Trust the Process
People: "How long does it take you to design a scarf?"
Me casually: "about 3 months or so."
Me actually: I truly don't know and honestly am scared to try to figure it out. When you are an artist/entrepreneur (and a perfectionist), it's all-encompassing; it never stops or turns off. Everything is inspiration. You dream about it and get up in the middle of the night to sketch ideas. And then, throw into the mix that my designs are inspired by real women, and I feel this need to fully immerse myself into my inspiration.
I imagine that I am an actor studying to play a new character. To fully and accurately portray each woman and breathe them into my work, I have to try my best to research and learn as much as possible about them and the things that make them unique. I start with a basic idea of what I think I want the design to look like. Then I begin to draw the elements while continuing to research as much as possible about the woman/design theme (i.e., with "The Carla," I spent hours reading about music, The Carpenters, the '70s, and songwriting in addition to specifics about Carla's life). So as I start to learn more, the design ends up evolving and eventually taking on a life of its own.
So, here is a very brief snippet of the evolution of The Carla. This is 30 of the (approximately) 200-ish versions (many of which would have made a beautiful scarf) that I had to go through to arrive at the finished piece. While this may sound excessive to some, I have realized that it is all just part of the process.