Creating a colorful future
When the women who work at Cornerstone Colors tie-dye a shirt, it will be three or four days before they see the finished pattern. In the same way, Cornerstone Colors founders Crystal Corcoran and Sheila Breckenridge hope the work they do today will create a pattern of success in the future for women recovering fromaddiction.
Cornerstone Colors is a Cahaba Heights-based nonprofit that opened in October at 4141 White Oak Drive, Suite 201. Corcoran is a former ballet dancer and teacher, and Breckenridge’s background is in audio engineering, though they both have owned their own businesses, as well. With Cornerstone Colors, they’re doing something different.
“We help women coming out of addiction rehabilitation going back into the workforce,” Corcoran said. “So many times, when women have been in an extensive rehabilitation program for eight or nine months, you certainly need your self-esteem built back up. So you can come here and work with us and create beautiful wraps and shirts.”
Behind the glass jewelry, cross necklaces made from horseshoe nails, screenprints and tie-dyed shirts, wraps, socks, scarves and leggings that Cornerstone sells is a team of women who create the pieces while going through addiction recovery.
Corcoran and Breckenridge work primarily with women from Foundry Ministries in Bessemer, whom they pick up for work days a couple times a week.
For these women, who have been in the Foundry program for several months, signing up to work at Cornerstone Colors provides a chance to earn money, learn job skills and take advantage of Corcoran and Breckenridge’s network throughout the community for possible employment once they graduate from the rehabilitation program.
“We’re trying to bridge the gap for people because we see that the biggest need is: you’ve got yourself together, you’ve turned your life around, which is great, but you’ve got to have money. You’ve got to have a job, and if you don’t, that’s where you see the sliding back down,” Corcoran said.
It’s also simply fun, Corcoran said, for many of the women to try out their creativity on something one of a kind.
“It’s uplifting, and it’s a break from the norm,” she said. “The only criteria is that you really want to work.”
The Foundry protects the identities of the women going through its addiction programs, but Corcoran and Breckenridge said they have heard stories of women losing children and becoming estranged from family because of the consequences of addiction. It’s part of what prompted them to create Cornerstone as a ministry in the first place.
“Every family is touched by it in some way,” Corcoran said. “It is just the most tumultuous thing in anybody’s life.”
While the women are in the Cornerstone studio, Corcoran said she and Breckenridge try to keep the focus on where they’re going, not where they’ve been.
“We’re not looking back at the past; we’re trying to direct people to the future,” Corcoran said.
Though Cornerstone has only been open a short time, they have worked with about a dozen women so far, with anywhere from one to four in the studio on a given day. Several of those who have graduated the Foundry program have used Corcoran and Breckenridge as references to help them land a new job and get a fresh start.
Neither Corcoran nor Breckenridge knew anything about tie-dyeing or jewelry creation when they started. They taught themselves, using Breckenridge’s bathtub for their first dyed creations, and now they pass on that knowledge to the women who work with them.
Cornerstone Colors products are currently sold at Monograms Plus in Vestavia Hills and B. Prince in Mountain Brook, and Corcoran said they want to be in additional boutiques as well as sell products online.
“We’ve done a whole lot in a short period of time,” she said. “We’re just really on the ground floor right now.”
Breckenridge said she’d like to reach the point where there are eight to 10 women from the Foundry working at the studio every day. They’re considering adding gemstone jewelry in the future, as well, because Breckenridge has collected gemstones for several decades.
Corcoran said she enjoys seeing the women get engrossed in their work, as well as sending their case managers pictures of the final products several days later. She and Breckenridge hope that Cornerstone Colors is helping women both on a practical and an emotional level as they overcome addiction and start a new phase in life.
In life as in tie-dye, Corcoran said, “You never know what you’re going to get.”