Hot Glue + Hope
What Halloween Taught Me About Creativity and Imperfection
I can’t sew to save my life. Never could. Straight lines, patterns, measurements; they all make my brain short-circuit. But for a few magical Halloweens, armed with a glue gun and pure maternal delusion, I somehow managed to pull together some pretty remarkable costumes for my son.
We’re talking Labyrinth. Edward Scissorhands. The Princess Bride. Willy Wonka.
Each one was a love letter to the movies that raised me: to imagination, weirdness, and the characters that made my young heart feel seen.
And yet, before every costume came the same familiar whisper: You’re not creative enough for this.
That’s my inner saboteur….the voice that likes to remind me that I don’t “really” know what I’m doing. That maybe I should just buy something from Target and call it a day.
But each October, I ignored her. (Silencio, Bruno!) I got out my glue gun. I made it work.
They were all patchworked together, and sometimes the hardest part of the costume was the simplest (it took me WAY too long to find grey leggings for the Gareth costume), but it didn’t matter. Because my son beamed. The photos still make me smile. And those imperfect creations ended up being some of my proudest.
The best creativity isn’t about perfection; it’s about giving yourself permission to not be perfect.
That’s the thing I’ve learned, not just from Halloween, but from a lifetime of creating things I wasn’t “qualified” to make.
When I started my photography business back in 2010, I had a cheap consumer-grade SLR camera and barely knew my way around Photoshop. No fancy gear, no formal training. Just passion, curiosity, and a stubborn belief that I could figure it out as I went.
And I did.
Not perfectly. Definitely not gracefully. But with a kind of scrappy, glue-gun energy that has followed me ever since.
It’s funny, now, as a designer, I see that same energy in my clients:
-The therapist building her first practice website.
-The small business owner who swears she’s “not creative.”
-The one who’s scared to be seen, but shows up anyway.
Because entrepreneurship isn’t about mastery. It’s about making something that matters to you, even if it’s messy, even if it’s improvised, even if you’re just holding it together with hot glue and hope.
The antidote to burnout is play.
For me, those costumes were a creative outlet outside my normal work; a reminder that creativity doesn’t always have to pay bills or fit into a portfolio. Sometimes it just needs to exist. And when you combine passion and grit, when you pour yourself into something you love (even without the “proper” skills), beautiful things can happen.
That’s what I try to build through AFOTIK.
Designs that aren’t about looking perfect, but about feeling perfectly you.
Websites that don’t hide behind polish, but shine with personality.
Because real connection lives in the imperfections, in the glue strings and fingerprints that remind us we made something with our own two hands.
So if that little voice in your head ever says you’re not good enough, pick up your version of a glue gun and make something anyway.
Who knows?
It might just be your Edward Scissorhands moment.
Ready to create something imperfectly beautiful?
At AFOTIK, I help small businesses and wellness professionals turn passion and personality into visual stories that connect.
Let’s bring your vision to life: glue strings, quirks, and all.
Let’s build something real →