Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Btw, only half a year to Yule...

What Can You Learn from Crafts You Dislike?

"Choose three crafts or creative projects that you have very little or no interest in. Then spend just five minutes researching each of these, just enough time to find out something you didn't already know."

Hmm... What ""creative project" am I not interested in? Quite a many, actually, and I am not intersted, because I have tried and found out that I am not interested. I have no interest to learn anything about them. But then there are a couple that I haven't even tried, because I think those are waste of time. For example:

Decorating flower pots. Decorating mirror frames and other such things with fake jewels and such.
Making things by gluing stones together, painting stones
Making things by gluing beads and pearls and sequins, or fabric on styrofoam base.
Making plaster figurines in ready-made molds.
Making paper clay figurines with ready-made molds.

I really don't want to learn anything about that.

But, here we go.

When painting flower pots, it's important to seal the pots from inside to stop the water damage on the surface. I thought one SHOULD not do this, so that the pot would "breath".

If I would decorate flower pots, I would do something like this, I think...
These are... well... kind of cute...
It might also be fun to paint simple patterns with the same colors, like stripes and polka dots and so, to have in a group with simple, colorful flowers like geraniums, African violets or such.

About painted rocks.
These "Stone Books" are pretty interesting.
Actually, I have a stone my sister has painted, and it means a lot to me :-)

This is something new I learned about this:
"If a smooth surface is preferred wood filler can be used to even out pits or imperfections in the rock."

I actually like these rock projects by Martha Stewart...
And this is what I learned there:
"Use little cushions of nondrying clay to support parts while the glue sets"

Huh... I am actually enjoying myself LOL

I learned that one must use water based paint when painting styrofoam, or the styrofoam will melt.
I also learned that styrofoam shrinks rather nicely in oven and becoming hard plastic.
And even though this is an interesting idea, I still hate styrofoam.
I like these styrofoam gumdrop trees...

I learned that plaster of Paris doesn't like cold and should not be applied on frozen surfaces.
This is rather interesting.
I know how to make molds of clay and cast plaster... and it's not bad... Hmm... I'm sure one could make molds for paper clay too. It really isn't the craft itself that I hate, just the readymade horrible figurines, kittens and angels... Brrrr.

1 comment:

Fiber Babble said...

Glad to see you posting. Interesting exercise - and it sounds like you've learned (or realized) something about yourself and why you 'thought' you wouldn't like those activities you chose!

Thankfully, there are hundreds of artists/crafters out there who are happy to hot-glue rhinestones on sweatshirts and hundreds of others who like painting on rocks. If you or I don't embrace those artistic forms, the artforms will not die.