crafty dreams

I used to loathe craftiness. I'm just not very artistic. I can't draw a stick person to save my life. It was easier to just develop a deep hatred for all things crafty than to admit that I just wasn't good at something. In college, I professed (and truly believed) that Michael's and Hobby Lobby were my idea of hell. I was very anti-crafty.

But in the past few years, I must admit I've felt a change coming over me. Maybe it was planning a wedding. I remember after we got engaged, I had this sudden burning desire to make a scrapbook. A scrapbook! Me, of all people! I mean, scrapbooks involve frou-frou paper, glue, and like...paint pens. And stickers. Oh Lord, not stickers. I barely knew what was coming over me as I threw all that stuff in my cart at Target (still too scared to enter Michael's). Man I loved making that scrapbook...for about 5 pages. (PS- Haven't made another one since)

In the years since, I've dabbled in the crafts. I messed around with Matt's paints once when he had them out. (It looked like a 3-year-old did it and I definitely hung it on the wall) I bought a beautiful set of markers. I bought a needle and some thread, thinking I could learn to sew. I used my old scrapbooking stuff to make personalized Mother's Day Cards this year-- that was actually a hit.

I have crafty aspirations. They don't usually come to fruition.

[Side note: I just looked back at the blog post I linked to in the above paragraph-- I gave almost the EXACT SAME explanation of my crafting history in that post-- am I consistent or WHAT?! And no, I'm not going to delete everything I just wrote. Those are my WORDS, man! From my heart!]

Anyway. I do love decorating. It's different from crafting, but sometimes the lines can get blurry. On Sunday, it suddenly occurred to me that I should create some new artwork for the house. After a bit of trial and error, I decided to cut (okay, get Matt to cut) a big square off of this old piece of wood we pulled off the china cabinet we're renovating. Then I snipped off a couple of random branches of leaves from some trees weeds in the back woods. Then I grabbed this random can of spray paint one of my co-workers gave me Friday as she cleaned out her office ("hey, do you want this spray paint?" "umm....suuure...???"). About fifty thousand thumbtacks later (because EVERY SINGLE LEAF had to be tacked down in multiple places or else it would fly up and get spray paint underneath it), I had my masterpiece:

It's random and really imperfect (we'll call it "rustic"), but I like it! The wood grain shows through the paint and the edges are all really rough (since the only saw we had was a hand saw) but I actually think it looks pretty cool...and best of all, it was completely free. Of course, I have no way to actually hang it...I'll have to wait for another wave of craftiness to wash over me and help me devise a plan for that. But I can guarantee you the plan will involve dental floss and duct tape, my main home renovation Big Guns.

Anyway, on my lunch break today I found myself drooling over some of the crafty ideas on this webpage... most especially these absolutely FABULOUS pumpkins!

Which are practically to DIE for, if you ask me. And guess what-- that ribbony stuff isn't even RIBBON-- it's this completely magical TAPE that someone brilliant invented and I obviously need. I spent the rest of my lunch break drooling over all the varieties that the tape comes in and picturing how I'd use each one and rehearsing the speech I will give to Mattie wherein I convince him that $40 tape is actually a necessity worth budgeting for.

I'll let you know how that goes.

In the event it doesn't go so well, may I just take this opportunity to remind you all that my birthday is right around the corner? Just FYI.