I have spent the last month trying to clear up my workshop! It’s not exactly that it was a mess, it was just that there were too many half finished projects.

I often find when I am trying out a new technique or have a new tool or material to play with, I will get so far and then get stuck. The original idea has been accomplished (e.g. see what shapes I can make with this material) but I have not reached a result that I feel is presentable (or saleable if that is the objective).

In the past I let myself off by saying it had just been a learning experience and I shouldn’t expect every experiment to result in a positive outcome. However when I learned to paint furniture, with the help of the free videos on Annie Sloan’s website, I realised her mantra of ‘if you don’t like it, just paint over it again’ could be applied to pretty much anything! If I don’t like this blog post I will go back and delete words and add new words until I reach the point I am happy to post it. So I decided to start looking at my art projects with the same mindset. 

Sometimes I use this mindset to go over and rework projects that I had put to one side to ‘percolate’ – i.e. waiting for fresh inspiration to strike. Although you may be ready to ‘paint over’ the previous attempt, you don’t always know what you want the new version to look like! However, if I allow those projects to sit for a while, and then come back with the intention to finish them (or at least make a good effort to) then usually the inspiration arrives, as if motivated by the intention, and the project moves on. Not always successfully, but – critically – the freedom to accept that the result does not have to be the final outcome allows the same level of excitement and creativity to flow as it did in the first attempt.

And if the second attempt doesn’t work, simply repeat the process again and again until you get to the point where you have to put the whole thing in the bin because it is mangled beyond repair OR you achieve something you can feature in your blog!!

This paper mache fish with mosaic background took no less than five goes to get to the point where I liked it. I really love the result but I had absolutely no idea it was going to end up like this when I started it last year! 

I don’t mind binning something if I feel it has structurally failed, e.g. the willow has broken or the bowl has become too chunky and can’t be stripped back again. My compost heap has repurposed a number of projects over the years and my garden is grateful! 

However since I began using the intention to keep redoing to the point of Win or Bin, I am finding I am having ever more wins and my creativity has increased exponentially. It is as if I am moving up through the gears of problem solving instead of giving up after starting the engine. Yes, there are still unfinished projects, but there is now a plan in place rather than a storage box.

Each project that is not completed is put onto a table in the middle of the workshop so I can’t forget about them – and the space is finite. So when it’s at the point of overflowing I have to take action before I allow myself to start anything new! Hence the last month of ‘clearing up’. I have not cleared the table yet but I have got a lot more finished projects (which is unbelievably satisfying!).

Even more exciting is that I can take the redoing mindset to projects as I begin them. This immediately takes away the pressure of making something ‘good’. So with printmaking for example, if it came out with a bit of a blur in one corner, I might cut up the print and collage bits of it onto another piece of paper, or I might apply a collage piece over the blur, or I might grab some paint or pastels and draw over it or even embroider some stitches to create a sharper outline… really, anything goes! 

Those of you who have been to my classes this year have hopefully noticed me encouraging you to work with the unexpected moments rather than fighting against them, and from my own experience I think that the more you open yourself up to the first go simply being the first step, the more you will start to enjoy the problem solving and find your true creative flow. 

Happy redoing!