Happy Everything!
Wishing you a happy, merry, joyous, peaceful, creative season.
I am excited for the fresh new year that lays ahead and, look forward to sharing continued creativity through reuse with you as we flow through 2021.
Visit our Happenings page for upcoming creative opportunities.
See you in 2021!
Warm Regards,
Jemma W.
Founder & Owner
What could be better than the gift of creativity!
That’s what we say about giving our Eco Craft Kits. We have boxed up a collection of our go-to recycled, reusable materials for the creators on your list. Hand packed and local, we assemble each box with care.
Explore our Eco Craft Kits page to learn more about what goes into each box with young thinkers in mind. Just perfect for holiday giving to your curious and creative. Let them explore the wonders of the creative process of making, enjoying their kits for days and days.
Hand-Packed Eco Craft Kits $20 plus tax with delivery locally.
Contact us to order yours!
This month we cast our proverbial Spotlight on Plastics and some of the various forms they comes to us in. Plastics, in their unending variety of forms make’s them a popular material source in our reuse line-up.
We’ll spend the month exploring plastics, how they are made, how they are recycled, what we are making with them, what artists make and their history too.
You can follow along our curious journey through our weekly newsletter, which you can sign up for on our contact page.
I love learning about new things, or leaning new details about common things. Just today I learned that plastics have been around a lot longer that I realized in manmade forms like bakelite jewelry from the early 1900’s. Plastics were drawn from nature years earlier from the sappy gum of Rubber Trees in the Rain Forest.
Plastics have been a means to do good in the world of product making. Durability and reuse have been focuses as our world has expanded, so have it’s uses. Many plastic uses have leaned toward convenience, take the plastic water bottle for example. Convenience items tend to be more lightweight, single use and disposable. That’s where the value of plastic gets difficult, and how plastic litter pollutes our oceans. This awareness is inspiring and demanding change. We’ll explore that too.
I look forward to sharing creative projects and interesting discoveries with you this month. Let’s get this plastic journey started, learning something new with National Geographic’s Plastics 101.
Regards,
Jemma W.
CReATE STUDIO
Founder & Owner
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” – Aesop
Here we are nearing the end of a challenging year, though whoever said it wouldn’t be?
Many of our lives have changed dramatically to say the least, mine included. I am learning though, in my mid-life stage that challenges, obstacles and issues nudge me, ok, sometimes push me in good new directions.
I am thankful to be pursuing a new path with CReATE STUDIO, using everything I already have. Turns out, I have plenty to pivot a new way.
Thank you for welcoming our change and being part of amazing community we serve.
I hope this years thankful time connects you to the direction you’re meant to go with the people you love around in person and spirit. Good things await there.
Thankfully Yours,
Jemma W.
Owner
Light Up Your Holidays.
We’re so excited to be partnering with CMATO to connect contemporary art with everyone through our Family Art Day collaborations. We share a common passion make art accessible to everyone.
We have another date set for virtual art fun inspired by their upcoming Defining Beauty exhibit and the gift of giving this holiday season. Mark your calendar for Saturday, December 12th from 2-3pm for a Zoom session in the spirit of giving.
Make one, Give One. With our day light hours getting shorter and our evenings getting longer we welcome lantern light. Let’s make one to keep and one to share. During our Family Art Day session you can make two glass and paper lanterns, one to give and one to keep using a few basic recycled materials you have at home.
Make it a family affair. You can light up your holidays and register for our Family Art Day at cmato.org. Be sure to learn more about their featured contemporary artists while you are there. A list of materials to gather for our Make One, Give One event will be provided upon registration.
I look forward to creating with you and your family.
Warmly,
Jemma W.
Owner
Inspired by our focus on natural things for November, I recently recalled a bit of charming poetry I had leaned in seventh grade, memorizing it as a monologue for my drama class.
Trees by Joyce Kilmer has stayed with me all of these years. I thought it would be fitting and fun to share with you in the spirit of nature and the majesty of trees. Many of the natural materials we use stem from trees.
Enjoy, Joyce Kilmer’s Trees.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Poem credit: Poetry Foundation
This month CReATE STUDIO Spotlights Natural Things; little cast-off treasures from nature we find around us everyday.
As a child I enjoyed the simplicity of a twig or fallen flower. I imagine you did too. I think that joy still lives within us. If we are inclined to notice the things nature leaves for us the joy comes back.
Pinecones are the obvious awe. To our eyes they are favored as fall decor, make cute little owls or even have been know to be dressed up as a pineapple! Twigs, spray from fallen branches that are so fun to gather for fairy homes, forts or in baskets by front doors.
Acorns look sweet, collected in a bowl or as a cap to a little gnome.
If we look closer we notice the symmetry, detail and, subtle colors of these natural wonders- too good to throw away or rake up. They inspire us still with their beauty and potential.
This month we spotlight natural things as natures art material. We look at how they are used in art, how they are recycled, how they impact our planet and what we, at CReATE make with them.
You can sign up for our newsletter and follow us on instagram to follow along. Let’s get caught up in curiosity together.
Jemma W.
Owner
I have been exploring post-consumer packaging this month with an emphasis on Cardboard. Through the studio I strive to be a part of the recycling solution we need in our community and our world. Our human impact weighs on the planet so here we can explore changing that through small actions like creating with recycled material, buying reusable products and, products that have already been made from recycled materials.
As I wrap up the Spotlight on Cardboard, I have explored companies that produce products from recycled or natural materials like All Birds who is B Certified, and makes all array of shoes ( we have received some of their shoe boxes as donations) and Pratt Industries who uses recycled materials to make Home Depot’s Cardboard boxes. I use those boxes when I buy new for our Cardboard Doll Houses. calrecycles.gov offers resources to Californians, with a Recycled Product Manufacturer’s directory so consumers can look for products made from recycled materials. B Corps like All Birds are companies follow rigorous environmental and ethical standards through brands they sell, we know and love.
We’ll keep creating the way we do; helping kids and families connect to their creativity through the creative reuse of recycled materials. I’ll continue to provide food for thought as I share about recycling, reuse, the impacts we face as a planet our Spotlight program as I explore the materials we reuse throughout the year.
Taking a look at Cardboard this month has felt scratching the surface of a great big world. The story will continue I am sure.
Next month I will explore the natural things around us. We reuse the gifts nature leaves behind like pinecones, twigs and leaves. Until then, let’s create!
Jemma W.
Owner/Founder
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I am a fan of documentaries. I especially enjoy films about the planet and our environments. Netflix recently released David Attenborough’s A Life On Our Planet so I had to watch. It was humbling. He is a truth teller.
I wont’ give anything away here but the film did remind me in a sense of what I have been blogging about the last few weeks; recycling, packaging, and the over abundance of it all and more.
I highly recommend watching it. Have a family conversation afterward.
I was reminded about the part we can play here on earth among the many things we do and live by. We are so lucky to still have choices.
We can start small by
reusing a cardboard box, eating a vegan meal, planting a garden or tree, buying package free, reuse…
The time is now and the place is here.
Jemma W.
Owner/Founder
Photo credit: Netflix
A cardboard box appears to have a whole life before it gets to us, the consumers. If you’ve ever looked at the bottom of of your shipping box your likely to see a series of numbers, maybe a barcode, a stamp of the company who made the box and perhaps a stamp referencing recycling.
I am scratching the surface of a few boxes lives as I google how2recycle.info, corrugatedrecycles.org and sfiprogram.org. These all tell be about the sustainable practices of the cardboards producers. There are box certificates that tell me which company made the boxes. I don’t yet know what the printed numbers mean- perhaps they are style numbers for the different box sizes.
Before the boxes were boxes they were paper, a while before that, trees. Some boxes are recycled so they have traveled their path before with a second run at the recycling plant, then to the company who will turn them into paper for cardboard. I know from my brief time as a product maker there are many regulatory steps one must follow to make an item for sale. This is a good thing. It keeps the producer of the product accountable through the creating process but I haven’t yet seen a way that we as consumers can get boxes back to their origin.
Boxes, I am coming to realize are big business. There is so much involved in the creating of them, so much care and intention into the making of them, the selling of them but, it stops when the boxes are sold. They get purchased by the companies who will use them to package and ship the products they sell.
We buy the products that come in the packaging. The ownness of the box it appears, then lands on us consumers and the trash companies to take care of the next and final steps- to reuse or dispose of or recycle the box. Should it? Should some responsibility, accountability befall the company who uses the box to ship, some to the producer of the box as well?
Our current end of the line process doesn’t seem to work, especially since learning that the U.S. was selling recycled cardboard to other Countries and now those don’t want it. As Annie Leonard says, “there is no such thing as away…”. Is there something we can do?
I envision a community us, people who want to help form healthy practices and a cycles for good for the things we use. Contact me if you want to join me in exploring the life of the cardboard box, to understand how it really impacts our world from start to finish. I think that is where change can happen.
Jemma W.
Founder & Owner