Oct 20, 2012

Arts, Crafts and Wonderful Nephews

Weekend at last! I already missed one of the programs I had planned - a yoga class held outdoors - and the second program of the day also seems to be falling through the cracks. I won't be taking my nephews to my favorite library for some children activities they had prepared. But no biggie as I've been relaxing, and getting the supplies I need for a little project of mine. Shhh! Those are still top secret. You will know when the time is right, and it they come through well.

It things come out right, I'm planning a crafty weekend for myself, with a good dose of fun. I've added a few crafty things to my list of 13 - things I've done in the past and weren't half bad at it - so I want to see how they go now. Maybe I've got bold and confident about my dormant skills after my "smashing success" with crocheting my cloche hat. (Yeah, I haven't added a picture of it finished, right?) As result, I've felt emboldened to try out my hand at some of my old hobbies. One of them is drawing. Yeah, I'm a complete disaster now, but I intend to keep giving it a try, see if I can get at least to the level I used to have, and then maybe try my hand at painting. You worry not. If my paintings are not good, then I won't make our apartment in Budapest ugly with hanging them on the wall. I'm consistent in that: the amateurish crap of others won't disgrace my walls, but neither will my own attempts unless they get to be good.

My inspiration for this renewal of the crafty hobbies comes basically from my eldest nephew. Sharing time with him playing with my scrapbooking supplies, trying to find new artistic uses for different things (he has a thing for corks, so he has been collecting them from the discarded wine bottles we keep in the shed), and then playing with things he normally don't have access to, such as stamps. My rubber stamps are all in Hungary, but there are some foam stamps I kept here, which he has discovered and he loves. I showed him once how to put different color inks on a stamp to get a colorful picture, and since then he has been enjoying trying out new ways to color his stamps.

Since my supplies are running low (and I still have much scrapbooking to do), I've decided to make him an arts&crafts box. There isn't much in it yet, just some plastic, gluey tubes of paint (the squeezing type), some inkpads and foam stamps on blocks, and then added also some painting brushes, water colors and a couple of supplies for water coloring. I want to see if I could take him a bit from the craft-side and towards the art-side. Perhaps I can interest him more in painting and drawing, and if so, I'll ask dad to make him an easel, so we can set him out in the backyard to paint to his heart content, and slowly get him more serious supplies, depending on what interests him more. If he rather leans towards the craft-side, then instead of an easel, we could fill the box with other materials, and maybe even try out other crafts.

The arts&crafts box is currently an old shoebox, but hopefully with time it will evolve to become a chest of wonders. I don't have my own box of wonders yet, but have a new drawing pad, pulled out my jewelry making supplies and readied my sewing box (don't have a basket for my knitting and crochetting supplies). I guess I am getting there too, and all thanks to one fabulous young guy in my life. Aren't nephews just a blessing?

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