Ever see an art or craft technique demonstrated and think, “Wow, I should try that out!”? It looks super cool and just watching, your mind is alight with all the things you could do with it. Maybe you already have everything you need, which makes it exciting – something new to do with your stash!
Or maybe you don’t have everything you need, which might be even more exciting – new things to shop for! You go as far as to buy all the supplies (even if it requires some shopping around) and you gather them together in an attractive pile, ready for your next art adventure.
Only, time passes and your supplies begin to gather dust. With each passing day, the likelihood of you actually trying out that cool “I-gotta-try-that” technique diminishes. Down the road, when you see something made using the same technique, you think, “Oh, right, I meant to try that.” But your fire to experiment with it has died down and it joins the long list of, “things I meant to do sometime.” Secretly, you start to build up resistance, resistance that might find its base in the anxiety of, “but what if I suck at it?” Because, you know, you might suck at it.
In fact, there’s a fairly good chance that, because you’re trying it for the very first time, you will suck at it.
The thing is, that’s okay. It’s okay to suck when you first try anything. (And even the second and third times!) But it’s easy to forget that when you get out of the habit of trying.
I speak from experience. There are so many things I’ve wanted to try out, where I’ve had to hunt down the supplies from the four corners of the earth, where I’ve scribbled notes about how I might use the techniques in my ideas book, and yet nothing has ever come of it. That’s why, about ten years ago, I developed the Scrap O’ Crap technique.
I was watching a craft show when, for about the 100th time, I saw a demo that I knew I could immediately put to use. And, like always, I made notes about it before settling back into the fainting couch to drink more of my morning coffee. Because, you know, it’s not like the technique was going anywhere.
But then I saw what I was doing: I was inviting resistance. The more time that passes after you learn something new, without trying it out, the lower the chances are that you will ever try it out at all. So, instead of finishing my coffee, I hopped up, went directly into my studio (some would call it a dining room), pulled out the supplies, and very quickly made a piece of crap.
A Scrap O’ Crap.
It was a little piece of crafting flotsam and jetsam and all it did was walk me through the steps. It didn’t look fabulous. I wasn’t going to send it to someone I loved. But I did it and you know what? After that, I owned that technique. It was no big deal to try it again because, well, I’d done it before. Now I could do it better.
This works with all sorts of things: painting, drawing, papercrafting, needlework…almost anything that does not truly require big set up. I do it a lot with surface techniques and textures. Many of us do it with drawing – but we call them sketches or studies (which instantly makes it okay). I’ve done it in the past with heat embossing, paper engineering, making embellishments, and so on.
Here are some guidelines I recommend to make this easier:
- Do it quickly. Speed circumvents your critical mind. I usually try to give myself a 15-minute time limit (you can do lots of things in just 5 minutes, though).
- Keep it small. Size contributes to both time and mental investment. Remember, you’re just trying it out.
- Don’t try to be perfect with your supplies. Grab whatever seems pretty close to what you need. Feel free to substitute items as necessary. After all, you’re not going to get graded and this is an experiment, anyway.
- Make this a low stakes operation. Do not create for a specific purpose. This is not about results. It’s about your hands and eyes learning the process.
- If you think you’ll suck at it, go ahead and say, “I’m just making a piece of crap. No big deal.” After all, this guarantees that your subsequent tries will be better, and who wouldn’t want to be assured of that!
I also suggest you consider keeping your scraps o’ crap, because over time, you might find that they aren’t so crappy after all. They might just be crappy when you compare them to the results of someone who demonstrates this day in and day out! I ended up incorporating some of my three-dimensional Scraps O’ Crap into mixed media pieces. Turns out they looked artfully primitive, not crappy. (I often get confused between the two.)
Have your own ideas about what motivates you to start moving on a new technique? Please share! I’d love to hear your wisdom.
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