Little green leaf

I’ve been creative all my life. My mother was very crafty, and I spent childhood afternoons beside her, elbow-deep in decoupage glue, threading needlepoint, and counting stitches in cross-stitch samplers. Very 70’s, I know. Over the years my curiosity led me to try everything from Ukrainian pysanky and rug-hooking to string art and tissue-paper mandalas. If it involved color, texture, or a glue stick, I was in.

About five years ago a little green leaf changed everything. I found it on one of my many walks in the woods and brought it home, not as a keepsake but as a subject. Holding it up to the light I studied the stem, the elegant midrib that runs the length of the blade, and the branching veins that divide the surface into a natural, geometric pattern. The light suggested multiple greens, each shade a whisper, and I felt an almost urgent need to capture that quiet complexity on paper.

That single leaf unfurled into a stream of ideas. From its lines came shells, birds, flowers, and more—a whole family of small, botanical musings. The sketchbook filled. The colors multiplied. The designs began to feel less like isolated experiments and more like a cohesive little world.

Last year I decided to bring that world off the page and into everyday life by turning my designs into lapel pins. I partnered with Wizard Pins to translate sketches into tiny enamel sculptures, and the results have been sweeter than I imagined. Seeing my first green leaf reimagined as a wearable work of art—its veins outlined in metal, its shades of green glossy and bright—was a proud, almost giddy moment.

Now my pins travel with me: fastened to jackets, backpacks, hats, and tote bags. They’re conversation starters, small talismans, and portable reminders that beauty is often found in tiny, ordinary things. Creating is still the same joy it’s always been—only now those joys join me on my walks in the woods.