Even though my email address is posted nowhere on this web site, I still get a ton of messages every day, and many of them ask me how I come up with my ideas. This is one of those questions where the answer is both crystal clear to me and completely impossible to put into words. I can often answer where I came up with the idea for a specific piece of artwork, but telling where I come up with the ideas about I think about art in general, or the direction of the craft industry is not so simple. This is my best answer:

• I read a lot. I mean A LOT. Magazines, books, the sides of boxes, road signs, whatever. I’ve been an avid reader since I was four or five, and all the stuff I’ve read is rattling around in my head, unfiled. I don’t differentiate between reading a novel and reading a craft magazine—it’s all input, and it’s all related. I truly try not to file craft things with craft things, and popular culture with popular culture. All things are one for me. Sometimes, a piece from this book and a piece from that magazine come together, and out comes an idea.
• I listen a lot. Even though once you get to know me, I talk a lot, I’m basically a quiet person when left to my own devices. I hear things being discussed at the office, on the floor at trade shows, in craft stores, and I remember them. Sooner or later, I connect two or three of them in a way that makes sense to me, and out comes an idea.
• I watch everything. Not just television and videos, but traffic patterns, the sky, people at the mall. Everything in life creates its own pattern and rhythm, and I try to be open seeing them. When I’m stuck in traffic, I look at all the people in the cars around me, the paths the traffic helicopters are taking, how many video cams are placed on that section of road, how many reflective bumps there are on the offramp. Texture, pattern, rhythm—they’re in everything. Find them and remember them—they may spark an idea.
• I connect the dots. If I see orange in two ads in a magazine, I start looking for orange. In flowers. In fabrics. In upholstery. In products. When you look at a magazine, ask yourself what color it is—sometimes, you can see this just by flipping through the pages. (In early 2004 when I’m writing this, it’s probably blue.) Look at the backgrounds of ads, and the accessories decorating living spaces shown in home improvement magazines—watch for the pattern. When it comes to color, all things are related—cars will come out in blue, then furniture, then home decor items, then clothing. Learn to connect the color dots, which are the most obvious, and soon you’ll start connecting other things. Motifs in decorating. Themes. Textures. The progression of these things from home decor to clothing to craft products, which tends to be very linear. For an easy lesson in this, watch the one aisle in the home decor section of Target that changes every two months. See what you find there, and then look for it everywhere else—these are the dots to connect. Learning to connect things is a great way to spark new ideas.
• I relate everything new to something old. I truly believe there is nothing new under the sun—we’re just reinventing things that have already been done before. If I see something advertised as new, I immediately look for its relationship to something that’s been done before. Knowing where something came from can help you learn to see where it will go next, and where other things will go as a result. Knowing your history will help you see the potential future more clearly. Nothing sparks more ideas than that!
• The best advice I was ever given, from Herb Camburn at Cal State Long Beach: if it sounds interesting, learn about it. Even if it has absolutely no relationship to anything else you’re doing right now, if the opportunity to learn about something that sounds interesting presents itself, take it. Herb said this to me before the entire world was connected via the Internet. Now, it’s so easy: I spend a little bit of time every day surfing the Internet. I usually start with a term in which I’m interested, but know nothing about. (Last week, it was ornare.) I type that term into my favorite search engine, and see what comes up. I follow the path I’m given from there: sometimes I just read, sometimes I end up looking up more terms, and sometimes I have to buy something to get get a real understanding of whatever sparked my interest. It’s all learning (yes, shopping is learning, no matter what your husband thinks). Learning sparks ideas. Wait—ALL learning sparks ideas.