The Craftiest Workshop

I have spent much of the last ten days, processing berries and berry juice from my freezer. I made some jam and added sugar to the juice to make drinkable juice. Chris and I have started a 30 day beginner yoga challenge which we tend to do just before lunch. I also get out every day to refill the bird feeders and feed my chickadee friends by hand. The other thing that has kept me busy is my daily art project from my February creativity calendar.

When I worked my way through my January self care calendar, I recapped that month in one blog post. For my February creative calendar I thought I would update weekly what I had made. This will help keep me honest and I think that my sharing may inspire someone else to pick up a pencil, crayon or brush.

After posting my creative calendar for February I went and wrote down all the objects in a notebook. I rolled the dice to see what I would be using to create each. I didn’t allow myself to use the same medium twice. It got to the point that, if I rolled a duplicate number, I just picked the closest thing that had not yet been rolled.

Day one was boots and I had rolled charcoal. I went outside to get a piece of charcoal from our firepit and noticed how sticky the snow was that day. I spontaneously decided to make a boot out of snow instead. It ended up being a bit larger than my big Sorrel snow boots.

Day two was mittens and I rolled red pen. It was quite easy to decide to draw patterned mittens with a Nordic vibe.

Day three was shovel and I rolled buttons. I have a plastic case with buttons sectioned out by colour. I placed buttons on a piece of black card stock. My “shovel” looks more like a guitar…oh well.

Day four was toque and I rolled pencil crayons. I forgot how relaxing colouring a simple picture can be.

Day five was igloo and I rolled wheat/canola. I decided to just use canola seeds. I drew out an igloo and covered all the lines with glue. I placed my paper in a plastic contained and poured 1/4 cup of canola seeds over the paper. This was the result. Seeing the seeds form the shape of the igloo blocks was oddly satisfying.

Day six was fox and I rolled crepe(tissue) paper. I have done many crafts with kids using squares of tissue paper. I used smaller pieces, rolled and glued them. I love how the crinkled tissue resembles fur. Looking for different pieces of tissue in my gift wrapping supplies prompted me to sort and reorganize that tote.

Day seven was skates and I rolled felt. I have felt pieces, sorted by colour, in a tote in my craft room. I made this red skate and then added a ribbon so it might end up as a Christmas ornament down the road.

All in all, week one went really well. I was excited to sit down and create, usually spending about an hour or so working on each project. I have thought of a few other mediums that I may explore as alternatives. Hopefully I can motivate myself to stick with this for the whole month.