I often get asked what my favorite part of being a jewelry designer is. For me, it's still the creative process, the part where I sit down, put pen to paper and sketch and sketch and sketch. After all these years, there's something incredibly satisfying about starting with absolutely nothing and watching an idea slowly become something I can eventually hold in my hand.

Of course, creativity doesn't exactly show up on command. When I'm alone in the studio, there's something about the quiet that gives my brain enough room to wander and, on a good day, flick on. Some of my best ideas have also arrived while I'm driving or in the shower, naturally when there's no sketchbook within reach. I've never figured out the perfect formula, but I have learned that the more consistently I give myself space to create, the more opportunities there are for the good ideas to find me.

From Sketchbook to Jewelry Bench

Sketching is only the beginning. Eventually an idea has to leave the page and make its way to the jewelry bench, where I can start figuring out whether what worked beautifully in my head actually works in metal. Sometimes it does. Other times, an idea I was completely convinced about turns out to need a little more work once I can see it, touch it and put it on a body.

That's where another kind of creativity begins. I start thinking about proportion, comfort, construction and all the tiny details that determine whether something is simply interesting to look at or something you'll actually want to wear. I'll adjust a width, change a curve, rethink the relationship between two shapes or scrap an idea altogether and start again. The metal has a funny way of letting you know when something isn't quite right.

Designing Something We Can Make Well

There's another piece of the puzzle that has always mattered at CMD. I'm not only designing a piece of jewelry, I'm designing something that needs to be made beautifully and consistently by hand. An idea can be wonderful on paper and still not make sense from a production standpoint, so part of my process is figuring out how a design can move from my hands into the hands of our production team without losing what made it special in the first place.

So much about CMD has changed since I originally wrote this post. I moved CMD across the country from San Francisco to Asbury Park, collections have come and gone, and my work has evolved in ways I couldn't have predicted. What hasn't changed is this part. I still sketch. I still experiment. I still have ideas that work immediately and plenty that don't. And I still believe some of the best designs come from staying curious long enough to see where an idea wants to go.

I used to call it the creativity roller coaster. Eight years later, I think that still fits. You stay on, keep making and trust that another good idea will eventually come around.

Still riding the creativity roller coaster,
Colleen

© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.

Published: July 6, 2018
Updated: August 13, 2026