In addition to lettering, my other passion is cooking! And over the last 6 months, I’ve been teaching myself how to bake bread. Kneading dough is my favorite way to give my brain a break from focusing on the week's tasks. It's a part of my creative practice I like to call "resting through making.

When @AdobeStudents asked me to share part of my creative process with you here, I immediately knew I wanted to do something with bread. It may seem unrelated to what I do, since as a commercial lettering artist, I spend so much of my week on my computer and iPad, but it's totally not! I approach my creativity holistically and believe everything in my life is connected somehow. So when I felt the pull to learn how to bake bread last year, I followed my curiosity knowing that it would benefit my work somehow.

Check out my process to make this video!

Sure, on the surface, baking bread has very little to do with lettering or running a freelance business. But WOW it's taught me so much about patience, problem-solving, and resilience...all while feeling completely relaxing and allowing me to work with my hands. Baking bread helped me let go of perfectionism because no matter how perfectly I shape my dough, it can rise in mysterious ways and directions. At first, it was SO frustrating (as is the case when learning anything new), but even my early flat, dense loaves were still pretty tasty. Eventually when I got the hang of it, my confidence soared. And guess what? That confidence carried over into all other areas of my creative life, like this ambitious stop motion concept I pitched for this project.