Designing Frustrations and Shoe Doodles!

 

Everyone once in a while a new design just sort of comes to me, but most of the time it's not that easy.  I've been playing around with a new micro macrame pattern for a few weeks now and I still don't feel like it's "right".  I started with a sort of knotted ripple design that I used in between the diamond sections in this piece:

And I like that section a LOT!  But the diamond part is too similar to other designs I've done and felt lazy, so I started experimenting.

I tried a knotted shape (top of the left piece) but that overwhelmed the new part, so I tried beads (bottom left) which just looked sloppy.  I tried reversing it (top right) but that ended up with no structural support.  I tried a combination of knotting and beads (bottom right) which wasn't bad, but again felt like it detracted from the ripple design.  

I ended up going tack to the concept of reversing the knotting but this time added an outline row of knotting to keep the design together.  See what I mean about it not being an easy process?  It may not look like a lot, but the hours involved in brainstorming and actually knotting all of these options really add up.  By this point I was feeling like I might be onto something, so I tried it again to test it out (and used red just because I never do):

I like it, but I'm just not convinced it's perfect yet.  I think I will try again leaving out the beads along the edges and pulling those "corners" into a more rounded shape.  This pattern is using up the cords at wildly different rates, too, so I will need to try to figure out which cords need to be longer at the beginning and which can be shorter.  I don't mind the excess cord so much as I just try to use it up in another project, but it seems much more professional for the tutorial if that doesn't happen.  This isn't an easy thing, by the way: I either have to try to track each cord through to the end or make another piece using different colors of cord so I can see where they go.  

And all this happens before I can even start making the design into a tutorial or class, which is a circus all by itself (check out this post if you missed it).  PS:  this is why it bothers me when folks copy my designs without purchasing them or post them on share sites.  It's like they're stealing a little part of my soul, I swear.

Meanwhile, though:

Shoe doodles!  I can only focus on one thing for so long before I start to get bored (and/or frustrated) so this week I've been playing with a new project - drawing and coloring on shoes!!  I'll tease you with this in-progress photo, but if you want to see the finished product, you'll have to pop over to the Love My Art Jewelry blog tomorrow!