I had a few more photos to reshoot for The Natural Home Wheel of the Year today. I will admit that I’m a bit photographed out. Not the least of which because I had to remake the twig wreath as I had thrown the last one out.
That meant today I was attaching twigs to a wreath frame with hot glue. But I wasn’t doing only that. I was keeping our newest family member, Clover, from chewing up twigs, and giving myself hot glue burns, and trying to do all this before I lost the light and would have to wait another day to get the photos.
And I spent a good portion of that time looking at what I was making and feeling like I was failing. The twigs were all spaced out weird and there were strings of hot glue everywhere. I had to go out and cut more twigs twice to fill in the gaps. I kept looking at what I was doing and worrying that I was wasting my and my editors’ time with a craft project that would look like garbage.
The whole time my husband, Stephan, kept telling me that it was looking great. I couldn’t see it though, because I was so focused on the details, while he was looking from the outside. He didn’t see the doubt and second-guessing that went into the placement of each twig. All he saw was the steady construction of a craft.
Halfway through I recalled a line from my book Sew Witchy. For the Foraging Bag there is a moment when everything looks like a wreck and I have a caption for that step which reads, “This is where your bag is going to look like an unfinished mess. This is the chaos before the order moment.” I had to remember that. Crafting and creativity is a mess, it rarely looks orderly, and, especially when you start, doubt can creep up on you and tell you, “This looks nothing like what you thought it would. This sucks. You aren’t good at this.” And that’s when you have to trust the process. Trust that you will get there.
Just keep creating. Keep gluing and sewing and beading until you have finished. And when you step back if you still see where you made mistakes, tell yourself that they aren’t flaws but your own signature style.
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