Rituals and Routines Surrounding My Creative Work #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to day 18 and my letter R post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I’m going to talk about rituals and routines surrounding my creative process.

I don’t really have any particular rituals, in the sense that I do certain ritualistic things related to my creativity. Maybe it would help me if I did, because I sometimes struggle to get started with my creativity. Maybe having a creative ritual would help me get the “signal” that I’ll be crafting. Then again, that’d be similar to having a creative routine.

I do have certain specific routines where it comes to my polymer clay. First, I set up my work space. Usually, my staff help me roll out my no-stick mat and set up my pasta machine. They also retrieve my ceramic tile and the pencil case with my cutting tools in it from the locked kitchen cabinet. I have my clay in a large storage box, which I usually put onto my bed before starting to work. Most of the time, if I need just one color at a time, I get them out of the box one by one too and return them as soon as I no longer need them.

I usually have the staff pull my hair into a ponytail before I start to work too, because I don’t want to get hair into my polymer clay. When I’m wearing a fleece vest, I remove that too. I do usually wear black T-shirts, even though I’ve heard lint from that can get into your polymer clay too. I however don’t have any white shirts.

I always make sure to wash my hands before working with polymer clay and inbetween colors. A notable exception is when I’ll be using black for a figure’s eyes, because firstly I’ll just need a tiny bit of black then and secondly black will hardly be contaminated by other colors.

When I’m done working with polymer clay, I also have a routine that includes cleaning every tool I’ve used, including the ceramic tile, the pasta machine, any cookie cutters, my knives, etc. I clean most things using baby wipes, but this does mean I need to dry most of my tools (especially my pasta machine!) too. Most pros disassemble the pasta machine for cleaning, but I have no idea how to do that or how to put it back together.

I have no set time for polymer clay. For other creative activities, such as blogging, I do usually have set times, because I need to be alone when doing them. My most common time to write a blog post is after 8PM in the evening.

Practice Makes Perfect?: How I Deal With Perfectionism As a Creative #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter P post in the #AtoZChallenge on creativity. Like I’ve said a couple of times before, I can be quite a bit of a perfectionist. Today, I want to talk about that.

Of course people say that practice makes perfect. I disagree. Even after a lot of practice making unicorns out of polymer clay, I still make mistakes. You see, here’s my most recent unicorn.

As you can see, one of its ears is slightly bent backwards and its horn is slightly crooked. You may or may not be able to see this, but the heart-shaped platform on which it stands is also slightly curved.

Sometimes, when my creation is really off and I don’t find out until after I’ve baked it, I throw it straight into the trash. That rarely happens now. In this sense, I’m not that much of a perfectionist, in that I do let less-than-perfect creations remain and even share them online.

When I still work on a project though, I try my best to perfect it. I don’t accept a mediocre result from myself when there’s still room for me to improve on it.

It does, however, feel slightly discouraging knowing that, even after months of practising, I still can’t create the perfect unicorn. I’d like to move on to something else, but if I’m still not able to craft this sculpture exactly as I want it, how can I move on?

Of course, I can, and I do craft other things besides unicorns. But doing a different design for a unicorn would feel like giving up on this particular design. And I have just a little too much experience having to give up on a technique or an entire craft.

Do I seriously not believe that practice makes perfect? Maybe I do believe it, but not in my own case. And maybe that’s a thing of low self-esteem and it needs to change. After all, maybe just practising sculpting the same unicorns using the same techniques a thousand times won’t make me perfect, but I could still ask advice from other polymer clay artists on how they’ve prevented their slabs, for example, from going curved. That way, maybe my next unicorn will be another step closer to perfect.

Negative Feedback: How I Cope As a Creative #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter N post in the #AtoZChallenge. I am feeling very uninspired today and almost gave up on writing this post, as my headphones decided to no longer work. Yes, those headphones I got for €239 a few weeks ago. The cable connection to my computer still works though, so I really have no excuse.

Today, I initially wanted to share some resources for newbie crafters, but that’d get rather boring. Instead, I’m going to share how I deal with negative feedback as a creative. This may get rather, well, negative, but oh well.

After all, I’m not thick-skinned at all. Like I said when writing about my creative frustrations and in other posts too, I get easily discouraged. As a result, my way of coping with negative feedback is usually to give up a craft entirely.

I didn’t do this when starting out with polymer clay. I mean, I did get some rather blunt comments early on, but I could see they weren’t meant to degrade my efforts or my ability to ever learn at all. It may’ve been because I had used polymer clay for a short time years before and, as a result, knew that it isn’t an inaccessible craft for a blind person.

It was different with card making. With that, I got hurt very easily when getting kicked out of groups for flaking out of my obligations for swaps etc. Still, it wasn’t until someone flat out told me that my work didn’t meet her expectations even though she knew that I was blind, that I decided to give up. Card making is not altogether inaccessible for blind people, but it can be very hard when you want to follow the traditional “rules”.

Then, with macrame, people doubted my ability to be able to learn the craft as soon as they found out I’m blind (and have mild cerebral palsy). With that, I decided, probably sensibly so, not to invest in a lot of supplies before I’d really decided whether I could master the craft. I so far only have one color of cheap macrame cord and a few supplies. I am so happy about this, since, with card making, I may’ve spent as much as €1000 without ever being remotely proficient at the craft.

Now that I’m okay as a beginner polymer clay artist, I still do get negative feedback at times. I can handle it when my staff point it out when I do something that I need to retry it as it’s not looking good. I also don’t mind people reacting badly to my finished projects. I remember once, when I’d published a polymer clay shell with a bit of a fleshy color to my Facebook wall, someone saying they were freaking out thinking it was a body part. That made me feel off for a bit, but I was quickly reassured by my staff as well as my other Facebook followers that it looked like a shell and I definitely hadn’t posted NSFW content or something.

On my blog, I get the occasional negative comment. Usually, it’s based on a misunderstanding and we’re easily able to resolve the issue. I deal with clear trolls with a direct hit to the spam folder. Then again, these are very rare.

Gratitude List (April 16, 2022) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all on this Saturday before Easter Sunday. I have no idea whether English-speaking people have a word for this Saturday. In Dutch, it’s called “silent Saturday”. I’m having a relatively good day. I thought I’d do a gratitude post once again. As usual, I’m joining in with Ten Things of Thankful. Here goes.

1. I am grateful for physical therapy. The physical therapist came by twice this week. Once for my back, which had been planned already. The second time, she came by for bad pain in my right calf. It had been going on for a few days, so really I could’ve told her the first time, but it wasn’t so bad then. Thankfully, after some massaging and a bit of exercising, the pain is almost completely gone now.

2. I am grateful for a good nurse practitioner’s appt on Monday. It was really validating.

3. I am grateful for some distractions from anxiety in the form of polymer clay color mixing. I created some really cool colors.

4. I am grateful my day activities staff ordered the true colors six-pack of Fimo Professional polymer clay, which includes a color mixing chart, as well as large packs of white, Indian red and brilliant blue Fimo Soft polymer clay. (With white, Indian red, brilliant blue and sunflower yellow, which I already had, you can create the colors from the recipes I bought.) The best part is, the day center actually pays for it!

5. I am grateful the Fimo Professional isn’t as crumbly as it was when I last used it. It was actually a bit on the soft side, but still useable.

6. I am grateful for a good Easter lunch yesterday (or should I say Good Friday lunch then?) at the day center.

7. I am grateful for sunshine today and most of the week. Only yesterday was a bit of a cold and cloudy day.

8. I am grateful my computer accepts USB sticks and external hard drives again for now. It for a long while would crash when I fed it a USB stick or hard drive through the USB port. Now, I was able to put both my external hard drive and a USB stick into the USB port without problems. Unfortunately, my wedding pictures aren’t on my external hard drive, like I’d hoped, but I was able to locate some old documents and transfer them into my OneDrive.

9. I am grateful for renewed energy. I decided to have a nap this afternoon and feel so refreshed.

10. I am grateful I won’t be kicked out of the care facility. I’m horribly scared of this again after some recent events, but my staff reassured me.

11. Bonus thankful: I am so grateful for Jesus! It is Easter tomorrow, so I can’t leave this post without mentioning Christ.

What are you grateful for?

Mental Health and Creativity #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. For my letter M post in the #AtoZChallenge, I’d like to talk about mental health as it affects my creativity and vice versa. There’s a common stereotype, and it isn’t entirely untrue or so I’ve heard, that people with severe mental illness are also often particularly creative. At the same time, autistics are commonly thought of as especially unimaginative. Now I indeed don’t have the most vivid imagination, but I wouldn’t say I have aphantasia (the inability to form mental images) either. I wish I were more imaginative and able to create things in my mind’s eye than I am though.

Anyway, my mental health is interconnected to my creativity in that, when I am depressed, I cannot usually put the effort into doing anything creative. For years while in the mental hospital, I struggled to write even one blog post a week. Now that I’m more stable, I at least find myself able to write almost daily. Still, I notice that my crafting ebbs and flows with my mood.

I also experience a huge flow of ideas sometimes, but am not always able to put them into action. For example, I have been wanting to craft a polymer clay squirrel for weeks and did indeed mix the colors I wanted to use for it, but I haven’t actually gotten down to starting on the sculpture itself.

Due to my autistic obsessiveness, I can perseverate about a particular aspect of my craft for a while, then lose interest completely. Some autistics have special interests that last for years or even a lifetime. I don’t. In my case, I am really lucky that I still enjoy polymer clay pretty much everyday nine months after having started the hobby. I do tend to change which aspect of it I’m most interested in though. Right now, of course, it’s mixing colors.

My creativity impacts my mental health in a positive way, in that I find in it a means of distracting myself from my anxious or depressing thoughts. When I accomplish something in the area of my creativity, it is a true mood booster. Conversely, of course, when I experience frustration while crafting, it can have a negative effect on my mental health.

Lessons I Learned While Working With Polymer Clay #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi and welcome to the letter L post in my #AtoZChallenge on creative self-discovery and self-expression. Today, I want to talk about things I learned along the way during my creative process. I am going to limit myself to polymer clay this time, as there’s so much I’ve learned.

My very first polymer clay creation was done after a blog post I’d found, but the blogger wasn’t specifically focused on polymer clay or even crafting in general. Maybe because of that, her skill level was quite basic. This was good for me, as I could easily follow the steps to creating my first project. It was a flower that I’d rolled out using a wooden rolling pin, cut out using a cookie cutter and then stuck a blob of clay onto as its center. I stuck a thick crochet needle through it to make a hole. When it was baked, I colored around the edges of the center with a sharpie.

There are so many things I did wrong with that one. First, I used a wooden rolling pin. I quite quickly found out that wood absorbs some components of polymer clay and, for this reason, wooden tools shouldn’t be used. I should have used an acrylic roller. Or, better yet, a pasta machine. Honestly, even though I do still have an acrylic roller, I hardly ever use it for rolling out sheets of clay now.

Then, the blob of clay. My flower center was raised and I had no way of preventing that at the time. Now, I can roll out my clay on a thin setting on my pasta machine, then cut out the desired shape for the center and put it onto the flower and, if I want to, give it a roll with my acrylic roller. To be honest, I haven’t tested that process recently.

Then, the hole. I eventually decided to buy bead piercing pins to be able to pierce thinner holes into polymer clay pieces that needed holes. Getting the holes in without distortion was quite the learning curve and I still honestly cannot do it myself. I can instruct my staff, but they have to do the actual twisting of the bead piercing pin.

Finally, the sharpie. Sharpie ink reacts with polymer clay or so I’ve heard. My piece is fine so far (I still have it because it was my first creation), but I did eventually decide not to use sharpies on polymer clay anymore.

After this one project came many more failed projects from which I learned one or more lessons. For example, I at one point used cheap glitter glue to cover my baked polymer clay piece. Well, that wouldn’t stick. Instead, I now add glitter to the raw clay just before baking my piece. Please note that you cannot run polymer clay that you’ve added glitter or mica or anything to through your pasta machine. At best, it will create a mess and at worst, it will ruin your pasta machine.

Finally, of course, I’m currently learning about colors and color mixing. Just yesterday, I downloaded a book off Bookshare about color mixing specifically for polymer clay artists. I think I’ll love it!

Keeping My Craft Supplies Organized #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. For my letter K post in the #AtoZChallenge on creativity, I’m once again rather uninspired. This time, my various sources of inspiration didn’t offer any help either, so I had to be creative (no pun intended). Today, I am writing about keeping my supplies organized. I hope this is not going to get me stuck once I reach the letter O post, but oh well.

Back in the psych hospital, when I lived with my husband and in the early months in the care facility, I had all my supplies in a large, wheeled shopping bag. Then again, I only had soaping supplies at the time and I still had to go to the day center with my supplies if I wanted to do something crafty.

After a while, when COVID hit and the day center closed, I put my supplies in my kitchenette cupboard. I still have a few things in the shopping bag, I think, but I really need to clear it out.

About a year ago, staff were talking about wanting to get rid of a large storage case from the living room. I told them I may want to have it, so it got placed in my room. I can’t imagine what I’d do without it, as the thing is now packed full of all my craft supplies and other activity materials.

My craft storage

For my polymer clay specifically, I first had just a basket with a few packets of Fimo in it. Then, I bought a stash of Fimo on Facebook that came in a large tea organizer. I used that for a while for storing my polymer clay, but have now graduated to a large storage box with many compartments. I currently organize my polymer clay by color, but the box doesn’t have enough compartments to store each color in its own place. For this reason, I have, for example, the Fimo soft brilliant blue, pacific blue and peppermint in one conpartment. I did at one point still have one empty compartment, which I now use for the colors I’ve mixed myself.

My polymer clay storage box

I still have a lot of my polymer clay supplies in other places too. For example, the tea organizer now houses my cutters, at least, most of them.

In addition to the polymer clay box, I have several more boxes for jewelry-making supplies. I still have one largely-unused box, but already have a plan for it, as my day activities staff is going to order large quantities of my most-used polymer clay colors for me and those won’t fit in the other storage box compartments.

I guess I could easily say I hoard crafting supplies and, to be honest, I need to do some clearing out soon. Not of the polymer clay though, as I still use that. Thankfully, polymer clay also doesn’t really expire, so even if I were to get tired of it, there’s no reason I should be throwing it out.

Jewelry-Making #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Welcome to my letter J post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to share about one of my crafty hobbies once again, because I thought it’d be an interesting distraction from the more philosophical musings. Besides, I just didn’t have another topic for this letter, ha.

I made my first pieces of jewelry back in the psych hospital in like 2014 or 2015. Back then, I bought quite expensive beads, such as gemstone beads, even though I could only make basic necklaces and bracelets. That is, I did make one necklace with three different wires, but I needed a lot of help with it.

Then, after a while, I stopped making jewelry, because I just needed too much help with it and couldn’t really produce the quality I liked. I restarted about a year ago. This time, the first beads I bought, were simple acrylic beads that weren’t too expensive or precious. I did try to go for shapes I liked, such as butterflies. I also at one point bought a collection of 90 silver-colored, plastic charms for €5,95.

For my birthday last year, I got a surprise package of jewelry-making supplies from a store local to my parents. In this package were a lot of glass beads, which I loved. Thus came back my love of creating glass and actual metal jewelry.

Because most of my glass beads are irregularly shaped, I at first struggled to get each side of the necklace, with the charm or pendant in the middle, equally long. To solve this, I got myself a beading board to be able to count out the length of each side of the necklace. My best glass beaded necklace is one I created about two months ago using this board as a guide.

I also like to make my own beads and jewelry out of polymer clay. I created one pair of earrings back in the early days of my polymer clay journey, but glued the earring posts to the polymer clay using generic jewelry glue. Now some people do use E6000, but even that’s generally recommended against for polymer clay. The best way to attach polymer clay earrings to their posts is to cover the posts in an additional layer of polymer clay. If you want or need to use glue anyway, choose a brand of superglue gel, such as Gorilla or Loctite. I had my staff glue the below brooch to its pin using Gorilla superglue.

Identity: Who Am I As a Creative? #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi and welcome to my letter I post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about my creative identity. Well, I’ve been talking about that for most of this challenge already, so this may get a little repetitive. I’m trying not to make it that way. So, who am I as a creative?

Of course, I could start by what I do. With respect to writing, I am a blogger who writes primarily about her personal experiences. In the crafting area, I am a polymer clay hobbyist. I make all sorts of things out of polymer clay, from all kinds of jewelry, such as beads, charms and earrings to sculptures. The only thing I do not make are miniatures, because I’m cluless about scale. However, the thing I love making most are sculptures, especially unicorns.

In addition to what I do, I could share the social roles that creating allows me to have. For example, being a blogger allows me to be part of the blogosphere. With respect to polymer clay, like I said before, I haven’t yet found such a community outside of Facebook.

Lastly, I could share about the higher pursuits I achieve by being a creative. For example, I make other people happy when I give them a handmade gift that I crafted myself. I also find meaning in the creative process itself, in that it provides me something to do on a daily basis that I can be proud of.

Since I dabble in many creative hobbies, not just blogging and polymer clay, I struggle to find a clear identity as a creative. However, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

I also haven’t yet found a style that is clearly mine in my polymer clay, with the exception of unicorn sculpting. As such, I often walk the fine line between copying work I find in online tutorials and being inspired by it. With respect to my unicorns, I think I can safely say they are mine, not a copy of something I found in a tutorial. In fact, even with the first one I created, though it was based on a tutorial, I purposefully changed some things to suit my own style.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 10, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I just had a soft drink and a glass of water, but if you’d like a cup of coffee or tea, I’m pretty sure my staff can make you one too. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that a fellow client passed away on Wednesday. He had had COVID back in February, like most of us, but he didn’t fully recover. This client had been hospitalized several times during December and January because of seizures, but these finally seemed to be well under control. Unfortunately, COVID was the last straw. He had been on a feeding pump ever since he’d had COVID, but because he became increasingly uncomfortable and unresponsive, the doctor and staff decided to discontinue his feedings on Monday. I last saw him alive Monday evening. He actually lifted up his body, smiled and squealed with delight upon hearing my voice. I made the conscious decision, having already been informed that he’d be dying soon, to keep this memory as my last memory of him while alive.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I finally managed to craft another butterfly with the silicone mold I’d gotten for Christmas last December. I badly wanted to create a butterfly to go with the fellow client’s coffin, but wasn’t sure whether I could use the mold. However, other tutorials seemed even more complicated, so I eventually decided to give it a try. I did the wings in Fimo Effect color blue ice quartz. The body is pacific blue and the antennae are black.

If we were having coffee, I would also tell you that I have finally given in to the polymer clay color mixing thing and bought a precision kitchen scale. That plus a collection of 60 Fimo soft color recipes. Of course, I haven’t tried Fimo professional yet, but if I have to believe my staff, the colors I’ve mixed so far turn out gorgeous despite not being done with the true primary colors.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you about the nationwide cerebral palsy day I went to yesterday. Of course, because the ParaTransit taxi had arrived at 8AM and we didn’t have to pick up any other passengers along the way, I was in Apeldoorn, where the day would be held, by 9AM. Thankfully, I had called my mother-in-law when I entered the taxi and she’d made sure to be there on time too.

The day started with a live-streamed lecture by Erik Scherder, a neuroscientist from Amsterdam. The message was quite similar to the one he’d conveyed in 2018 when I’d attended the cerebral palsy day too: that exerting yourself physically is needed to stimulate your overall neurological wellbeing. In 2018, the lecture had mostly been geared towards (young) adults, while yesterday it was more focused on children and their parents.

I attended two workshops during the day. One was on aging with cerebral palsy, mostly geared towards those age 40+, so I was a little outside of the scope, but I could relate (sad as it may be) to some of the increasing discomfort that older adults with CP face. The other was a yoga class.

As regular readers of my blog might know, I am not 100% sure I even have cerebral palsy, in that my parents never told me and, by the time I was an adult, things got so overshadowed with other diagnoses it’s unclear. For this reason, I felt validated knowing that I appeared not to be the most mildly affected person, strange as this may seem. In fact, during the yoga class, we had to loosen up our muscles and my mother-in-law told me to loosen up. Someone else half-joked: “That’s about the hardest thing to tell a spastic.” That made me feel good.

How have you been?