I discovered a lot about myself and creativity whilst I was in Finland and I’ve been reflecting on my experience for 6 months now. It’s taken me a lot longer to process the experience than I expected. It's still ongoing and I’m enjoying learning about myself and my creativity.

My residency walks in the 2nd week were a little more irregular as I had less new places within my radius to explore.

I came to Finland to unleash my creativity and find a balance between my client led jewellery and my self-directed designs. I was stopping myself from being creative, even here, in a number of ways.

The essays, blog posts and books were explaining similar things in different ways, and different creative processes were shown as effective for different people. The more I looked for answers to my creative process the more I found lots of paths that all seemed to be interconnected. This was the day I discovered accretion, it spoke to me and slotted nicely into my creative process.

Part of my Finland residency blog series. Starting my one month residency ; getting to know the area, how to use Sauna and exploring my creativity.

This is the first in a series of posts about my residency in Finland in 2017. The residency was made possible by the generous support of Creative Scotland and Arteles. This blog is an edited version of one you may have read on my previous website.