ReePin Crafts

Crafting is not only a passion of mine it is something I need to do to help me feel grounded. The word grounded is used a lot in social media and the press and I wanted to find out what it actually meant. So the Cambridge Dictionary provided me with this: ‘someone who is grounded makes good decisions and does not say or do stupid things’. I’m not sure that this definition is completely accurate of me but certainly being grounded does help my brain from thinking and then in turn reacting to stupid things.

I have an extremely overactive mind. I have never been diagnosed with ADHD but I certainly can identify with some of its traits. If allowed my brain can and often does turn a pretty simple situation into a storm of overthinking and procrastination which then in-turn stops any creativity I have, as I just cannot think straight. This then can affect how I react to other people or the world around me. I have used meditation in the past which can help but to position myself in the right environment to achieve this state of relaxation requires many things. Being comfortable, right temperature, right position, no noise I can go on and on but to allow me to calm my thoughts there has to be a whole host of parameters which can make it hard to access.

Crafting however, provides multiple spaces, time, techniques, friendships, distractions, learning opportunities and to be honest I could go on and on to what crafting gives me to help my restless mind. There have been times if I am honest where to start any of my usual crafting activities like sewing either by hand or machine, spinning wool, knitting or crocheting have also been to much for me. So just within the last few months I have been doodling. I needed something that I could just ‘do’ quickly and not have to think about at all. Here are some of my doodlings that have helped me greatly over the last few months.

I simply started this doodle by drawing with a pencil going round and creating shapes that didn’t need to make sense and then either drew lines, dots etc and then coloured in with very neutral colours to give it non focal point so to speak. I then added some words which I think described how I felt ‘Disjointed or Joined’

The doodle on the left I completed after the one above and I wanted straight lines so more geometric shapes. The doodle on the right I completed whilst watching TV as I was even having difficulty concentrating on the telly. It took ages, good job it was a film but I found it totally absorbing. My husband wondered what on earth I was doing haha!

These simple designs were not thought out initially and I just did them, my heart rate slowed and my focus was minimal as I had nothing to achieve by completing them. I was just ‘doing’ for want of a better word.

Within this post I haven’t really covered all the crafts that I do as I do many due to you get it my overactive brain! (I will get into them all as I go forward with this new Blog). But just easing myself into this new way of ‘doing without thought’ I started looking at Art/Scrap/Junk Journals on Pinterest – goodness that’s a real rabbit hole to fall down and I really liked the expressive ways people had made their own journals with lovely words of encouragement to expressive themselves. So off I went to look at my stash and of course add more to it to try and use this as an easier way to express myself and to almost stop the block I had with crafting at this time. Here are some of the pieces I completed in November and December of last year.

Well as you can see I really had fun not limiting myself with anything. I had my new scrapbooks that I brought and I could do what I wanted with them without any limits that I usually give myself. Self expression is so very important to us Crafters, it’s what keeps it fresh and allows us to connect with not only ourselves but what we are doing. I think I had lost that a bit. During the time just before I started this process I was really struggling with my Functional Neurological Disorder (FND) and it almost felt like I had no brain whatsoever. It’s crushing having that feeling so to just be in the moment and create I believe it has truly helped as today January 2026 as I write this I am able to think and as I have written on some of my art journals ‘be brave’ and ‘learn to be free’. I did feel so stuck before and this new intention had given me the ability to unstick myself, and stop the constant chatter that I have going on in the background.

So what have I discovered over this last 3 months? Crafting is my ‘SuperPower’! It’s a Superpower that helps my mind which I have found to be so very absorbing and almost dare I say controlling of me. I’m kicking it in the butt to create a more harmonious and thoughtless experience where I can rest and the more I allow my mind to rest the less noisy it is becoming. The great thing about our amazing brains is we can make new and quite literally mind altering neural pathways to help us become the truest version of the person we want to be.

It has certainly taken me years to come to this place however, I would love to encourage you to take up your ‘Superpower’ whatever that may look like for you. As you can see by my pictures above I was kind to myself and started in the smallest notebook I own to enable me to put something on paper that I felt I could 1. complete and 2. feel like I had achieved. To allow yourself the space and time to do something in that moment is powerful. Start small if you are finding it hard, and almost scribble on a page and colour it in, it will be unique to you. The world we live in at the moment throws us more questions than answers. So let Crafting be your SuperPower to enable you to just ‘be’ and give your mind the rest it needs to ‘do’ all the things it has to and not think about all the things it does not.