Fur hats are more than head warmers. I found some handmade versions online that will make you stand out in a crowd as well as lift your spirits. Just try to keep a frown while wearing one of these hot pink creations with ears. I cobbled together my own version, and you can too. Or if you’d rather buy one, try these sellers on Etsy. mspresto, doriumlux and gobbolino
The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
Every few days, my daughter’s playroom “explodes,” as we say. And as much as I try to encourage, plead, and threaten her to put one toy away before taking another one out, her room remains a disaster zone until I take the time to organize it again.
I admit it – I am a bit of a neat freak. Everything has it’s place. And I love empty, open, horizontal space. It frees me to think and imagine.
But I am trying to be more open to the chaos. So my creative project for this week has been to make something of the mess. I started by taking a few pictures and then using the computer to process them into something else. I kind of like the end result.
Maybe mess CAN be inspiring.
Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.
I used to have a milk crate filled with scraps of wood and other various bits – pieces saved from a woodworking class I took in college. I’d build little sculptures using this really potent super glue called Zap-a-Gap. Sometimes I’d bring the box into my office and my colleagues and I would make a sculpture over the course of a week. One piece per person per day. We’d treat it like a game of design strategy – trying to see if we could create something balanced, even beautiful.
Eventually I purged that box of wood scraps during a move. I miss it. You got any wood scraps? I’m now accepting donations…
The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.
For Valentine’s Day, my 6 yr old daughter presented me with a silver wire sculpture that surrounds a red paper heart. "Mommy, you are the atmosphere that surrounds my heart.“ I melted. I loved the idea, the execution, the meaning – the whole thing. Then I became inspired to make a necklace based upon her design. I found all I needed at a local bead shop called Ritual Adornments. A simple iridescent red bead is threaded on 18 gauge silver wire and then wrapped like a cocoon. Since I’ve never made jewelry before, I relied on the friendly and helpful staff to add the clasp. I was so excited to wear the finished necklace and to share it with my daughter. At first, she was happy. "Now I have your heart, too.” Then her mood changed because she felt like my necklace supplanted her sculpture to me. I tried to explain, without success, that copying her design is the best complement anyone could give. We decided that neither of us would wear the necklace. So it now sits in a drawer. I hope to present it to her again when she is much older. I still keep her sculpture with me all the time in my bag.
This project combines two of my favorite things: origami and fused recycled bags. Fusing is really easy, as demonstrated in this Etsy “How To”. Once you create your plastic sheet, you can use it like fabric, or as I found, like origami paper. I used an xacto knife to cut the sheet into a rectangle. It is relatively simple to fold, although creasing the plastic takes some effort. Eight layers of plastic (about 4 grocery bags) provided enough material for one simple origami box. I then used my sewing machine to stitch the edge. In my first experiment, I tried to fuse the box edges, but the melting process just deformed the box shape.
Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.
by pauline 