How do you have embellishment ideas for fashion?

Taryn - I'm not sure anything of substance and quality can be done "without thinking too hard". However, I'm going to go ahead and answer the remainder of your question.

When I was working at Avon - I was responsible for innovation and strategy - primarily looking at emerging technologies, and thinking about the way that Avon's business operated - looking at how the combination of these two could lead to new way for Avon to embrace technology -- it was an incredible experience!

How does this apply to your question - in thinking about embellishments on dresses, shirts, pants, jackets, and other garments - I would break down the problem into 3 areas:
1. The embellishments - what are the major categories/techniques - for example, bejeweling, embroidery, and say "iron-on" (these are just examples), and under this category push yourself to think about embellishments that you not even seen yet on garments, but perhaps on other material (say for example, painted on stencils, or graffiti)
2. The garments - you've listed a few of them, but again, here, think about ways that you can push the envelope of garments that typically do not get embellished - say scarves for example
3. The process - here I would think about the phrase "fail early, fail fast" - so building on the examples that I suggested in 1 + 2, I would say how about if we painted stencils on scarves -- I would not immediately go out and figure out how to make scarves and find a factory with the correct manufacturing processes, and build a website to sell my scarves... I would "fail early, fail fast" -- I would go out and buy ONE scarf. Perhaps a solid colored scarf from a nearby store. Then, I would go out and buy one quart of paint, and one stencil that I liked. I would make one scarf with a painted stencil - then I would go ask my friends for their thoughts on my scarf (potentially even sell my creation to one of my friends).

If none of my friends like the scarf - that's fine - I would listen to their comments - if many of my friends give me the same type of feedback (for example, i don't like it on a scarf, but on gloves, it would be awesome) -- then I would fail my scarf... thereby failing fast, failing early...

but..

then I would repeat for gloves....

if my friends liked the scarf - and were fighting over who gets to buy it - i would write all their names down, take a deposit, use the deposit to buy some raw materials, and collect the rest of the payment when you deliver the scarves to your friends (be sure to ask them to tell THEIR friends)...

and pretty soon, you're going to be known as the person who has very creative embellishment ideas for fashion.

Hope this was helpful.