Craft For Health

Crafting Cookies Makes Me Whole by Amber

 

 

 

I’ve always been an artist. Everyone in my family is an artist in one way or another. Creating art is part of who I am.

 

I feel so blessed to be able to do what I love and share it with the world. When I am decorating cookies I feel as though I am fulfilling my purpose in life. It has become my meditation.

It makes me wonder, then, why I drifted through four years of business school thinking that I had to get a 9 to 5 job in a pantsuit in order to be successful?

  

 

 

I learned recently that being present is the key to feeling content and whole. When we get caught up in dwelling on things that happened in the past or the problems that await us in the future, there is no space to enjoy this moment. It is no easy task to live in the present. But crafting, whether it is cookie decorating, crocheting, or drawing, is one of the few things that allow me to reach this place.

  

 

I truly believe that anyone and everyone can find this feeling through crafting. When you are creating something from your heart, you are doing God’s work.

  

 

 

Amber Spiegelis a baker and pastry artist originally from Upstate New York. She now lives in Chicago, IL where she bakes and decorates cookies for her Etsy store.  

 

 

HAPPINESS COMES WHEN I'M CREATING SOMETHING by SADIE

  

  

All of my life, I’ve found that I am my happiest and most centered

when I am creating something. All of the illustrations I do in my

spare time are of my family members, and I find that I feel more

connected with each person after I have gone through their old albums,

selected a photograph, and created an illustration based on that

moment in their past. It feels like I understand them in a new way… on

a deeper, more human level.

 

Doing custom portraits for people has also been very fulfilling

because it lets me bring happiness to a complete stranger. I like to

be able to take a small, candid moment and turn it into something that

is meaningful and cherished. I often do memorial portraits for people

who have lost loved ones, and I find that a portrait that is happy and

cheeky is a much better way to remember somebody than something formal

and stuffy. I think that seeing their loved one represented in a

casual, ordinary moment, helps people to better remember who the

person really was in his or her day-to-day life.

  

 

My name is Sadie and I run the Etsy shop, Emmie Bean, which

specializes in quirky, custom illustrations inspired by old family

photographs.

I Spent an Entire Week Painting a Pineapple and I Felt Better

My father always said I was born with a crayon in my hand and I'm pretty sure it was the one called Prussian blue. By second grade, I had turned my art skill into a business. For five cents, the price of a Baby Ruth candy bar, I would draw a picture of a pony, with a custom colored mane and tail. I had a catalog, color swatches,order forms and a price sheet.  Since that thriving little enterprise, I went on to produce art work for greeting cards, picture books, game boards, class room readers, achievement tests, stickers, window clings, and coloring books. I taught art in public schools from Pre-K through 8th grade. I created a series of step-by-step guides for young artists called 1 2 3 Draw and I am about to launch a second series called Draw Plus Math. All of this work was satisfying, frustrating, rewarding, stressful, goal-oriented and time pressured. Most of the people I worked with were wonderful. With the few not so wonderful ones, I kept my eye on the prize, happy with the check that eventually came in the mail.I went from drawing and painting on paper to learning Photoshop. I went from chasing the UPS truck down the street with packages for editors to emailing all my files in electronic form. I went to conferences and trade shows. I blogged, I networked, I tweeted.

Then I turned 60.

I know that certain birthdays should be considered 'just a number' but somehow this one sat me down and said 'Howdy'.

I was stressed. I wasn't eating right. My allergies re-invented themselves. My weight went up. I wasn't sleeping. Or I slept too much. My heart raced for hours at a time for no medically discernible reason. I was picking at my feathers like a maladjusted cockatoo.  And I was unhappy with the work I was doing. It had long ago stopped being fun.

Then there was a recession. The work I considered no longer fun, no longer existed.

So, I had less money but more time. I started taking walks at the Botanic Garden. On a whim, I enrolled in a botanical illustration class at the horticultural school. I started to draw and paint again with no other purpose in mind but the pleasure of seeing an image appear on a page. I met other people with similar interests. I found several wonderful teachers.I had always loved flowers but now I began to be fascinated with depicting the elegant way plants are organized. I spent an entire week drawing a pineapple. There were no art directors. There were no contract negotiations. There was just music on my CD player and the scritch scratch of my crow quill pen. Time flew by untracked. And I felt better.

The link to my blog:  www.polkadotpie.blogspot.com  My website:  www.freddielevin.com

Fabric and Thread --My Therapy in Disguise by Diane

 

It’s taken me a long time to discover that the handwork passions I have pursued all of my life are my therapies in disguise.  I’ve always felt that there was a frustrated artist lurking below my veneer of high school math teacher.  I had complained for years that I was unable to meditate successfully (my mind continually moves around in ridiculous directions), and it took a highly intuitive friend to help me realize that machine quilting is my form of meditation.

  

  

 

 

I enter a different world when I walk into my studio.  The physical aches and pains that accompany six decades of living seem to fade into the background –- I am about to have fun with fabric and thread, and nothing else matters.  It is nearly impossible for my mind to wander too far from the project before me; the left half of my brain, which has guided me through 24 years of teaching mathematics, refuses to give up on solving the problem at hand until the right half has played with all the possibilities. 

  

 

 

I seem to be in my most meditative state when I am guiding the quilt sandwich through the machine, following the lines of the motifs which I have drawn on the fabric, concentrating on the size of the stitches as I strive for uniformity.  Sometimes there is a great dealing of un-sewing, but I know this is necessary, because, in the end, I want to experience that rush of joy at seeing my vision come to life in fabric.

 

 

 

  

  

My name is Diane Evans and I am a retired math teacher, studio quilt artist, and blogger.  I agree with Danny Kaye that “life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.”  My designs are available for sale on my website and I am happy to do commissions –- just contact me.