Vellum has always felt like a threshold material to me — translucent, delicate, and quietly strong.

It holds light in a way that paper doesn’t, softening edges and revealing what’s beneath without giving everything away. Working with vellum feels like working with possibility. It’s a reminder that not everything in the studio needs to be opaque or certain. Some things are meant to be seen through. (On the other hand, one of the worse paper cuts I ever got was from vellum – a 36 x 24 inch piece that sliced the skin between my index and middle fingers. Owie!)

Vision works the same way.

It rarely arrives fully formed. More often, it shows up in layers — a texture here, a color there, a shape that keeps returning in the corner of your mind. Vision isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s a slow accumulation of noticing. It’s the way your hands reach for the same materials again and again before your brain understands why. It’s the quiet pull toward something that hasn’t revealed its name yet.

As someone with a vision impairment, my relationship with vision isn’t always the literal sight. Sometimes it simply means having the vision of what I want to create. I think that’s one of the reasons I like working with fiber, because there’s the tactile component and not just visual.

And then there are the vessels — the bowls, baskets, jars, trays, notebooks, and boxes that hold the pieces of your creative life.

Vessels are the unsung collaborators of the studio. They gather scraps, protect fragile ideas, keep tools within reach, and create small pockets of order inside the beautiful chaos of making. A vessel doesn’t just hold materials. It holds intention. It holds the shape of what might become.

Vellum, vision, vessels — they’re all forms of containment and revelation. They remind me that creative practice isn’t about forcing clarity. It’s about giving ideas a place to land, a place to rest, a place to unfold in their own time.

What vessels — literal or metaphorical — are holding your creative vision right now?