The Creative Collective

Allie is getting ready for an ADHD creators summit at Paris Hilton’s house, and she’s pretty sure the road there started with bedazzling. That felt like the right way to open an episode about ADHD and hobby hopping: the rush of a brand-new craft, the supplies you bought and never opened, and the project that’s been 90% done for longer than either of us wants to admit.

Emily is deep in her own rabbit hole, researching every workshop she could possibly take in Tokyo. We spend a lot of this conversation on why newness is so hard to resist, and why the last 10% of a project can feel impossible even when you really do want to finish it.

We also talk about how quickly “I just tried this” turns into “should I be selling these?” And Emily makes the case for judging a hobby by what you got out of it instead of how long you stuck with it.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How Allie got from bedazzling to Paris Hilton’s house, and the Tokyo workshops Emily can’t choose between because, as usual, she wants to do it all
• Why being a beginner is so appealing to an ADHD brain, and why something as repetitive as bedazzling can still hold attention for hours
• Allie knitting through every single grad school class, and whether a lot more people listen better with something in their hands than we assume
• What to do with a project stuck at 90%
• Why an ADHD brain would rather start a business than fold laundry, and Allie’s cost-versus-worth question for hobbies that will never make money
• Hobby hopping without buying everything first: craft supply libraries, creative reuse stores, and texting your friends before you order the supplies

Resources & Links

• Brooklyn Public Library’s Craft Supply Library
• Independent Review - ADHD study
• Forbes Article about the Rise of ADHD and Autism
• Official Hobby Hoe Club - Instagram for serial hobby hoppers
• Our episode: Can We Please Stop Monetizing Every Hobby?
• Scraplanta - Art and Craft reuse store in Atlanta

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

For about ten years, Jen barely made art. She was training to become a PA, starting a career in pediatric cardiac surgery, and raising small kids, and in her head, making art meant a big acrylic painting and enough time to finish it. Looking back, she wishes someone had told her she could just carry a little watercolor sketchbook around in her tote bag.

Jennifer Chiles is a painter, ceramicist, and art educator who has taught kids and adults for years, and she co-founded Creative Club Retreats with Emily. She talks about how her art came back when she took a break from medicine and moved to Denmark, how she lost the playfulness somewhere between art school grades and commission work, and what it looks like now to keep both careers going at once.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why Jen is the person at work who gets asked to draw the medical diagram for a family
• How art school grades and commission work made her a perfectionist, and how a much more casual sketchbook habit changed that
• Painting flowers with her dad as a kid, and how he kept nudging her to make things
• What her creative week looks like now, from sketching with her son at the bagel place to sketchbooks that never quite make it onto the walls
• Why adults come to an art table with more hesitation than kids, and why people talk more easily when they're making something side by side
• And the sketchbook argument continues: first page, or wherever it opens

Resources & Links

• Jennifer Chiles: jenniferchilesart.com and Instagram: @jenniferchiles.art
• Creative Club Retreats 2027
• Life of Color - Allie's new project!

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

In this episode we chat about creative nostalgia - the craft supplies we wish we still had, the ones we still use, and those that can stay in the past. We go back to what we made as kids: giant poster-board birthday cards, clothes for American Girl dolls, slip-cast ceramic swans, and a whole bedroom wall of magazine collage.

Beyond the fun creative supplies, we talk about why time felt so different back then, and how to pick a thread back up now without recreating your entire 1998 bedroom. Join us for a trip down memory lane.

In this episode, they discuss:

• The giant homemade cards and that specific crayon smell
• Allie's grandmother's friends, who never once said "we can't make that"
• Which American Girl dolls we had
• Crayon bins, Play-Doh, scented markers, and Lisa Frank
• Brooklyn Public Library's new Craft Supply Library
• Why everyone should use their stickers today

Resources & Links

• The Everyday Millennial Oracle by Elizabeth Su
• Pipsticks
• Brooklyn Public Library Craft Supply Library
• Klutz activity books
• Shrinky Dinks

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

What if the most creative thing you did this year was grow something?

Dominique Begnaud is an art therapist in St. Louis who works with art, play, and gardening — and it's the gardening that we couldn't stop thinking about. She runs art and garden groups in community nonprofits and schools, and her practice is built on a simple idea: that tending something is a creative act.

In this conversation she gets specific about what making art with plants actually looks like and how this changes with the seasons. She talks about what happens when a client who struggles to stay present tries hammering flowers. And she tells us about building gardens where ever she can find space and how this changes therapy spaces and communities.

This is an art therapy podcast built around creative community, and Dominique's work is a reminder that community doesn't require a beautiful space. Sometimes it just requires a pot, a few seeds, and the patience to wait six weeks for something to happen.

In this episode, they discuss:

• How flower pounding actually works, and what a hammer does for someone who has trouble staying in the present
• The difference between saying gardening is your therapy and practicing gardening therapy, and why Dominique is careful about that line
• The surprising places gardens can grow
• Why she tells clients they can just try something once, with no commitment to ever doing it again
• The one plant she thinks everyone should try growing, which is beautiful, edible, and works for both pressing and pounding

Resources & Links

• Dominique Begnaud — therapy website and instagram
• Bowood Farms, St. Louis
• Missouri Botanical Garden
• Episode about letting yourself be bad at something

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

Here's the listener requested episode where we chat about all your Art Therapy FAQs!

Emily and Allie answer the questions they get asked at parties, on airplanes, in comment sections, and occasionally by other mental health professionals who should probably know better. They cover what art therapy actually is, what it takes to become an art therapist in the US, and what those two letters after our names really mean.

We cover some funny stories and the times we recommend lying about your job, as well as the times when you should shout it proudly. We laugh about the art therapy myths circulating online right now and what might have a bit of truth to it.

Whether you're considering the field, already in it, or just curious what happens in that room - this art therapy podcast is for you.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why Allie stopped ignoring one particular comment section, and what it says about how misunderstood this profession still is inside the mental health field
• The actual path to becoming an art therapist in the US — the master's degree, the supervised hours, the board exam in a real testing center, and the difference between ATR and ATR-BC
• Whether you need to be good at art to become an art therapist, and why a trained painter sometimes has the hardest time in an art therapy session
• The enormous range of places this work happens
• Why both of them have considered lying about their jobs to strangers, and what changed their minds

Resources & Links

• Art Therapy Credentials Board (ATCB)
• American Art Therapy Association (AATA)
• Life of Color - Allie's mandala design
• Gel Printing Summit - Emily's online workshop

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

Rukmini Poddar didn't initially set out to teach anyone about drawing their emotions. In 2015, burnt out at the end of a graphic design degree and convinced she was the least consistent person alive, she started The 100 Day Project with no plan beyond touching the page every day. Ten years later she's the author of Draw Your Feelings, she leads workshops for individuals, schools, retreats and corporate teams, and she's built a global creative community out of people who mostly don't call themselves artists.

In this episode, Rukmini takes us back to the twenty-three-year-old who had nothing to lose and posted her drawings to a few hundred followers, which later turned into a really inspiring creative community. She also walks us through what she actually teaches: how to get acquainted with the texture of a feeling before you try to draw it, why abstract beats representational every time, and why she thinks the art you make alone is only half of the work. This conversation was a perfect fit for this creativity podcast.

In this episode, they discuss:

• The 100 Day Project that changed the direction of her life — and why she credits it for who it proved she could be, not for anything she actually made
• Obscure Emotions, the 2016 series of small pink figures that gave her language for feelings she couldn't name, and the comments from strangers that turned a private habit into something bigger
• Her ten-second timeline exercise and what people end up telling a total stranger afterward
• What she says to the person who tells her "I can't draw," plus her case that honest art matters more than beautiful art
• Life-size self-portraits, a redwood forest, and the first retreat she ran before she felt anywhere near ready

Resources & Links

• Draw Your Feelings: A Creative Journal to Help Connect with Your Emotions through Art by Rukmini Poddar (Penguin/Ebury)
• Rukmini on Instagram: @rockinruksi
• dearruksi.com
• The 100 Day Project (#The100DayProject)

You bake the cake, finish the sweater, frame the painting — and someone asks when you're going to start selling it.

They mean it as a compliment, and it usually is one. But when did, "someone would pay for that" become the main way we tell people their creativity has value? On this art therapy podcast, Emily and Allie get into what that does to the making itself, and why the pressure shows up fastest on the things we love most.

Allie explains why she has never sold a single piece of the jewelry she taught herself to solder, and what she says when people are taken aback by that. Emily tells a story about being asked to illustrate a children's book, and hearing herself say something about her own art she has genuinely never said before — the second money entered the conversation. They talk about how to tell the difference between wanting to build something and feeling like you should, why touring musicians are the right test case, and what it might mean that in Denmark the community center art classes sell out every week with no one expecting to get good.

This is an art therapy and creativity podcast, and this episode is a reminder to our creative community that not everything you make has to become something.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why "you should sell that" lands as pressure even when it's meant as praise — and what to say instead
• The creative practice Allie protects by never selling it, and how she responds when people push
• What Emily heard herself say about her own artwork the moment a paid project was on the table
• How to tell whether you actually want to monetize something, using the touring musician test
• Whether the pressure to make hobbies productive is a US-specific problem — and what a culture of hobbies looks like instead
• A yes/no/maybe experiment on selling, resting, and keeping one practice completely private

Resources & Links:

• Absalon - Community art center in Copenhagen (great for a visit if you're traveling!)
• Creative retreats - the retreat Allie mentioned in Greece
• Allie's metal smithing class
• Beacon Gem Tack - our favorite for bedazzling!

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

What happens when you stop trying so hard to be creative?

This week, we’re joined by therapist and ceramic artist Melissa Grisi to talk about creativity, clay, imposter syndrome, and what it actually looks like to find your way back to making when you feel stuck.

Melissa shares how clay has followed her through different chapters of her life, why it took her years to fully claim the word “artist,” and how slowing down has completely changed her relationship with creativity.

We also get into creative blocks, the pressure to constantly produce, why sitting in your creative space without making anything still counts, and the surprisingly tiny steps that can help you reconnect when creativity feels far away.

Plus, we talk about redefining what it means to be creative, finding inspiration in your environment, building a “menu” of things that support you, and why sometimes the first step back into creativity is simply getting the pencils out.

In this episode:

• finding your way back to creativity after a long break

• creative blocks and making the first step much smaller

• imposter syndrome as an artist and therapist

• why slowing down and doing less can make space for ideas

• letting go of the pressure to perform or post your creativity

• how our environments influence what we make

• expanding our definition of what “counts” as creativity

• the art and craft of therapy

• and, of course, a little clay appreciation

If you’ve been feeling creatively stuck, disconnected, uninspired, or like you need to make something “good” before you even begin, this one’s for you.

Resources & Links:

• Melissa Grisi, LCSW - Blue Sky Therapy
• Melissa's Instagram: @the_desert_therapist
• Allie's cyanotype supply picks

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

Whimsy is having a moment.

Searches are up, whimsymaxxing is everywhere, brands are bedazzling their products, and what started as people sharing the tiny, weird things they do to make ordinary life more fun has somehow turned into… a shopping list.

So, did we accidentally lose the point?

This week, we’re talking about what whimsy actually means, why we think so many adults are craving more play, color, silliness, nostalgia, and everyday magic right now, and whether something changes when a mindset becomes an aesthetic you can buy.

And because neither of us is about to pretend we don't also love ridiculous little objects that make us happy, we're asking a more complicated question: can buying something be whimsical too?

We get into whimsy as permission to play, making mundane things feel magical, reconnecting with the things you loved as a kid, using creativity to practice play again, and why whimsy might even be a tiny form of rebellion against a culture that wants everything we do to be productive.

Plus: emergency purse sprinkles, googly eyes on household appliances, medieval soundtracks for doing the dishes, the most whimsical fruit, and why you should probably just use the good stickers already.

Because maybe whimsy isn't something you can buy, maybe it's a way of moving through the world.

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.

Somewhere along the way, most of us picked up the idea that creativity is something you have to earn — that you need the right studio space, the right technical skills, and a long stretch of free time before you're allowed to make anything. Our conversation today our our creativity podcast takes all of that apart.

Leah Guzman is a board-certified art therapist with twenty years in the field, an artist, and the author of five books on creativity and healing. She's spent twenty-two years working in school systems, and she founded the Creative Soul Society, an online community that meets weekly to make art together — and that turns six the week we recorded.

We love how practical this creativity conversation is. Leah talks about how showing up is the hardest part of any creative practice, and how that's a solvable problem. She talks about the systems that get her there: art journals small enough to travel, creative time written into the calendar like an appointment, a thirty-dollar table that means she can leave a mess out and come back to it. She also talks about what she's learned watching people arrive in her community from every possible starting point, including the ones who show up certain they aren't artists.

If you've been meaning to get back to something, this is a good one to have on while you do.

In this episode:

• The six-layer birthday cake art journal Leah built for her community's anniversary, and how to make one for yourself
• Why showing up is the hard part, and the systems that get you past it — travel-sized art journals, creative time in the calendar, a mess you're allowed to leave out
• Emily on carving linoleum when every part of her brain said there wasn't time
• The three questions Leah asks herself every morning, answered with a scribble and a bit of watercolor in about five minutes
• Why the people in her community keep coming back, and what she thinks is really happening when creative people gather
• Allie on the reframe that gets used most: who said anything about painting?
• The member who spent years refusing to call herself an artist — and the day she stopped
• What Leah says, without hedging, to anyone who has decided they aren't creative
• The stretch of Leah's life when she was giving creativity away all day and keeping none of it, and how she found her way back

What happens when the person teaching everyone else to make art stops making it for herself?

Leah Guzman has been a board-certified art therapist for twenty year and has written five books on creativity and healing, while working in school systems. She has also had a stretch of her life where everything looked good on paper and nothing felt good underneath it — a period she describes as her dark night of the soul, when she was giving creativity away all day and making none of it for herself.

Resources & Links:

• Creative Soul Society — Leah's website and online creative community
• @creative.soul.society - Leah on Instagram
• Omega Institute - workshops and residencies
• Mod Podge — decoupage your own oyster shells

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode, follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ or visit our ⁠website⁠ to learn more. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, you can apply ⁠here.⁠

You can find Allie on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠, and you can find Emily on ⁠Instagram⁠ or her ⁠website⁠ to learn more about all they do and stay connected

You can find Austin on ⁠Instagram⁠ for all of your podcasting and musical needs

If you enjoyed this episode, follow along and share it with someone who could use a little more creativity in their life.

And this is your reminder that you don't have to be an artist to benefit from creativity. You're welcome, as you are, in this creative community.