Making Stuff Out Of Other Stuff - A Way Of Life
It's very therapeutic for me to work with my hands, as there's something uniquely satisfying about pointing to an object and knowing, "I made that. It didn't exist before and now it does." Because I'm such a school person, when fall rolls around I get in the mood for homework and dioramas and experiments. As a result my family and friends wind up with strange gifts.
While idly stumbling the Internet, I came across this project. How cool (and easy!) does that look? I decided to whip one of those suckers right up for Thanksgiving at my aunt's house. However, a new 9-5 and a few rainy weekends in a row prevented my journey to the maple tree area of Central Park before last weekend (my deadline).
Staying in because of more rain that Saturday, I rooted through my craft stuff for centerpiece supplies. My project monkey desperately needed to be fed. Astoundingly, among the ribbons and beads and fancy paper types and special scissors, I found a branch of silk maple leaves. Why and when I purchased such a thing? No idea. Sale at Michael's probably, but it was like fate telling me that the maple-leaf-rose centerpiece would bestow a predestined blessing upon our meal. There was one problem, though. The maple leaves looked a little too real, a little too declining and a little too, well, sad. Behold.
Photo courtesy of e e cummings.
But that was OK! I have paint. I'd paint them into pretty yet varied fall tones appropriate for roses. I'd have the chance to create leaves of a deeper individual and wider collective palette than I'm likely to get during any one trip to the park. Donika:1, Mother Nature: 0
Photo courtesy of Raphael and Thomas Hardy.
So things were going well, until a few painted leaves dried and I started testing them out. Something I should have tried before painting them, because it turns out the texture and cut of the silk leaves did not lend itself to folding.
That's when the thing that always happens happened-- the moment when all goes wrong with my crafts, when innocent items around my house become prone to smashing, and I might start digging through the trash. I decided I was going to have to make stuff out of other stuff, and let that be my guide.
I tell people I like to make crafts, and they either picture one of those lonely moms crying into their vats of nylon pigs dyeing in tea, or a Martha Stewart overachiever who isn't quite an artist but might secretly fancy herself one. While I'll admit that I can occasionally do cool things like reupholster a chair or sew a dress, most of my crafts are pretty crappy. Because I have no project plan. I have all the wrong materials-- just what's in my house that looks like it would like to be something else. I don't make crafts; I deal in reincarnation.
It's much worse when I'm depressed. Once I quit my job, and spent the whole summer watching the BBC The Office (and crying) while redestributing my futon mattress textiles into god-only-knows-how-many pillows (and crying). Though I'm in a much better frame of mind now than that summer, every contently passive item in my apartment now stood at alert, knowing the drill. I felt particularly guilty when I finally seized on this poor guy:
Crow and bag. Crowbag. Ha.
Purchasing that crow was the highlight of an un-fun hayride my best friend (E.M.) and I attended a few years ago, and seeing him makes me think of her and smile. The purple bag is actually from her, too. She gave me a glass apple in it for good luck before I moved to the Big Apple. For no justifiable reason whatsoever, I was about to turn these items into the equivalent of third grade art homework-- as it always is with artwork created in the desperation of a deep project withdraw. Don't fret, though. The crow did not go under the scissors, and half his haystack was preserved.
Nonetheless, this quiet little notion quickly blossomed into something that required an ironing board, hot glue gun, and polyester stuffing:
And several other supplementary measures, not even including leftover padding from my latest laptop packaging, cut-up sections of a cat food box, and the calculated consideration of rice as a filler.
A pattern I printed off the Internet to
cover the gift bag.
The obviously necessary vodka and cranberry.
My crafting hammer and screwdriver. They're
floral in case you can't tell. The screwdriver has
interchangable tips in two sizes and both
screwhead types. I just wanted to show them
because I love them.
The assembly area.
The proper writing thing to do here would be to build some anticipation. Talk about how I toiled, and measured, and ironed and sewed a pilgrim from scratch; discuss burning myself with hot glue and stabbing myself with a sewing needle; explain trying to figure out how to make glow-in-the-dark letters blend in with the autumn colors. But after reviewing both the precious personal artifacts and richness of scrappy chum that comprise this masterpiece, I think it's better just to show it.
TA-DA!
I can't stop looking at this and thinking about handing it to my aunt as a thirty-something adult with a sincere expression of gratitude on my face. How she'll overlook the pilgrim's depressed appearance and the obscuration of the pumpkin among the leaves and other fluff piled in there (a wee squirrel you probably can't see, and the pumpkin is inexplicably wearing a Christmas bow). She won't be faking it at all. She's my godmother, and she'll be so touched that I thought of her in advance that she'll place it proudly in the middle of the table, where my cousins will uncomfortably compliment me on what is obviously a silly piece of crap.
Thanks to my aunt, her love and my sublime artistic genius, we'll all participate in a polite fiction where we approve of everything each other does, and find each other neat, and hope that everything works out well for everyone. Yet, in being forced into that exercise, we'll realize it's not an act, just something we usually we forget to live. The words on the front of this atrocious centerpiece, by the way, are "Love, Family, Food." I know it's a little Eat, Pray, Love, but three words felt right and I was limited by the distribution of glow-in-the-dark letters I had on hand. It's as accurate a way to describe the holiday as any, or as least as much as one could ask from it. Thanks in advance, Aunt Peg (and family), for making this happen every year.
PS-- Not all my crafts suck. In another fit of making-stuff-out-of-other-stuff, I burned my sister the first season of 30 Rock (she was out of the country for much of last year), and made this container for it out of a shoebox.
Functional AND handsome.
It's cute, but has more practical charm than appears. The floral outside sleeve has a slide-in topless box in the same color as the title band, which holds everything together. Also, I apologize to Tina Fey for pirating her material, and I actually wanted to show this as an excuse to sing her praises. But I think I've already made myself tedious and she definitely deserves her own entry anyway. In short, mad girl crush on Tina Fey. Details to come.