Recipe for Art: Coffee Filter Flowers

Sometimes during a flare or especially painful lesions, those of us with HS are stuck in a loop of depression and inactivity. Art helps us to process our feelings and reprogram our brains, and lift us out of our funk. Art is personal, not perfect. With this project, there are no hard and fast rules on how to apply the colors, so get creative! All of your supplies can be found in your home or a dollar store, including a paintbrush (and water for the brush), watercolors, coffee filters, pipe cleaners, a paper towel tube (or a wrapping paper tube, if you want something longer to decorate), and scissors.

Taking our mind off of the pain

Making coffee filter flowers allows you to freestyle with color and relax with few rules. You can meditate, hum, sing, or even do math problems (because nature is mathematical!) as you blot colors onto the coffee filters, taking your mind off of your pain and anxiety. This project allows you to see your results quickly, which brings a sense of satisfaction as well as brightening up your space with the colors from the flowers. If you want to get extra fancy, you could get gold or silver acrylic paint and very lightly gild the edges of the flower petals. This is the artist that inspired this particular project, I would like to give credit where it is due and she is amazing!