Greetings Die-Hard Crafters of the Apocalypse!

Scandinavian Pink, Paris Grey, Napoleon Blue…

There they sat, the cans of chalk paint I bought after my trip to England where I attended a workshop on how to decoupage furniture - something I had always dreamed of doing. But as so often happens, once I returned to the reality of my day-to-day life, I could never seem to find the time to do the projects of my dreams. How was it that doing the things that bring us joy can end up on the bottom of our list, I wondered?

When I was a kid, I can remember jumping out of bed the moment I gained consciousness because I was so excited about that paper doll I was going to cut out, or those felt troll clothes I was going to make, or the crepe paper flowers I was going to learn how to create from my favorite How-To crafting book. I could not wait to get going on my latest project! I loved making things. And I still do – only now, as an adult, it can feel hard to justify doing something creative, just for the sake of it.

It wasn’t until my twenties when I hosted a Valentine card making party, that I realized how many other people also love crafting – in fact they were all around me and included most of my girl friends and even a few of my guy friends. Over the years these crafting get-togethers morphed into the tin can decorating party, the glass bottle decorating party, the small box decorating party, the votive candle decorating party, the Christmas ornament and dreidel decorating party. You get the picture, lots of things become precious because of their potential to be transformed! I found myself hosting one or two of these crafting parties each year and my friends always told me that if it weren’t for my events, they would never craft at all. What they didn’t realize, was the same was true for me.

But now, as I stared at those unopened cans of chalk paint, everything had changed. The unthinkable was happening – a deadly pandemic was unfolding across the globe and the city of Los Angeles where I lived, was going into total lockdown. Little did I know that this was only the beginning of what would be more than a year of living life very differently.

Suddenly time was not an issue, all I had was time.

The problem was I felt too anxious and distracted to do anything creative. I hardly had the concentration even to read, much less do a crafting project. And besides, shouldn’t I be worrying about losing my job and how to keep going in spite of money problems, and isolation? I missed seeing people, my friends, my family, even the guy behind the counter at the coffee shop. But wasn’t it almost inappropriate to think of something like being creative during a time like this?

I thought back to the fun days of those crafting parties, being together with friends and making things and I got an idea. I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, but it was worth a try – anything would be better than the way I was feeling, which was awful. It was a terrible mixture of fear and boredom and anxiety and it seemed like nothing could make it better. Everyone I knew was feeling the same way and we needed to do something about it. We needed to craft.

I composed an email to see who could join me online to craft together and just hang out. I had never used Zoom before but it seemed like everyone was figuring it out, so surely I could too.

“Greetings Die-hard Crafters of the Apocalypse!

Please join me for a Crafting Circle tonight, at 7 PM!

Bring any arts or crafts project to work on or none at all, and we will have a glass of wine and/or cup of tea and do something different.”

I took a deep breath and clicked Send.

Now I had to get my own project ready. Collage is my favorite kind of craft and one of the great things about it, is all you need is some images to cut out, paper, glue, and most importantly, a good pair of scissors. And even though it’s fun to use many other kinds of supplies like rubber stamps, glitter, stickers, paints, and stencils, you really don’t need much to create a super gorgeous collage.

Decoupage is just a trickier form of collage where you decorate objects by cutting out images and gluing them onto the surface. These objects can be anything from an empty jam jar to an old piece of furniture, like my little thrift shop table that was sitting in my basement waiting to be transformed.

Being cooped up in my house for months on end made me want to get as far away as possible, from the reality of the pandemic. Where better to go, than to an underwater fantasyland filled with mermaids and coral deep within the ocean? I found my inspiration for my decoupage design in an old children’s picture book about sea life that a friend had given me “for you art projects”. The pages were filled with illustrations of beautiful pink coral, blue sea urchins, golden starfish and silvery shells, I even found a vintage mermaid image online to add into my design. I’d already bought my chalk paints and I had my glue and my favorite pair of scissors on hand. I was ready to start decoupaging - as soon as we could meet for our first Crafting Circle online. I hoped my plan would work, because it felt like the only thing in shorter supply than toilet paper during this time, was joy itself.

On the evening of our first Crafting Circle, I dragged my little table up from the basement and dusted it off, the veneer was peeling and there were scratches and dings all over it - would chalk paint really hide all these imperfections, I wondered? But I then remembered from the workshop that they called it “miracle paint” and said it would hide anything, (which turned out to be true!). I set up my laptop and laid out all my supplies on a folding table covered in newspaper.

At exactly 7 pm I opened the Zoom room. One by one they appeared, my dear friends and my two sisters along with all their crafting projects! They joined from all over – California, Maryland, Hawaii, Montana, Wisconsin and even some friends from Los Angeles where I live. Distance meant nothing since we could not get together in person whether we lived far away or right down the block.

We were so happy to see each other, even the littlest things were so exciting, was that fruit tea or red wine in that glass? How many times had everyone made pasta in the last week? Everyday chatter seemed precious, we were starved for it and for each other’s company. I opened the can of Scandinavian Pink chalk paint and I started painting my table and when I looked up, everyone was crafting away on their own projects.

At times during that first Crafting Circle it did feel a little awkward, because sometimes when you really get going on crafting there can be intense concentration and therefore little stretches of silence – almost like being in a state of meditation. Everyone was getting used to Zoom for the first time, and we didn’t know if we were supposed to talk the whole time. But soon it began to feel natural to just be there doing what we love and hanging out and we all relaxed and it was almost as if we were sitting around one of our dining room tables and crafting together like we used to. The moments of silence were okay, the small talk and chitchat were like a gift to our spirits, the crafting, a tonic for our souls. We were reconnecting not only with each other, but with our own creativity. We had found our secret source of joy again.

We met more than 50 times over the course of the pandemic, we went through a lot together, every week we toasted each other, some with a glass of tea, others with something a bit stronger. We talked about our crafting projects and how best to clean a paintbrush and what was the best kind of glue to use. We compared notes about how things were where we lived and how the pandemic was affecting us, how often we were washing our hands and groceries and how we were learning to order everything online from art supplies to toothpaste, we talked about wearing masks and being afraid to go out anywhere, we missed restaurants and movies, we missed our friends and families, we were sad about canceled weddings and Bar Mitzvahs. Eventually, each of us knew someone who got Covid, we prayed for the vaccine to come. We talked about George Floyd and racism in America, we went through the election and then the attack on the capitol; someone’s dog had to be put to sleep, someone’s son decided to move to New York City during the height of the surge, we laughed together and someone cried because there couldn’t be a funeral for their father. Some of us knitted blankets and hats, one learned to crochet a baby blanket that looked like a pastel rainbow from YouTube, we collaged holiday cards together, bottle cap earrings were made and printmaking was learned online, someone hand-colored old photos and someone else decorated a wooden tray and someone finished decoupaging a small table. And somehow we made it through and here we are, we, the “Die-hard Crafters of the Apocalypse” who have been through so much together and will never, ever stop crafting!

My table has been transformed into something beautiful. Those cutout mermaids and shells and corals and starfish tell a story, but it’s not about what you think, it’s not about the ocean; it’s a story of memories of time spent crafting with friends and family; it’s a story about finding joy through doing something creative, even during the hardest of times.