Fixing a loved Item

Once there was a Snowman

 

  

BEFORE

AFTER

The snowman that hangs on our boys’ bedroom door is well loved.  It gets played with during the day and hangs on their door knob at night. After months of time and attention from our youngest boy it was starting to come apart.  Our youngest was so attached to it that I could not convince him to let me fix it for him at first.  Finally after a month I convinced him to let me fix it.

When I sat down to fix it, I saw that it was hot glued together initially.  This put the whole things together for me; cause and effect of the snowman falling apart.

“No wonder, hot glue is not strong enough for him.”

So I set to picking the hot glue off.   Then I sewed it back together.  I didn’t even know my youngest was paying attention to me fixing it.  He was playing in the room.  However, he was not standing by me watching like he has at other times when I have fixed things for him.  I was so wrong.  As soon as I started to take a picture of it when it was finished he snatched it right off my desk and ran upstairs to put it back on his door. 

I had to laugh.

Materials

Thread- left over from another project          0.00

Total Cost

                                                  0.00

Rag Rug Repair

Rag Rug Repair

 

If I were to pick one item to symbolize doing the best you can with what you have to make something beautiful, it would be a rag rug. 

Visually they are beautiful. If it is a circular shaped rug it naturally moves your eyes.  And if the construction does not move your eye, the change in colors, the variety, naturally keeps the eyes interested longer than an item like a rug normally does.  To illustrate this point, think of when you look at a rug hanging in a store.  Or even when the rug is rolled up with a picture of what the rug looks like attached to the outside of the rug.  How long do you think you look at each design before you move on to look at the next design in the stack? 

I had an art professor once who said you had five seconds to engage the viewer.  A rag rug almost demands you spend longer than the average of five second because there is too much visual information to be processed in that amount of time.  A rag rug is not a repeated pattern that the viewer can subconsciously say to themselves, “Oh, ok, I can see the pattern, next.”

Economically, they are wonderful as well.  A person takes materials; t-shirts, jeans, old kitchen towel, or even holey socks and makes something useful.  Regardless of the material that is chosen, the materials are not purchased for the project, they are what’s lying around that a person can’t use for anything else.  Rags are at times considered the dregs of materials. The Only cost comes in thread or yarn and the time spent to create it.  I won’t bother listing all the places people use rugs to make their lives more comfortable or sometimes even safer; like a bath rug.

Some people have lists of places they want to go before they die or things they want to do.  On my list is to make my own rag rug. 

This rag rug I did not make.  I was blessed enough to be given it by a friend who didn’t want hers around anymore.  It needed a few repairs; I spent just over an hour to repair the parts where it was coming apart.  Threw repairing it, I now think I will have a better idea how to construct one from scratch.  For now though, I will have to be content with repairing oneJ.  Some day however, I will make one.

Materials

 scraps yarn- left over from another project                             o.oo

Total Cost

                                                                                  0.00

Strawberries Apron

Strawberries Apron

                                       

Strawberry blonde was the color of my oldest sisters’ hair when she was younger. Her hair is now more of a sandy blonde color.  She happens to also like objects with strawberries on them or shaped like strawberries.  So when I found a strawberry print fitted sheet at the thrift store about a year ago I immediately thought of that sister.  I also thought I could use it for part of an apron I had imagined making for her as a birthday present. 

When the time came for her birthday I talked myself out of making her the apron I had planned for her.  My reasoning was she already had aprons and it would probably be lame for her to get another apron.  About a week after her birthday had passed I still had not thought of something else to make for her. I felt defeated. So in frustration I asked for her help in knowing what to make for her.  She laughed and said she would go through my Pinterest board called Old Timers Habits. 

I use my Old Timers Habits board differently from my other boards.  For example, I use a ruffle from one pin, or a cut from another, or a material I like from one pin that I want to use in a way not demonstrated in the picture.  This creates something new that has be informed by others works but is not a duplicate of others works. In contrast with my mother boards which I often use as the other person has posted it for use.

Prior to her saying she would go through my Old Timers Habits board.  I had never consider using it as way to have someone pick out what they would like from ideas I have already been collecting.  A good amount of my pins are base parts for birthday present ideas for different family members.  It was nice to know that whatever she picked it would be something she liked.

Then enters my kind of humor to the situation.  She picked out an apron. Not just any apron( I have a lot of aprons pinned), but a series of aprons that I had originally picked out for her, with a piece I liked here and a piece I liked there for the apron I had originally wanted to make for her.  I had to laugh.

Materials:

Strawberry print material- thrift store fitted sheet           1.50

Green cotton material- left over from another project       0.00

Pink Striped material-thrift store flat sheet                      2.50

Flower buttons- left over from a family members' project  0.00

Thread- left over from other projects                                0.00

Total Cost

                                                                                        4.00

Overhead Projector Meets Death of a Salesman

Overhead Projector

Meets

Death of a Salesman

Black berets and black clothing have been iconically associated with artists for as long as I have been alive.  An association which I never understood as a child, I would think with bemusement, “Why would anybody into art want to wear anything sooo boooring as all black clothes?”  The beret, however, I thought was sooo cool. Not because it was associated with art and artists.  I liked berets because par t of my ancestry is French and Scottish.  Now as an adult I can see the practicality behind wearing all black when you are on a stage crew for a play; which may be part of where the association came from initially.  

As an adult I have had the opportunity to help one of my friends paint sets for the plays she helps produce.  Her Husband is an English teacher and Drama teacher at a high school.  It has been an instructive learning experience for me.  For Example, I was taught to never use black in art as it makes your work look flat.  However, using black as outlines in sets is often done.  I felt like I was removing a dead mouse from a mouse trap the first time I used black paint on a set( quite snobby of me, but that was truly my internal reaction).  Despite my initial reaction, I could quickly see wisdom in her color choices being bold rather than subtle.  When for the first time we checked the backgrounds from the back of the gym I could see she was right.  What I had seen as glaring and slightly jarring, was soft, subtle, and completely necessary from a distance. The way I would have done it would have looked great up close but would been completely ineffective for informing the audience and the actors.

One of the others problems I have noticed in helping with sets are keeping things in proportion, perspective and those stubborn vanishing lines.  The scale of the set is so large, I can’t even use an eight foot long two by four held up by my friend and I across the set, it’s not long enough. Even if we could get something long enough there is no way to know if we are holding it up straight, that I know of.  I even tried a level once and found out the floor was slopped. 

This time my friend is helping her husband produce Death of a Salesman.  She asked for help with the sets. However, I can’t afford the gas to drive out to the school as it is quite a distance.  I also don’t have the hours to spend since I am helping my husband by creating art work for his web site design class.  However, I understand her difficulty with the sets and wanted to help.

She has found a student at the school who is an artist to help with the sets.   However, this student is not comfortable with creating buildings and on such a scale I can understand why.  So an idea popped in my head to have her use an “old school” overhead projector.  The kind I remember my math teachers in high school using for problem demonstrations.  So I drew up the design she wanted on a piece of paper, and then laminated two sheets of lamination paper with nothing in them. Then I drew the design on the lamentation sheets with permanent marker.  My hope is that she will now be able to project the scene onto the set and just trace the lines with a lot less head ache.  

Harry Potter Helper

Harry Potter Helper

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 April 18, 2014

   

                                    

                              April 16, 2014

          

             

                      Source Material-Friend                       Source Material-Harry Potter

                                                                                 (for Background information)

                                                      

My oldest two children have birthdays in January. Three months before their birthdays, my oldest son said he wanted a Harry Potter Birthday party. So I started researching on-line.  In December my oldest Daughter started talking about combining her birthday party with her brothers.  I don’t normally combine birthdays, so that each child can be an individual in what they want for their party.  However, they had both said they wanted to combine their parties with the same theme.  Since they were both so sure about combining their parties I allowed it.  I had already spent a good amount of my free time researching food, decoration and invitation ideas. I had also started making decorations, and slowly buying the food items necessary when they were on sale with a coupon.

I felt very confident in my preparations for their party.  Then the morning of the party it occurred to me that I had neglected a big part of parties for that age group, games and activities.  We also had our sons’ baptism that same morning. I am sure I was looking frazzled despite my happiness at my son choosing to be baptized.  A friend of the family who was attending the baptism asked

“Are you ok?”

I responded by explaining what I had left to do with the decorations and food.  Also my mistake in not preparing games. 

She asked” Would you like some help?”

I said” That would be great!”

What I did not know is that my friend was a HUGE Harry Potter fan.  She had not only read the books, but had also gone after high school to tour the Harry Potter sites as a vacation.

I have always thought this particular friend is really fun.  She is one of those people who make you feel lighter from being around her.  She really helped me out of the bind I was in with the games and finishing everything else. My husband finished the last of the cleaning so I could finish the decorations and food.  My friend was able to, on the spot come up with classes for the kids to go through, using the food and decorations I already had made. 

The games went as follows; the kids got their Ollivanders wands, the sorting hat sorted the kids into Houses, Care of Magical Creatures where they had to take care of Flobber worms, Herbology where they re-potted Mandrakes, Charms where they put wings on keys which they pretended to make fly, Defense Against the Dark Art where my husband pretended to be a Boggart who would come out of the closest wearing funny costumes when the kids used their Riddikulus spell, and lastly they visited Honeydukes Sweet Shop.

My children and all the kids’ friends seemed to have a good time; so did I with all the laughing and giggling the kids did during the party.

Afterwards my friend stayed to help clean up. Trust me there was a mess  I feel so thankful for her putting herself out there to help me with the party.  I am not a spontaneous person that is not one of my talents.  It is one of her talents.

After she left, I was trying to think of a good way to thank her for all the help she gave me.  After tossing around a few ideas with my husband I settled on doing a drawing of her in the Gryffindor common room reading a book.   Thankfully, her husband has agreed to help by getting a picture of her reading a book so I could use it as a reference for the drawing.  Now that I am done with the drawing I did for my husband, I am now starting the drawing for my friend.  

Here it goes . . . 

Fixing a Broken Armiore door

                     Bang! Went the Cabinet Door
                       
                  Before
                    
                   After

Bang! Thump, thump, thump and dull thud …..five seconds later, crying.  I squeeze my eyes closed.  I pull off my rubber gloves and set them down on the counter by the sink.  I can tell by the cry, no one is seriously hurt.  I pick our youngest up from the floor and hold him while he cries.  While I am holding him, I am feeling around on his head for lumps, checking for cuts or breaks.  Thankfully I discover that the only thing that hurts is his bottom.  My other children then describe for me what happened. Our youngest used the cabinet as a climbing wall then decided to swing from the cabinet door like Spiderman.  It didn’t work out for our youngest or the cabinet door.  I start to look around at the rubble on the floor, then at the cabinet that was used as a tall building.  Most of the cabinet door was lying scattered across the floor in chunks.

I start thinking,

“Well, I might be able to glue it back together again. But it sure can’t take another attempt from little Peter Parker again. Well, what have I got to lose by giving it a try.”

I start gathering pieces of the cabinet door.  Over a period of about two weeks I put the door back together. It is not the same as it was before but it is better than a missing cabinet door. I am sure I would feel more confident of the repairs if I had used wood glue instead of Up & Up glue. However, my Great Grandmother Winnie Mac Daniel used to say “Use it up, wear it out, do with, or do without.”