We recently connected with Christa Vail and have shared our conversation below.

Christa , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you wish you had started sooner?

I will always wish I started my creative career sooner, because I knew from a young age that I wanted to be in the arts. However, as life has unfolded, I know that when I started was the right time for me. I officially started my business when I was freshly 30 years old, in 2023. But leading up to that, I was a solo mom to a toddler and I was very riddled with postpartum depression and PTSD with no end in sight. My creativity seemed non-existent and had been for years at that point. I started making quirky little suncatchers while I worked from home, during my daughter’s naps. They brought me happiness and made me start seeing the light again, from different angles. At that point, I couldn’t stop making them and then I posted about them and immediately had 5 orders, and 20 by the end of the month. I knew I had to officially start my business at that point.

With that being said, had I started my career beforehand, I wouldn’t have leaned on suncatchers being an option for a product. I would’ve been trying all of these other creative ventures that didn’t have as big of an impact on me other than I knew I could do it and I wanted to. It would’ve been more of a way to get into the arts, which would’ve made me happy. However, I’m afraid it would’ve meant that art was just my career, and a passion of course, but not as meaningful as what the suncatchers became and how they translated to my customers and how healing and special they were to me.

So, while I don’t regret always wishing and trying to be in the arts as a career, I don’t think it was meant to find me until I was afraid my creativity had dried up and I was just trying to find light in the darkness and the prisms and I found each other in that process. So I’m very grateful I started when I did. To me, it was divine timing.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a 32 year old solo mother, who has always looked for the beauty in everything and if I don’t see the beauty, I create it. I’ve always been deeply into the arts and across the board with creativity. Writing, painting, dance, singing, sketching, crafting, hair, makeup, fashion, and prism art. I believe in fantasy and magic and have always been a bit quirky and witchy.

I use to make bracelets even when I was in daycare and hand them out to everyone. That turned into having beads and making jewelry and then making crystal jewelry into my early 20’s. I lost my creative spark during some very dark years and abusive trauma. I fell pregnant and experienced postpartum depression and PTSD to a pretty severe extreme. I was lost on how to be my creative self again but I knew my daughter would be creative and I knew I was her example and that I owed it to myself and her to show her what it’s like to honor our creativity. So, I picked up beads again. I went back to the basics. I knew I wanted to make cute, quirky, magical, fairy-like, sparkly things that could just bring me some peace and joy. Suddenly, I was making these suncatcher strands, my space was sparkly, and my mind and soul was lighting up again. I haven’t stopped since. I did that for about 2 years before I decided to post about it and I immediately had 5 orders that day and 20 by the end of the month. I believe the industry found me, and I re-found myself in it as well.

I make unique handmade suncatchers. All shapes, sizes, color themes, book/movie themes, memorabilia, for baby nurseries, yoga studios, car charms, sparkly body jewelry, bird cage suncatchers, etc. – if I can find a way to create light, I make it.

My suncatchers help people by bringing a beautiful piece of art to a space that catches their eye from any angle, and helps them ground into the present moment and find a moment of peace, inspiration and joy. My suncatchers help people see the light again, no matter how dark it’s been. They help new mothers take a moment while their baby is mesmermized by the dancing rainbows. It helps humans of all ages, remember magic exists. I believe mine are unique because of the limitless nature I embody with them. There’s no shape, color, size, theme, etc. that I won’t do.

I am most proud of my intention behind them. They are not just a decor piece to me. They are a transfer of energy, a reminder, of light existing, if we just look at it from a different angle. I am also proud of being able to do these in front of my daughter and having her cheer me on for every order. It’s inspired her to keep creating and be an artist herself. I am also so proud of myself for fighting the darkness and making these anyways, relentlessly. Now I get messages from customers saying how deeply profound their suncatcher is to them. It’s priceless.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We all experience darkness, no one is immune to it. How we navigate it is what can change the course of our entire existence. For me, I was deep in very dark times. I had never felt as low as I did for a handful of years. I felt I had nothing to give, nothing to share with the world and was being abused. Told I wasn’t an artist. Constantly lifting up other artists, while building a foundation of believing my creativity was a fragment of my imagination. The voice in my head was no longer mine. Falling pregnant with my abuser and then losing my dog two days before giving birth, one year after losing my best friend to suicide, while choosing to leave and be a solo mother was the final straw for me. I let the darkness consume me for about 3 years after that. I eventually realized resiliency could only be about surviving for so long before it meant action and changing the path I was deeming to be mine. I was becoming complacent in my struggle and just mourning my creativity, even when it was still alive. I just was choosing to not muster up the courage to get to know it all over again.

I’ll never forget the day I clocked out from work and packed up my daughter and opened the doors to the craft store again. I stood in the bead aisle with a silly smile on my face for at least an hour or so. I picked out so many materials and then almost put them all back when the foundational story I had been letting play in my brain started being loud again. I looked at my daughter playing with the sparkly beads I had chosen and said to myself, “if not for me, for you” and I bought the materials and went home. I wish I could say I was excited going home with the materials, but I wasn’t. I was intimidated. And all of the memories of the darkness and the voices of others were circling my mind. I sat down, starting playing with the beads, and a suncatcher was made. My first pocket of peace and joy had been had for the first time in awhile. So I made another and another and another…until I was having more pockets of joy and the voices got quieter and I was dreaming up designs and realized, I pushed past a brick wall in my mind that told me I had nothing to create, give, be and here I was…doing all of that. That I decided to push past the darkness and look at it from another angle, and found the light sparkling right back at me and a little daughter smiling back up at me, running to her little beads I got her and trying to make one just like mommy. That not only was I an artist, but I was encouraging a little artist in the making as well.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of being an artist/creative is portraying that inspiration is everywhere and that you get to inspire others to tap into their creativity as well. You are a constant reminder of what the human soul can do and be and that finding beauty is just on the other side of creating it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://alwaysevermore.etsy.com
• Instagram: @alwaysevermore.art
• Facebook: AlwaysEvermore
• Other: TikTok: alwaysevermore1
  Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/alwaysevermoreart/

Image Credits

These are all taken by me