My pieces are usually more metaphorical than literal, but the creation of this year’s holiday card design has been, unintentionally, both a metaphor and a literal exercise of the Rumi quote I used for it:

“There is hope after despair, and many suns after darkness.”

My idea for it was sparked by the final lines of Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration Day spoken word poem, “The Hill We Climb”:

For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it.
If only we are brave enough to be it.

When I heard her recite those words, an image of a sunrise appeared instantly in my mind, a reminder about the power of light in the darkest season. The image stayed with me for days as I thought about her words and everything we’d all been through in the year leading up to that day.

Over time, the image coalesced further into a kind of stained glass window, and I knew that was going to be my idea for the holiday card this year.

Not an actual stained glass window, of course. But a stained glass window effect, if I could manage it. I had an idea for how I could do it, but it was a complicated concept that needed to percolate for awhile. When the idea didn’t let go after months, I decided I had to do it.

By the time I was ready to tackle it, I had definite ideas about the design – a stylized sunrise, a curved “window” frame, organic lines, not-too-simplified-but-not-too-fussy, an almost-rainbow color palette - but not an actual fully-formed design. For that, I had to break out the ruler, compass, and protractor and spend a lot of time drawing, erasing, redrawing, adjusting, erasing, refining. And then, big breath: committing to the final design with a black sharpie.

I created my own "glass" paper out of tissue paper, mod podge, and paint, and a window frame from a textured cardstock and more paint. I don't know what it’s like to work with actual stained glass, but my version was kind of a hybrid between doing a tile mosaic and quilting: finding the piece that will be perfect for that spot, getting the cut right, carefully pressing the seams tight, pulling out the pieces that don’t work after all, building a color story with little scraps.

The problem I still hadn’t solved by the time I started all this work was how I was going to get the quote I wanted to use onto the glass paper. It required more precision with lettering than I have the talent or patience for, and writing directly on the glass paper was challenging at best. And then there was the whole problem of writing it on a curve so that it was all spaced correctly.

This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, I told myself. Multiple times.

Out of desperation from no other good options, I decided to try printing directly onto the glass paper (affixed to a regular sheet of paper) with my inkjet printer. It took some finagling and several steps, but the inkjet idea actually worked. Sort of. Because the glass papers were basically plastic, there was no way for the ink to soak in like it would for paper. So it basically sat on the surface, which meant it was in danger of smudging if it got touched or rubbed by anything. Learned that first-hand.

The final hurdle was the window “leading” between the “glass” panes. I used a fabric paint to give the right dimension so it would look like stained glass leading, but it was really finicky, easy to accidentally squeeze out too-big globs instead of maintain a nice, steady line. It also takes a long time to dry completely, which meant I had to figure out a strategy for what order everything needed to be outlined, and do it in stages. And, while the paint takes a long time to dry completely, it starts to set pretty much right away, so where it’s thinnest – especially where it meets the glass paper – it dries quickly. Translation: not a lot of room for mistakes or time to fix them.

Over the course of several days, I worked my way through the outlining. And always laying in wait for me was that darn curved piece with the easily-smudged lettering.

Finally, I just had the last of the curve outlining to do, and the perimeter where the window design would meet the window frame. I got the pieces I’d made for the frame in place after some fiddling and adjusting. This part was tricky because I work on a watercolor block, which is basically a pad of watercolor paper that’s sealed almost all the way around instead of just along the top edge like a pad of note paper would be. It keeps water/paint from getting under the edges and helps the paper stay flat and in place when it’s wet. When you’re done with that artwork, you slide a palette knife in a small opening in the seal and slice through all the way around the edges to separate it from the block. Handy for most purposes, but challenging when you’re trying to affix a window frame made out of thick cardstock and paint and glue.

Anyway, I finally got that part done, took a breath, and tackled the last of the leading. Managed to get the curve outlining done around the lettering without smudging anything (that hadn’t already been smudged, anyway), then carefully worked my way around the outside of the design where it met the window frame. It was a lot like caulking around a bathtub, but less forgiving.

Everything done, I leaned back in my chair and took a moment to just enjoy finally being done. There were a few touch-ups needed where the glue dried on the surface of the window frame or the leading needed to be thicker, and of course some smudges on the lettering. But it all felt fixable.

Rather than try to do it right then, I knew not to press my luck; better to let all that fresh fabric paint dry, then tackle those fixes. As I moved to set it aside someplace safe to dry, a top section of the watercolor block – including the surface piece I was working on –

separated from the block,

slid right off like a sled on snow,

and landed facedown on the floor.

After my initial (desperate) triage session to fix as much as I could before the paint dried, I stepped away from it for several days, sick at heart, before coming back to assess the remaining repairs needed and if it could be salvaged. In that time, I had a chance to ponder the larger lesson from what had happened and internalize the sympathy and encouragement from folks who commented on my posts about it. One very wise commenter even noted the correlation between the quote I’d used for the design and what had happened to the design itself, something I hadn’t realized until she pointed it out.

We’ve all had an experience like this. Something we’ve poured ourselves into that went heartbreakingly sideways. Sometimes salvageable, sometimes not. I’m grateful to be able to say that this time, I was able to salvage the thing I’d poured myself into. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it? After all, not every mistake can be fixed.

What’s important is what you do with that moment. You may give into despondency and despair, at least for a little while. And that’s okay; heartbreak deserves our grief. For a while.

But give into hope, too. Not just hope that what was damaged can be fixed, but the kind of hope that comes from commiseration with people who know what it’s like to be where you are, and the encouragement and compassion of people who take a moment to reassure you it’s going to be okay in the end, one way or the other.