This brief report presents a review of the literature on health implications of crafting practices, as well as secondary analysis of data from the National Endowment for the Arts' Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. The secondary data analysis focuses on trends in crafting practices in the United States. The findings indicate a greater prevalence of craft-based practices compared with fine arts media, as well as, distinct differences in arts participation based on gender, ethnicity and income levels. Using these data sources, implications for craft-based expressive practices as a therapeutic tool in art therapy practice are discussed.

Art and craft practitioners have personal experience of the benefits of making: the handling of material can help to regulate our mental states through providing a means to reach flow states. The mirror neuron system helps in skill learning, and the plasticity of the brain ensures that skills may be learned at all stages of life. Arts and crafts play a role in controlling stress and enhancing relaxation. They also enable us to fail safely and handle our emotions. Furthermore, they facilitate social activity for many individuals who are at risk of social isolation. This article aims to integrate knowledge from both the field of neuroscience and the arts by focusing on the implications that flow experience and the mirror neuron system integral to making processes have on our psychophysical well-being.

The aim of this study was to examine how textile crafts are described as a psychological well-being-enhancing leisure activity in female textile craft makers' narratives. To this, the stories of Rose, Ann, Mary and Sheila are depicted to represent how the eudaimonic intrinsic needs of doing, belonging, becoming and being were expressed in crafting. The qualitative study is based on written narratives of 65 female textile crafters aged 31-88 years. The data were analyzed using content analysis drawing on Wilcock's theory of eudaimonic well-being. The narratives revealed that crafting improved the participants' well-being in different ways. The results showed that the focus was not on seeking pleasure and satisfaction or on manufacturing need-based products but, above all, on crafting a richer and more purposeful life through self-actualization and excellence in doing, social connectedness in belonging, self-empowerment in becoming, and relief from stress in being.