Making Jewelry With ADHD: Part Two

Making Jewelry With ADHD? 5 Tips to Spend Less Time Overthinking and More Time Creating

If making jewelry is hard, making jewelry with ADHD (or suspected ADHD) is a whole other kettle of fish. One minute you’re full of ideas and excited to get started… The next minute, you’re reorganizing your gemstone collection, modifying a hammer, and Googling the origins of the phrase “kettle of fish”, with no finished jewelry in sight.

If you read Part 1, you’ll know I was nearly forty when I was diagnosed with ADHD. Understanding why my brain could get completely absorbed in one job while refusing to start another explained a LOT. By the time I was diagnosed though, I had almost two decades of jewelry learning, making and teaching experience under my belt… and I’d learnt a thing or two about how to harness this brain of mine for productivity (instead of procrastination)!

That’s why in Part 2, I’m revealing all my tips and tricks to help you to spend less time chasing distractions… and more time actually making the damn jewelry. 

So, whether you’ve officially been given the ADHD stamp or you can just resonate with the experience of sitting at your bench with seventeen ideas and no idea where to begin… Hopefully you find them useful too! Let’s dive in…

Tip #1: Don’t Wait For a Free Day to Start (Small Wins for Busy Brains)

I don’t know about you, but if I think something needs a whole day of concentration, I’m unlikely to start it when I’ve only got a few hours. I’ll put it off until I have a lovely, uninterrupted day with nothing else demanding my attention.

Which is an excellent way to never start anything.

That’s part of why I create smaller resources alongside our full jewelry classes. Sometimes you want to get stuck into a substantial project. Other times, you just want something to watch while you’re eating your sandwich at lunch time. 

I know how easily “I haven’t got time to do the whole thing” can turn into doing none of it. Having a smaller place to start helps me, and it’s something I think about when I’m putting resources together for you.

You can explore a texture without deciding what magnificent piece of jewelry it’s eventually going to become. A scrap of copper and an afternoon are allowed to be enough.

👉So, if your brain works like mine: pick something you can finish in one sitting. Texturing is perfect for this, and my free Ultimate Jewelry Texturing Guide has plenty of ideas to try with whatever scrap you've got lying around.

Tip #2: Don’t Just Learn the “What”. Learn the “Why”.

ADHD or not, us creative folks rarely follow a project exactly. We love to tweak it, customize it, and make it our own! It’s what turns jewelry making from a process into an artform. 

The challenge is though… if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can easily make annoying (and expensive) mistakes that derail your progress and kill your motivation. 

That’s why it’s so important to find a teacher who doesn’t just show you the ‘what’, but also explains to you the ‘why’. So you’re not just learning to follow instructions… you’re actually learning to think like a jeweler. 

My ADHD brain LOVES to know the why. It’s actually deeply irritating to anyone trying to teach me anything. What does it achieve? What happens if I do it differently? Is this essential, or have we all just been doing it since 1987 because someone called Brian said so?

That need to understand the reasoning follows me into every class I create too. I spend ages thinking about the flow, what you’ll need to know before we move on, and which questions are likely to crop up along the way.

If you’re watching a lesson and thinking, Hang on, why are we doing that?, I want the answer to be there. Otherwise, part of your attention is still stuck on that question while I’m merrily explaining something else.

It’s also why writing a class script can take me days, weeks, or months. I’m mentally working through the project from your side of the bench, trying to spot where an explanation might leave you scratching your head. I’m physically working through it too, making each test piece several times to make sure I understand where the roadblocks may kick in. 

Understanding why something works means you can use that knowledge in your own designs. You’ve got a reason for making a decision, rather than a vague memory that Lucy did something with a file at roughly the twelve-minute mark. 

👉 Try this: Be picky about who you learn from, whether it’s a paid class, a free YouTube video or a tutorial on someone’s blog. Look for clear demonstrations and explanations of why each step matters. You want something you can follow, not another forty minutes of squinting at someone’s knuckles. And if there’s a way to ask questions, use it. You’re learning, not being an inconvenience.

Tip #3: Ditch the Blank-Page Paralysis With a Starting Point

Just because you understand how something works doesn’t mean you’re magically able to get up and make something. Have you ever had a beautiful, free day and thought, “I’m going to spend it at my bench!”... only to sit down and draw a complete blank? You’re in good company! 

That’s me to a tee. Give me a blank page and tell me I can make absolutely anything, and there’s a good chance I’ll spend the day farting around with possibilities.

By lunchtime, I’ve considered seventeen possible concepts. By teatime, I’ve realized I spent four hours on Pinterest. Nothing has actually been made, but I’ve had a very busy day imagining it.

Give me a starting point, though, and I’ve got something to work with. For example, if you tell me to design a pair of earrings using no solder, mixed metals and geometric shapes, I can get going, see what happens and start making decisions along the way.

That’s the balance I aim for in my classes. There’s a base project to get you started, but the final assignment leaves room to explore and tweak the design. You might change the shape or try a different texture. You’re practicing the technique while making something that feels like yours.

I’m not expecting you to spend the entire class suppressing an idea because it doesn’t look exactly like my sample. If you’ve spotted something you’d like to try, I want there to be room for that.

For me, a little structure helps the ideas go somewhere. Otherwise, they can spend six hours arguing among themselves while I achieve bugger all.

👉 Try this: If choosing between possibilities is swallowing your bench time, pick a starting design and one thing you want to change. The other ideas can wait their turn. If I still can’t choose, I write my ideas on paper and point at one at random. Hot tip: It’s also how I choose food at a good restaurant.

Tip #4: Put the Rabbit Hole on a Post-it

You’re halfway through a project when another idea pops up. You only meant to look into it for five minutes... but somehow your original piece hasn’t moved in two hours. Relatable? Me too! 

Interesting work can still distract you from the work you wanted to finish. I know this all too well from the Academy forums.

I’m in the forums every day answering members' questions (yes, seriously). I love helping people work through their jewelry dramas. I can picture what they’re describing, jump between possible explanations and get properly absorbed in figuring out what’s happening.

The trouble is knowing when to stop! 

A quick forum answer can turn into a two-day investigation if I’m not careful. I’ll look into one possibility, find something else interesting, and disappear down a rabbit hole that apparently has its own basement.

The upside is that those investigations build my knowledge, which helps me help students. They also result in a lot of new resources. The downside is that they don’t get the original jobs off my never-ending to-do list! 

What I’ve learnt is… 

You don’t have to abandon every interesting idea that turns up while you’re making. But you don’t have to follow it immediately either.

👉 Try this: When a rabbit hole opens mid-project, jot it on a sticky note, finish the task you’re working on, and then go exploring. The rabbit hole will still be there. Promise. Post-its for the win.

Tip #5: Learn How You Learn

If you’ve ever watched an explanation several times and still not understood it, you’ll know how frustrating that can be. Especially when you start getting angry with yourself, when the thing simply hasn’t been explained well.

Sometimes listening to an explanation, with an analogy to help describe what’s happening, makes it click. Sometimes you need to see things in action, but for that, you have to see the details too. And sometimes you need to read an instruction manual with clear photos five times to get it. I know I do.

Pay attention to what helps you understand. It might be different depending on what you’re learning, and you might need a combination. You don’t have to get everything from watching a video once.

That’s why I try to make sure our Academy classes combine all that: clear videos, detailed but waffle-free explanations, and extensive handouts where you can easily find what you need without having to rewatch a video.

(I suspect some of my own difficulties involve undiagnosed dyslexia as much as ADHD, although I haven’t had that assessed. If you’ve ever seen me write a phone number or a word by hand (or even on the computer), you’ll know why I suspect it. The first letter of the word goes in last... more times than I can count!)

👉 Try this: Next time something clicks, notice what helped. Was it a close-up, an analogy, or having written instructions beside you while you tried it? Look for those things when choosing learning resources, and ask for another explanation when you need one. You’re there to learn, not to win a prize for understanding everything on the first bloody go.

Your Brain Isn’t Your Weakness. It’s Your Superpower. 

That brain of yours might take the scenic route, but it’s also the one coming up with designs you’re excited to make, spotting possibilities and wondering what would happen if you tried something differently. There’s a lot to love about that.

The frustrating bits are real. But you don’t have to squash your curiosity to get something finished. A little structure and teaching that makes sense to you can help you put those ideas to work. That’s where your wonderfully busy brain gets to be a bit of a superpower.

It’s what I aim for inside the Metalsmith Academy: enough direction to get you started, with room for your own ideas. If that sounds like your kind of learning, come make something with us.

I’ll bring the starting point. You bring that brain of yours... and we’ll see what we can come up with, together.

Lucy xx