In the Flow Making Necklaces

In the midst of sorting and packing household items in order to prepare for a move, I took some time to engage in a creative project. Not that sorting and packing can’t be creative … they’re just not creative in quite the same way as making something new.

I spent about four hours making three new bead necklaces.

While I was making these necklaces, I listened to music and podcasts, though I was only half-listening part of the time. I slipped deeply into the flow state, so named by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In this state, those four hours slipped by, causing me to miss lunch until 2 p.m., when I finally finished the third necklace.

Interestingly, much of the work of making these necklaces was choosing and arranging the glass and metal beads in an attractive way. Once that was done, it was a fairly simple matter of cutting and bending and attaching the wire pins holding the beads.

I only intended to make one necklace, the one with the bear pendant seen on the right in the photo above (closeup below), but I found so many intriguing beads and pendants in my collection that I kept going, making a necklace with a sunflower pendant (middle in photo above, closeup below) and another with a frog pendant (left in photo above, closeup below).

After finishing my necklaces and eating lunch (I was getting pretty punchy by 2 p.m.!), I entered another flow state in photographing the necklaces. This state didn’t last as long as when I was making the necklaces, but for me, photography is another creative process, particularly taking photos from unusual or rakish angles.

For more of my bead photography, check out the online BEAD exhibit I created for the Morrison County Historical Society.

I love the luminous quality of glass beads along with the weight of metal beads. Necklaces like this feel luxurious, even though they aren’t that expensive to make.

Making three necklaces in one go was an impromptu and enjoyable process. It was nice to slip into a flow state in the middle of a lot of major life changes.

Sitting down to write this blog post (or pretty much any blog post or other form of writing) puts me into the same flow. Though this time, my stomach is telling me lunch needs to happen before 2 p.m.