I called this Signature Collection project Simple Petals but it was anything but simple. I started with the white tall lantern. I didn’t think it would go past that until one afternoon I started wondering what a six-sided version would look like, then cards, then boxes, and then more candle cover type pieces. I just kept going. I have more ideas but I had to stop at some point — ha!
This project took me longer than usual because I’m really trying to reign in my night owl tendencies. I can go overboard with my terrible sleeping habits. If I’m focused on a project I can easily keep going and going and not realize that ‘all of a sudden’ it’s 5 am — and I only notice because it’s lighter outside. Oops! Fortunately, I really don’t do that during the week — the responsibility of a full-time job prevents me from doing that. Needless to say, I’m very excited that Simple Petals is out in the world now.
I feel like it’s the inevitable point I was going to reach after all the reading I’ve been doing on meditation and mindfulness during the last couple of months. My word for the year also happens to be “present”. How does that all relate to this project? I’m not sure but at some point, I thought of candlelight and how peaceful it is and I recalled that I’d been wanting to create a new lantern for a while — and voila!
If you feel like I’m narrating how my mind made some skips and jumps during the last few weeks you’d be right. That’s how creativity goes.
And here’s one more skip. Recently, someone asked me why I still do what I do while having a full-time job. The selfish answer is that while I’m working on these projects I relax and my mind goes into a quiet very calm place — and it doesn’t hurt to earn a little something extra while sharing my ideas.
The less selfish side of me feels such accomplishment (it actually thrills me to my core) when I get emails from people that buy my files and the stories they tell me about how they will use my work. The latest small but amazing story — one of my customers bought a paper quilt to use each square as a wayfinding system in an Alzheimer’s home. Be still my heart. Never in a million years would I have thought that my paper creations could help people in such a way. How can I stop when I hear something like that?
My wish for you today is that whether you work on something like this set or any other crafty endeavor that you gain some of the peace I enjoy when being creative. May your story include hops and skips that take your mind to calm places, new stories, and maybe sweet paper ideas. It’s really that simple.