Throughout this entire process of starting my business, I was aware that I couldn’t afford to buy a bunch of materials I just liked and design from there. I couldn’t waste money on materials that I wouldn’t use, or figure out later that a particular design required more of something I didn’t have.

I had to figure out all six of my designs *before* I bought anything.

I had to calculate exactly how much ribbon I would need to make a certain number of garters and I couldn’t over buy. So when it came time to plan out all the designs, I used cheap ribbon I had in the studio to figure out shapes and ribbon color cards to imagine the colors.

Last week as I was finishing up the boxed sets to post to Etsy, I ended up redesigning the last garter set. It was kind of vague to begin with, I knew I wanted certain colors (teal, rust and grey) and I knew I wanted knotted loops.  I ‘sketched’ out how I thought it would look, two flowers surrounded by a circle of knotted loops:

bad picture, I know

My process has been like this, I know what colors I want to use and I have an idea about the shape. I’ll rearrange the elements until it feels right, and then figure out how to duplicate the process in the  most efficient way to create multiples.

But something about this one wasn’t coming together. I knew I wanted it to be more messy and organic as compared to the other two designs for the boxed sets. Something about it was feeling too chaotic though; the stamen, the loops- there was too much going on. I didn’t love it, so I reworked it. I knew I had to use the same materials because there wasn’t time or money to start over on this one.

I realized how much I liked the rust colored silk ribbon and decided to make it the dominant color. I got rid of the stamen and used cleaner looking black knotted centers instead.

I made the grey knotted silk ribbon off to one side and used just a small amount of the teal ribbon as a transition. Now I love it!