This one's for you Grandma!

This morning I am working from my home office. This means that you can find my sitting up in the most comfortable bed in the world. The bed is queen sized with sheer white drapes sewn onto the framework around me. Think of it as a private cubical. Propped up on my knees is my Mac ready to help me with any task that might arise and also to distract me at a seconds notice. “Oh, I want to look up images of snowglobes!” Organized around me in a semi circle to my left is my sketchbook and pencil to capture ideas before they escape me, my current reading selection “The Art of Choosing.,” and my work notebook and pen to trick the clients into thinking I am sitting right there at my desk working diligently.

In fact, I do consider myself to be working, working and dreaming and creating all the new projects that I want to try. You see, sometimes I get in wildly creative moods. They will keep me up all night focusing on a project that sometimes even makes it to completion. Growing up when these moods coincided with school projects, I was amazingly successful. I did some of my best work. Now I want to grasp as much of this mood as possible and squeeze it until I can wring out all of the projects that I can. I do not want to waste time doing work paperwork.

I’ve crafted since I was a tiny kid. Weekends were sometimes spent at my grandmother’s house in Lower Burrell where she would undoubtedly have a dozen projects for us to do. She would collect bits and pieces as supplies and know where everything was in an instant. Do you need a something to put glue in? She’d have an empty lipton tea mix container right on the 5^th shelf up in the craft room. It was a magical place and I loved being there in the stuffy second floor room that smelled of oil paint. I still remember a lot of the projects that we did and I’m keeping them safely stored in my mind for when I can craft with my kid. (Note: I should document them just incase I die.)

When my grandmother passed away she had collected a lot of things and when it came to the craft room, my parents turned to me. I wanted to take it all! And I did manage to save quite a bit. Last night in fact, I opened up a brand “new” package of paint brushes from Ames, a store that closed 10 years ago. My grandmother is still managing to give me presents. I share those presents as well. During my 3 years as a design teacher at a high school, grandma’s supplies took us all through various projects and I tried to instill in my students a sense that everything could be used again. We threw away nothing in my class.

I think about her a lot when one of these creative explosions lands on my doorstep. I’m a lot like her in many ways and I often wish I’d gotten to know her better. I will craft in her honor as long as I can.