It's been an emotional day for me personally today. Sometimes I think I have my depression under control, then all of a sudden I have a teeny tiny setback, nothing major just enough to make me realize I'm not out of the woods yet!
Luckily I have my art to get me through. Honestly, it really is like a liferaft sometimes - I just cling hold to it until I get to the other, hopefully calmer, side. My creativity is a gift, and I am eternally grateful for it, and the wonderful thing is that creativity is a gift that anyone can have access to.
Today I made a couple of gifts for my sister as it's her birthday very soon. I made her a peg doll angel, which I've posted about at Christmas and a friendship ball (aka witch's ball). According to old English folklore witch balls were hung in cottage windows to repel evil spirits. The baubles we hang on Christmas trees are descended from them. Anyway, as you may know I like round things and shiny things, so this was a perfect way to combine the two and let my sister know how much she is loved. You can buy the plain glass baubles from craft shops, I got mine from Spotlight - after Christmas is a good time to buy them because they are half price! I filled the bauble with silk fibres in our favourite colours and put in a few 'scatters' (shapes cut from shiny plastic, people put them in birthday cards, you open them and it makes a lovely shiny mess!) shaped as butterflies. I don't want to tell you all the symbolism in case this is read before her birthday, but the gift was made with lots of love and thought. The hanging beads even have meaning - for example, the hearts are for our sisterly love that is felt even across the miles, and the teardrops are for us missing each other. Ah - what a soppy thing!
Just as small things can sometimes make me sad, it's the small things that can also make me happy. I've mentioned my butterfly scatters, well I needed to store them somewhere and instead of popping them in a bag, decided to put them in a mini jam jar so I could put them on the side and look at them. I left them on the side in the kitchen until I found them a permanent home; in the early evening with the sun shining through the window and hitting the jar there were beautiful reflections on the kitchen worktop from the light reflecting on my butterlies. I kept turning the jar and watching the kaleidoscope affect. It made me smile, so although the day started with a bit of sadness, by the end I'd found several things to lighten my mind and be grateful for the day.
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