If you’re here from Dana’s Kraft Paper Stamps blog, welcome! If you haven’t visited her blog, yet, please do!
When Justine Hovey sent a call out for paper crafters to partner up and make our voices heard in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, I was all in. I’ve been journaling and painting my thoughts out because words aren’t easy to come by, and I am grateful that these art sessions have led to some deeply meaningful conversations with my young daughter.
The goal of this hop is to come together to stand behind our crafty sisters and brothers of color not just in the art industry, but also to show our support in the never-ending fight for equality all over
the world.
For this blog hop, I decided to go back to the basics: skin color. At the core of it all is the value attached to how much melanin your body has. It’s absurd, really, that your skin should dictate how you’re perceived and treated.
I’m unable to explain to my six-year-old why it’s ok for lighter-skinned people to feel superior to those with darker skin…why there is so much systemic bias in our societies worldwide against those who are dark, why humanity takes a backseat when it comes to skin color…why we still run commercials promoting fairness products and try home treatments to get whiter skin. Why fairness is desirable and dark skin demonized…
Isn’t it what’s inside that matters? The color of the skin is purely a coincidence of genetic materials co-mingling…it doesn’t make you who you are! More than anything else, what makes us human is empathy, kindness and respect. It’s our heart, our mind, our soul that makes us human. Not the color of our skin.
With this card, I wanted to share how we are all joined by the common thread of kindness…there may be gaps in our understanding of what we consider “the other” but those gaps can be filled with education, with empathy and with kindness. We may all look different on the outside but we can all strive to be the same on the inside.
We have to listen harder to the voices that have been suppressed for centuries, do better to support those who have been marginalized, and be better every day in our thoughts and actions, so that our future generations focus more on what counts inside over what appears outside.
To continue on this blog hop, please visit Ingrid’s blog next.
Also, here is a list of Instagram Accounts of Black Crafters (Thanks Kristina Werner!) and a List of Ways to Help (Thanks Jennifer McGuire!)
If you’re looking for a way to help, please consider donating to one of the following charities:
• Black Table Arts – organizes and brings in black artists into communities and provides creative spaces for leadership
• The Loveland Project – helps provide therapy for black women and girls
• Fair Fight – a movement to ensure free and fair elections
• Black Girls Code – a movement to increase women of color in STEM fields and exposes girls to computer science and technology
• The Bail Project – mission to combat mass incarceration and reshape the pretrial system in the United States and helps reunite families.
Supplies
Curious about my cardmaking supplies? I have listed my most-used items below. These are compensated affiliate links at no cost to you. Thank you for your support! Affiliate and product disclosure can be found here. As always, I was not paid to do this post and I only use products from companies I love.
Specifically for this card, I used a Gelli Arts gel plate in conjunction with Brea Reese alcohol inks to get the skin colors. Next, I used Concord & 9th’s Sew Seasonal Dies to cut out the leaf shapes and sewed them together with a gold thread. I thought My Favorite Things Cross Stitch Die in combination with the Stitched Circle Die cut to make a backdrop for the leaves (representing holes in our understanding of “the other”). Last, I added the Altenew Be Kind Sentiment, which really drives the point home.