I guess I'm crafty now
How I am embracing creative impulses and using the artsy skills I learned in childhood — plus, a tastemaker's home full of handmade items, unique hand-crafted decor, and how to stock a craft cart
On Saturday, I indulged a fun and simple creative impulse: I hand painted some wrapping paper for the gift I was taking to a baby shower. The idea came to me when I was thinking through all of the tasks to do over the weekend, wrapping the present being one of them. I only ever buy simple brown kraft paper to wrap Christmas and birthday presents, usually tying them with a ribbon and calling it a day. But I wanted something creative to do after a long work week and, more than anything, I was excited to wrap something cute for a baby.
Using paint supplies we had in the closet — most of them leftover from the art class my husband took in college a decade ago — I created a pattern on the brown paper. I mixed paint colors until they looked right (my knowledge of color theory is limited to yellow plus blue makes green and blue plus red makes purple). And to create the woodland animals, I looked up “how to draw [insert animal]” on Pinterest, sketching out my designs before painting over them.
I think I spent three or four hours painting the gift. The time flew by because I was so wrapped up in it. The process was such a gift to me to indulge in a spontaneous and simple project like that. It was refreshing to create something in a low stakes way (I could’ve re-wrapped it with plain brown paper, tied a bow and called it done if the artwork looked terrible). And I was proud to give it to my friend.
It’s been a long time since I’ve painted something and I was a little apprehensive that it might turn out poorly, but the project was a manifestation of a lesson I have been learning.
It is good to do something imperfectly.
I have always wanted to be the best at things, and typically my definition of “best” is some unattainable standard of perfection. This, for most of my life, has kept me from trying things, being creative and even enjoying life — and it has caused me lots of stress. Something has begun to shift in my value system around creativity, especially about its value as a process and not a product. It might be because I’m getting older that I crave a return to childhood things like reading long hours and creating something by hand. Whatever the cause, my grown-up brain has benefitted from following creative impulses and doing the simple, purposeless and even sometimes disposable creative tasks that enrich my life.
Today’s newsletter is about the joy of making something with your hands and the beauty of handmade things. I guess I’m into crafts now. As always, thanks for being here.
3 CREATIVE SKILLS TO KNOW
And how to learn them
I hadn’t registered until recently just how many creative skills my mother and both of my grandmothers taught me when I was growing up. So much of my childhood was spent working on projects, making collages or decoupage artwork, baking desserts, spending time painting, learning to needlepoint with my maternal grandmother and to sew a circle skirt with my paternal grandmother, and so on.
Knowing these few creative skills has meant I am able to indulge in a spontaneous creative idea, like hand-sewing a cafe curtain for my bathroom with leftover fabric and thread or painting a personalized birthday card. It’s incredibly rewarding.
If you want to take on something creative but don’t know how to start, I combed the internet for you to find great tutorials and beginner kits to take on a new creative (and useful) skill.
Paint
A $30 watercolor kit will teach you how to use and mix paints — skills you can transfer to homemade birthday cards later on.
Bake
Understand the foundations of baking with this Cook’s Illustrated guide, which you can buy used for $9. This publication has all of the best articles and guides for novice and experienced chefs and is the best out there. (Many thanks to my grandmother who bought me a subscription to the magazine when I was a child.)
Sew
Learn a basic backstitch to use for any sewing project (this is how I made a cafe curtain). And if you want to learn another incredibly useful skill, here’s how to repair a sweater.
FEELING BLUE
Azure-hued artwork and designs made by careful hands
Soane Britain’s Espalier wallpaper in azure.
“Stars” by Kees van Dongen.
Ornaments made from a recycled tube of tomato paste by British artist Louise Lockhart. (Here’s her how-to video.)
Collage art lockets by Brandie Stonge, an artist based in Newport, RI.
Romola fabric by Schumacher.
Malibu Ceramic Works, which was founded in the 1970s but specializes in making tiles in the style of early 20th-century craftsman, helped restore tiles at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles. This is a screen grab of a bathroom in a room available for rent. The hotel was home to many celebrities. My favorite among them is Katharine Hepburn.
“The Orchard,” a wall hanging designed by May Morris and stitched by Theodosia Middlemore, designed and embroidered between 1885 and 1894, from the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection.
18th century embroidery from The Metropolitan Museum.
“Two Lions” from a page of a 13th-century Bestiary, a type of medieval manuscript that used tales of animals to depict biblical themes. From the Getty Museum description: “According to legend, when a lioness gives birth to her cubs, they are dead. It is only when their father, coming on the third day, breathes in their faces that they come to life. Here the lion on the left stands over the cub, opening his mouth to revive him. Bestiaries were designed as teaching texts in which the animals served as vehicles for explaining Christian doctrine. The lion, the king of beasts, was understood in the Middle Ages as a symbol of Christ. So the story of the cub's three days of lifelessness was interpreted as a reflection of the three days between Jesus' Crucifixion and his Resurrection.”
HANDMADE HAVEN
Alexandra Tolstoy’s eclectic homes
Alexandra Tolstoy’s life appears as lavish and as beautifully heartbreaking and complex as the lives of characters written by her distant cousin, Leo Tolstoy. Her homes, though, they are something out of a children’s fairytale.
The English socialite-turned-adventurer — who, after a tumultuous relationship with a now-exiled former banker to Putin himself, pulled herself (and her three children) up by the bootstraps — runs a homewares shop and also a traveling company for which she organizes horseback trips in Kyrgyzstan.
When I was thinking on beautiful homes full of handmade items, hers came to mind. For years I found myself saving photos of her home(s), not realizing all were all images of one person’s various homes. Alexandra’s Russian heritage and love of the culture alongside her British upbringing yield this collected, comfortable, vibrant result.
Her cottage, above, is an 18th-century Cotswolds home that you can rent for vacation. I love the collection of handmade pieces: the tile on the backsplash, the mugs on the shelf and what appear to be old spice jars or tins in the left-most corner.
Here’s another angle of the cottage kitchen and I love the distinctly un-kitchen feel of it; it just looks like another comfortable room in the house.
Tolstoy shares her home with three children and many of the rooms have such sweet kid-friendly designs with patterned quilts and antiques and toys mixed together.
Alexandra’s cottage was decorated in collaboration with Emma Burns, the managing director at the unrivaled design firm Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler. (Colefax & Fowler are responsible for many of those famous patterns you see on the pages of design magazines, like Bowood and Fuchsia)
Working with Emma Burns was a longstanding partnership. The pair, alongside another director at the firm, Daniel Slowick, also decorated Alexandra’s former home in Chelsea, London. Many of the contents of the home were sold at auction in 2020 when the countess (yes, she is also a countess) was evicted when the house was claimed by the Russian government to pay off her former partner’s (the one in exile) debts. Again, I say, the stuff of novels!
One article I read about her story described her home in London as Hansel-and-Gretel chic and I think that’s a very apt description.
Notice the handmade details here in a bedroom at her house in London, especially the quilts and a Kyrgyz rug. How practical would the idea of a tray with books by the bed (on the smaller green carpet) be? I always have so many books, journals, magazines, etc. that I want to read in bed, I could use something to carry them on.
More recently, after moving out of the Chelsea house, she negotiated the option to redecorate a rented flat in London. You can see the colorful result — another collaboration with Emma Burns — in a 2021 article for House & Garden.
(Should you like to read more about Alexandra’s unusual story, I recommend this profile by Air Mail, plus one by Tatler and then here is a fun design-forward one by Inigo. Her life is often written about in tabloids, but please don’t give those your clicks.)
HAD TO BE HANDMADE
Craftsmanship you can’t manufacture
If I were shopping for a beautiful, unique handmade gift for a friend, I’d pick one of these: coco-colored teacups made in Italy, a super splurgy marbled paper mirror made in England or a beautifully practical comb made in France. (I have one of these combs with my initials on it and can attest to its quality.)
GOOD CHOICE
Stock up a craft cart
My creative hobbies are varied: painting, calligraphy, needlepoint, sewing. One of the best practical things I did for my creativity was to assemble a craft cart that rolls in and out of the closet in our spare bedroom. It was mostly designed to organize the scraps of fabric, endless envelopes and stamps left over from our wedding and our handful of painting supplies.
Now, though, I’ve stocked it with a few simple creative tools that are great to have on hand when creativity strikes — like this weekend when I wanted something creative to do and painted designs on simple kraft paper to wrap a gift for my friend’s baby shower.
I have a simple cart I’m sure I purchased on Amazon or at Target and here’s what’s in it:
Fabric remnants from various since-completed home projects
A box full of ribbons, bows and string
Needlepoint supplies (in that needlepointed bag hanging from the side)
Scissors for cutting paper
Lots of tape for wrapping presents and things I’m sending in the mail
Paint supplies leftover from an art class my husband took in college (brushes, paints, etc.) and a few paint kits
A simple, $8 watercolor set and watercolor paper postcards for making handmade birthday cards
Construction paper in random colors
Envelopes, stamps and cards leftover from our wedding (ha!)
All the best,
Mary Grace