Crafting helps Lowell resident through difficult times
By Emma Palova || Contributing writer
8/30/2024
A car accident in 2014 left Lowell resident, Chris Kenyon, with a brain injury, anxiety and disability to work. Even before the accident, she had to go through several obstacles, including a hip replacement and widow-maker heart attack, resulting in a heart pump and defibrillator implant. Prior to the accident, she worked for Amway and delivered mail.
“We persevered and got through it, but I felt just existing,” she said. “I’ve always been crafty but not fully into it.”
She got on the computer and watched Damon from Deco Exchange, and made a black and white Christmas wreath. When her husband, Alan, got home and saw the wreath, he questioned why Chris was spending money on the wreath. “I made it,” she said. “I started making wreaths for friends and family.”
After her first success, she took classes from Damon from Deco Exchange and JoJo Rustic Remnants, traveling to different retreats, with crafting and business classes, all over the states.
“I went to a wreath convention in Texas,” she said. “I slowly started getting more sociable. I put my fear aside and knew I could do this. As my business grew, my confidence grew as well.”
She went from a depressed homebody to an active crafter, doing shows in the West Michigan area. “This helped me get off depression medication,” she said. “I had something to look forward to.”
With her husband, Alan, helping set-up her booth at craft and arts festivals, she has made a lot of connections; meeting new people at different shows. “People have been very kind,” she said.
And crafting materials matter in creating beautiful quality wreaths. Kenyon uses Farrisilk wide ribbons that hold, to make wreaths for all seasons. Currently, she’s working on widely-popular Halloween wreaths with skeletons, which takes approximately four hours.
For the skeleton wreath, she uses a 26-inch-wide round rim that she pushes together to shape it into an oval, and decorates it with Farrisilk ribbons. “I got attached to these ribbons,” she said holding spools with wide beautiful ribbons.
Kenyon made all the wedding arrangements for her son’s wedding in the Upper Peninsula, this year adding wedding arrangements to her line of products. And also, going forward, she plans on offering classes in a bachelorette party setting to learn how to make wreaths in homes by next year.
“I am going to do this as long as I can,” she said. “It gives me a sense of doing something and feeling very accomplished when I get it done. You kind of need that. It’s very therapeutic,” she said, adding she highly recommends crafting to other people. “Start on the Internet,” she said. “Some designs you don’t connect with and some you do.”
Her next show is the Apple & BBQ Festival in Silver Lake on Sept. 7 and then Christmas through Lowell at Fairway.
You can call Chris Kenyon at Kenyon’s Kreations at 1-616-780-6687 or email at ackenyon@comcast.net
