Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. No other compensation was received.
Title: Crafting Calm: Projects and Practices for Creativity and Contemplation
Author: Maggie Oman Shannon
IBSN: 978-1-936740-40-6
Published by Viva Editions
Suggested Retail: $16.95
Available as Paperback or Kindle
Summary: Crafting Calm is a book of projects and ways to practice being creative and crafty for a purpose. Maggie Oman Shannon, both a mother and minister, shares interesting crafts like making your own bath salts or wall hangings, and talks about the effects of crafting on children as well.
Review: I had thought being crafty was something you had or you didn’t. I had never thought of it producing spiritual benefits. Maggie shares how crafting keeps us in touch with creativity, refills us, and inspires us. From just the title alone, I thought it would contain particular projects, like beading and so forth with patterns. This book is more to seek inspiration and does give craft ideas with a few drawings. Photographs, even in black and white, would have been more inspiring.
We had a wedding this past weekend and my husband had built a cutting board for the couple that I shared images of in a recent post. Along with it, I placed a loaf of homemade bread and shared a poem from this book since cooking and baking are also a spiritual practice. It can be summarized as “feed the stomach, feed the soul.”
Crafting Calm contains 40 projects and includes eight chapters: Crafting for Calm, Crafting for Clarity, Crafting for Comfort, Crafting for Contemplation, Crafting for Creation, Crafting for Community, Crafting for Connection with Others, and Crafting for Connection with Spirit.
