Surprisingly, designing new products can be a particularly arduous task. I spend a considerable amount of my time working on accounts, admin, sales, marketing, website development, blogging and other such activities that have nothing to do with designing or crafting. They are a necessity of self-employment; they are also a demon to my creative mojo … let me explain.
When I eventually find myself with time for ‘play’, I get very excited. I mark out days in my diary – weeks in advance, put my phone on silent, ban the kids from the studio, shop for new supplies to inspire me, drag all my idea sources and notebooks out of their hiding places, put on a fab new album to listen to and then set about, with much gusto, the task of creating.
It sounds idyllic. I can assure you it isn’t.

Two hours in and the scene is not one of harmonious creativity. A hundred ideas swirling around my head along with product and resource overload just isn’t cutting it. Everything I try just isn’t working; heaps of product and supplies are now strewn all over the studio in various piles – die cuts, glue pots, paintbrushes, stacks of coloured and patterned 12″ x 12″ paper, flowers, rub-ons, metal frames, boxes of buttons and brads – you name it, it’s all out. Half finished projects and my initial ideas are now scraps of crumpled paper on the floor and my note books have huge pen marks through them with the words NO blazoned all over them in red marker.
I have lost my creative mojo.
No artist or creative (or writer for that matter) likes to admit to losing their creative mojo – but it happens. We spend 80% of our time doing uninteresting, mundane, necessary administration and that seriously messes with our creative thought process. We just can’t dive straight in and produce wonderful, fresh pieces of art straight away. It takes time and thought, then more time and even more thought. This can go on for days, even weeks.
I have, however, been here enough times to recognise the pattern and have, to some extent, accepted this part of the process. My solution? Cake (or wine, dependent on the time of day) and a few hours spent casually glancing through the carnage that now surrounds me whilst listening to the aforesaid album at my leisure.
Then the ideas come.