We occasionally need a little help in making our brainstorming as productive as possible. There have been times when I wanted to be fluent, flexible, original, and elaborative, but it just didn’t happen. Luckily, tools like SCAMPER, discussed herein, can help get the creative juices flowing. SCAMPER is an acronym put together by Bob Eberle based largely on the brainstorming work of Alex Osborn. Each letter indicates something we can consider when trying to develop a new idea or improve upon an existing one.
If you have interest, you can Google SCAMPER and find the questions Eberle suggested to help us generate ideas. I’ve “jewelry-smithed” those questions to try to make them more applicable to what we do, and am including examples of how I have used SCAMPER in making links for handmade chain. It’s one of my favorite tools and although I seldom use all the letters of SCAMPER on a single project, I have used each of them from time to time. It seems the words from the tools pop in to my mind when I’m struggling to figure out what to do.
I’ve been making my own wire chain for a very long time and occasionally I just want something a little different. I commonly make “S” links and connect them to each other or join them with jump rings as shown in the photo below. The finished piece shows that I also use beaded links with the other wire connectors.