Art &Alchemy
December 2025
What We’re Making:
Notecards for the Unnoticed
Who holds the invisible threads that keep life humming?
Often it’s the women in our lives - the partners, mothers, girlfriends and girl-bosses. This month, we're collaging cards that see the unseen, thank you notes for the thousand small labors that make our worlds work. The lunch notes tucked in backpacks. The conflicts smoothed before they bloom. The mental lists that keep households and teams afloat. Together we'll create beautiful handmade cards that say what often goes unsaid, making visible the care that holds everything together. Perhaps we’ll even make one for ourselves.
When We’re Gathering:
Date: Sunday, December 7, 2025
Time: 4:00-5:30pm EST/1:00-2:30pm PST
Duration: 90 minutes
Where: Online
(Zoom link sent at registration)
Cost: Pay what feels right; a portion of all proceeds supports others doing healing work in the world
Creative Lineage: Who’s Inspiring Us
Our project this month draws inspiration from:
Maintenance artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles (who scrubbed museum floors and shook hands with 8,500 sanitation workers, declaring maintenance work as art).
Mail art traditions where connection itself is the canvas - from Ray Johnson's correspondence networks to contemporary letterpress artists who understand that gratitude deserves beautiful fonts.
Feminist makers who document invisible labor: Sophie Calle's intimate daily gestures, Laurie Anderson's postcards to strangers, the Japanese tradition of omiyage that shows someone you were thinking of them
These creative souls remind us that attention is a form of love and that naming the unnoticed can be revolutionary.
Making is a Meditation
Our project this month is about shifting from oversight ("I didn't even notice") to insight ("I see you"). When we learn to witness the small magics that keep life flowing, we start to understand that appreciation itself is a creative act. Together we'll be...
Practicing
Noticing the unnoticed
Gratitude as resistance
Making the invisible visible
Creating something for someone as a form of care
Unlearning
The belief that some work "doesn't count"
The idea that thank-you notes need perfect words
The habit of letting care work go unacknowledged
The myth that what matters is always obvious
What You’ll Need
The Usual Suspects: Keep these basics on hand for all Art & Alchemy sessions:
Scissors
Glue stick, white glue, and/or glue gun
Markers, colored pencils, pastels, or crayons
Paper (any kind works)
For This Session
Cardstock or heavy paper (can be recycled from cereal boxes, old folders, etc.)
Decorative elements: old magazines, wrapping paper scraps, fabric pieces, pressed flowers (it’s the holiday season, so gather all those extra cards, tissue paper, etc.)
Optional: stamps, stickers, washi tape, ribbon, thread for simple stitching
A few envelopes (store-bought or we'll show you how to make them)
What You’ll Receive: A Zoom link, detailed supply list and inspiration guide will be sent when you register, along with a downloadable guide to our favorite craft products.
Your Co-Hosts
Alice Chen is a knitter and sewist who is on a mission to turn every scrap in her craft room into something delightful. She believes in everyday creativity as an act of care: for the materials that want another life, for the landfills we can keep things out of, and for the magic that arises when we work with what we have instead of what we're told we need.
Megan Rossi creates handmade works through Chaparral Made, celebrating the California landscape with natural and upcycled materials. She's a maker who believes that the best art comes from what's already around us - foraged, found, and transformed into modern boho magic. She'll show you how to let your materials lead the way.
You’re inner creative is waiting for you and so are we!
Join Us
What is Art & Alchemy?
A monthly virtual creative gathering where we make art, build community, and remember that creativity isn't reserved for artists; it's a way of being in the world.
Each session includes a lightly guided project that invites reflection, play, and creative courage. Follow our prompt or bring one of your own that's been calling for your attention. Both are welcome.
Upcoming Circles
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January - Blueprints for Becoming
Sun, 1/11 from 3:00-4:30pm EST
Bookmaking anyone? Yes please. This month, we’ll look to folk book arts, sketchbooks of explorers, and the notebooks of wild inventors and witches, then stitch together our own creative journals for the new year. For notes and nonsense, for sketches and spells, for keeping track of what calls and what quiets, for dreaming sideways, mapping what matters, and calling in what’s to come. -
February - Constellation Keepers
Sun, 2/22 from 3:00-4:30pm EST
Every darkness holds the possibility of light. This month we’ll create home-made lanterns that illuminate the shadows. We'll draw inspiration from Polynesian wayfinding, the work of James Turrell's light installations, Mexican papel picado traditions, and the Japanese art of shadow play. Together we'll craft vessels that hold both darkness and light, and invite ourselves to remember that sometimes creation means making space for brilliance to shine through. For remembering that we are our own light-keepers, and that even the smallest pinhole of light can become a constellation by which we navigate.