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Creativity is like riding a bike. Y ou might be a little rusty at first, you may even fear falling off, but then you feel the wind through your hair, you find your balance and wonder why you haven’t ridden in years! More and more people are embracing creativity in some way because they feel the need for connection, expression and the acknowledgement of who we are. The act of being creative requires us to take risks. Most of us learn by the time we are in middle school that we had better stay comfortable and safe and not take any more creative risks. Somehow, transitioning from stick figures to realism is a daunting task. Go figure! We Americans want successful results right away. Do you know some people spend their lives drawing the figure? Somehow, as our brains develop, we never make it back to the drawing table and we continue playing it safe. Making furniture is already a bunch of hard work, why make it even more difficult by changing the design? I could be mak

It's like take out, you have to make the call and place your order if you are going to get your dinner! Jo Bradney  still life My last post really got me thinking about the process of creativity. I was explaining that I am waiting for the right design to ‘come to me’ for a box hinge and legs that I have been dinking around with for the past 6 years. I realized that I didn’t say that I actually have to place an order for the design. I set an intention and put the box off to the side while I am working on actual jobs. I don’t know what I will make for it. I try to clear my mind and let the creative department take over. Being a woodworker, I do my best to balance creativity with skilled manufacturing. I did start out designing with a drawing. However, in this case, a drawing just won’t suffice. The particular board that the main box is made from has so much personality that a drawing just isn’t going to cut it. It isn’t simply a question of the size of the

I NEED TO SYNC MY iPHONE WITH THE DESIGNS IN MY HEAD. They have finally figured out the wireless sync, so why not? I’m sure someone is working on this right now. I know it may require some intense filtering but sometimes I wish I had this feature. My screen may look like this at times:                                           by Thorsten Nass   Beautiful isn’t it? See more of his work here: http://www.videodraws.me/ I ALWAYS HAVE SEVERAL WOODWORKING PROJECTS GOING AT ONCE One is a jewelry box, or at least that’s what I think it is going to be. I have decided that I will make my own hinges for this and I want them to be sculptural accents made out of the hardest wood in the shop, Vera Wood.   Its green and blue and amber which will accent the fir box nicely. HOW DO I MAKE IT ART? The way I go about this is I engineer the working parts and structure and then I wait for a vision to come to me. I see things in thr