Hi friends ♡
So I’ve been thinking about something lately while looking at my workspace, which, depending on the day, can look like a jewelry station, a sticker factory, a bead explosion, or the aftermath of someone letting a five-year-old loose inside a craft store with adult money. 😂
And I realized… I don’t think I have one art form.
Some days I want to draw. Other days? Absolutely not. Give me beads. Then suddenly I’m making a keychain and I’m completely consumed by finding the EXACT shade of blue that belongs next to this particular pink because the other blue is obviously wrong and I refuse to explain myself. 😂 A few days later I’m making jewelry, then bag charms, then stickers, and eventually I find some random little thingamabob and immediately think, waitttt… I could put beads on this.
And BAM. 💥 New obsession unlocked.
For a while, I wondered if bouncing around creatively meant I was unfocused. Like, shouldn’t I have a thing? Shouldn’t I be able to say, “Hi, I’m Venus, and THIS is what I make”? But the more I create, the more I realize I actually don’t want art to become another box I have to fit myself into.
We change constantly. Our moods change, our interests change, and even what feels good to us changes. So why wouldn’t our creativity move with us?
There are days when drawing feels amazing because I want quiet. I can sit there with an idea and disappear into it for a while. Then there are days when drawing sounds like homework, and I would much rather sit in front of a pile of beads trying to figure out which ones belong together.
And OMG, that process is probably one of my favorite parts.
I’ll start with a pink bead, add a pearl, stare at it for five seconds… nope. Take it off. Maybe blue? WAIT. Yes. Now we’re getting somewhere. Then something sparkly, maybe a charm, maybe another charm because apparently restraint is not part of the VenusgemsDesigns business model. 😂
Then, suddenly, I’m holding this little thing that literally didn't exist an hour ago.
I MADE THAT?!
That feeling never gets old.
And because this is our little Let’s Talk Art Therapy corner, you already know the therapist part of my brain eventually had to enter the chat. I promised myself when I started writing these posts that I wouldn’t throw around mental-health terms just because they sound cute, so I wanted to actually look at what psychological research says about everyday creativity.
And guys… this part made me smile.
Conner et al. (2018) followed 658 young adults over 13 days and examined their everyday creative activities, emotional experiences, and well-being. They found that engaging in creative activity was associated with greater flourishing, and creative activity on one day predicted greater flourishing and positive affect the following day.
I love that because it doesn’t mean we need to be professional artists or create something worthy of hanging in a gallery. It was everyday creativity.
That matters to me.
It also made me think about the way I sometimes feel after spending an evening making something. Nothing dramatic has happened. My responsibilities haven’t disappeared. My inbox certainly did not answer itself. 😂 But I can feel different. I was absorbed in something. I played with color. I used my hands. I made decisions that weren’t about work or responsibilities or what needed to get done next.
There’s research looking at that physical stress response, too. Kaimal et al. (2016) had adults spend 45 minutes making art using different materials and measured their cortisol levels before and afterward. Cortisol significantly decreased after the art-making session. What I found especially interesting was that participants didn’t need prior art experience to achieve that effect.
Basically, your nervous system does not need to see your art portfolio first. 😂
And no, that doesn’t mean making a bracelet is therapy or that we can bead our way out of every difficult emotion. I wishhhhh. Art therapy is a recognized mental health profession, and working with a trained art therapist is different from doing creative activities on our own. But research does give us a reason to take creativity seriously as one of the many things that can support our well-being.
A broader review by Stuckey and Nobel (2010) examined research on several forms of creative expression and found promising links between engagement with the arts and psychological and physiological health outcomes, while also emphasizing the need for more rigorous research.
And I actually like that nuance because I don’t want this space to become, “Buy beads and regulate your nervous system!” That’s not how mental health works.
What I do think is worth talking about is how creating can give our attention somewhere to go.
When I’m stringing beads, I’m paying attention to what’s in front of me. I’m noticing colors, textures, little details, whether something feels balanced, whether I like what I’m seeing. When I draw, my attention moves somewhere else. When I’m making a sticker sheet, I can get completely lost arranging tiny pieces until everything finally feels right.
For a little while, my brain has something else to hold.
And sometimes that is enough to create a tiny pocket of calm.
I think that’s also why I’ve stopped feeling guilty about moving between different kinds of art. Maybe choosing different mediums isn’t inconsistency at all. Maybe I’m responding to what feels interesting or satisfying to me in that moment.
Sometimes my brain wants the precision of drawing. Sometimes my hands want the repetition of stringing beads. Sometimes I want to make something useful, and sometimes I want to make something completely unnecessary simply because it is CUTE.
And honestly, sometimes I don’t even care what I’m making.
I just want to play with color.
Ahhhh, COLOR.
This might actually be my favorite part of everything I make.
I love watching the personality of something completely change depending on what colors I put together. Pastel pink next to baby blue gives me one feeling, while hot pink next to black gives me a completely different feeling. Sometimes I’ll literally hold two beads side by side and stare at them like, “Do you guys like each other?” 😂
Eventually, they tell me.
And I think that freedom is becoming one of my favorite parts of art. I don’t always need to know what something will become before I start making it.
Actually, our Powerpuff Girls theme for this post feels weirdly perfect for this conversation.
Different colors. Different personalities. Different energies. None of them needs to become the other one for the whole thing to work.
That’s kind of how I’m starting to look at creativity.
I don’t want VenusgemsDesigns to become one perfectly coordinated thing where everything I create looks like it came from the same little box. I want it to feel alive. I want to follow whatever makes my brain go, “OOOOH WAIT… WHAT IF WE DID THIS?!” and see where it takes me.
Maybe my style was never meant to be a single craft.
Maybe the way I play with color, nostalgia, emotion, and tiny details is the style.
The medium is simply how it decides to come out that day.
And I really, really like that.
So if you’ve been bouncing between hobbies, putting something down and coming back to it months later, or suddenly becoming obsessed with something completely different, maybe you don’t need to immediately turn that into another thing you have to figure out.
You can just be curious.
Follow it.
Make something weird.
Change your mind halfway through.
Start over.
Put entirely too many charms on it.
Who cares? ♡
Art gives us somewhere to experiment without having to have everything figured out first, and maybe there’s something really healthy about having at least one place in our lives where we allow ourselves to do that.
So I’ll leave you with this:
If nobody cared whether you were “good” at it, what kind of art or craft would you try next?
I really want to know. ♡
Until next time,
— Venus 🎀
Founder of VenusgemsDesigns
Let’s paint the world with color. 🌈💖
References
Conner, T. S., DeYoung, C. G., & Silvia, P. J. (2018). Everyday creative activity as a path to flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 13(2), 181–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1257049
Kaimal, G., Ray, K., & Muniz, J. (2016). Reduction of cortisol levels and participants’ responses following art making. Art Therapy, 33(2), 74–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2016.1166832
Stuckey, H. L., & Nobel, J. (2010). The connection between art, healing, and public health: A review of current literature. American Journal of Public Health, 100(2), 254–263. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2008.156497
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