I really must feed my subconscious more often

big shell1
Originally uploaded by steampunkglass

It’s funny how glass making can be come a kind of trance somedays, and that’s when the subconscious can sneak in and give you a nice surprise. I had a brief afternoon trip to St Ives the other week. Normally that would be great, except this was a cold and windy day, and we went there to try and clear our heads after a funeral in Truro a day before.
I must say I do like seaside towns when they are off-peak; you get to see the real place hiding under the plastic spades and holidaymakers. After a few hours cheerless wandering, I popped into a tourist shell shop, feeling the need to get something ‘positive’ however small and silly. I bought a small bag of chipped shells and one larger long coil shell, not even sure why. When asked what was in my little £2.99 brown paper bag I said ‘a bag of inspiration,’ although I felt far from inspired. On my return home the bag got left in a corner of my workshop as other routine things like washing clothes and buying cat food took precedence.
Then on Sunday I was messing around with some new techniques I’ve been trying, mostly involving making spirals trapped inside beads (I love doing spirals!) Some of them were taking ages to do, 45mins on a bead is a very long time to stare at the same thing, when in a lapse of concentration – or I think maybe my subconscious had a better idea – I pulled too far on a spiral, and then pulled a bit more, and a bit more, until I had these amazing shell-shaped beads, with little sea anemones trapped inside! Of course what I didn’t realise until after I had tidied them and tweeked them a little, that they were like that one big shell I had bought a couple of weekends before. I then looked on my desk and found I’d ‘doodled’ the same twisty texture with some other glass that I then didn’t know what to do with.
So, the moral is, feed your subconscious, even when you don’t think it’s paying attention!