It's been awhile. Been busy making stuff and reading about making stuff.

This is one of the charms I sent off for the Cloth, Paper,Scissors magazine charm swap. Almost didn't make the deadline even though I knew about the swap at least 4 weeks before the due date!

Keeping myself on task has been a challenge. You'd think since I enjoy making stuff so much, there wouldn't be any problem about sitting down and just doing it, but no. The big problem is how easily I get distracted while working on something. Usually happens when I need to find a tool or materials. While looking for my hammer, I suddenly found myself on the floor, looking through a book on needle felting. While outside spraying a coat of varnish on some charms, I end up spending an hour puttering around with the plants. It's very enjoyable, but the end result is a whole bunch of half-finished stuff. This is where having projects with deadlines comes in.

In the last month, I've completed making the journal for the round robin swap (the phoenix book below), completed my 4 pages in the journal I got from the person before me on the round robin, and submitted 3 charms for the charm swap. It became a little stressful at the end of each project because up until I finished, I spent a lot of time following some crafting wil-o-wisp into the deep forest. The feeling of pride of actually finishing a project was fantastic, though! Now that creativity is back in full force, my next exercise will be to learn to be disciplined in time management. Ai-ya!

Even this blog., the frequency of my posts isn't anywhere near what intended. No worries, though. It's still in it's infancy. So many ideas...so little concentration.

Tools to Create and Destroy

When I was little I would get into so much trouble with my hands. All the time. Mom would go nuts after finding me sitting at the table, big ol’ blobs of paint squeezed out of those tiny watercolor tubes…or worse yet, I got my hands on her acrylics…but I could not resist. Then she’d just get exasperated when I got mad after I smooshed all those wonderful colors together and it all turned to that purple-brown poo color.

Went to town on the big bathroom mirror with her lipsticks.

And the nail polish.

Locked myself in a room and started “painting” on paper with all her nail polish. My brother ratted me out after smelling the nail polish fumes wafting out under the door. I remember starting to feel a little weird in the head while pouring all the polish out.

She lined the hallway walls with butcher paper because she knew I’d draw there spankings or no spankings, but didn’t realize until years later that I also doodled on the underside of the dining room table. And a little bit at the back of a closet.

Then there was the time I went to bed with Silly Putty because I wanted to make animal shapes…and fell asleep. Woke up to mom swearing under her breath while trying to pull it out of my hair. It makes a neat noise when you chew it, by the way. Don’t sue me if you do this and get poisoned.

My hands weren’t always getting into inadvertent mischief, however. There was a time in my early years when I remember waking up with weak hands. Could barely make a fist and took until breakfast was ready to get them to wake up. Vaguely remember the doctor telling my mom to have me spend time working with my hands before I went to sleep, so she had me doing origami. Ducks, cranes, inflatable balls, boats…all of them coaxing life into my hands. I’m curious to know what that was all about. It did go away in time, but I’d like to know what was wrong with me back then.