Tuesday, June 25, 2013

The Creativity Can for Kids

Recently we were shopping at our great local toy store, the Toy Maven in Dallas, Texas when we found out that the Creativity Can people were coming to town. The product designer and a couple of others from Faber Castell were hosting a demo day at the store. You could get a Creativity Can for free, so we did. It contained a bunch of random but good stuff: feathers, google eyes, colored craft sticks, whatnot, doo-dads, etc.
It turns out that they are on a campaign to get kids creating all across the country. Of course, all of their "Creativity for Kids" products encourage that. But the cans in particular are intended to raise awareness of the need for arts education in underfunded public schools. You can get your coupon for a free kit here:
http://blog.creativityforkids.com/
With the creations, which included using the can itself!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Crafting as a form of procrastination

I do lots of crafty projects without much fear. I will try just about any craft, and sometimes it may not work out - or I may start something but never complete it. This week, I became obsessed with piecing my first quilt. Rather than follow a pattern, like a sane person would, I decided to design my own first quilt using a Moda Jelly Roll featuring bright fabrics by V and Co. The colors look great when arranged in a roughly rainbow order. I'm thinking of an inky indigo blue for the background.


Moda Jelly Roll - Simply Color by V and Co.











Here's the general plan
  1. Sew each of the 44" wide by 2.5" tall strips together along the 44" edge in rainbow order. 
  2. Figure out how much indigo background fabric I will need to make the quilt twin size.
  3. Sew that to the rainbow strip, then become confused or lose interest when faced with adding the back side and batting!
Through with the green stripes.











At the moment, all of this craftiness is certainly related to procrastinating from my masters degree program capstone which I'm working on this quarter at University of Denver University College. The closer I get to a project deadline, the more I want to sew this rainbow! Or embellish my new 2013-14 calendar with unnecessary scrapbook supplies. Or go back to one of the many partial knitting projects next to the couch. 

What kinds of crafty procrastination have you done? Do you find you are more creative when procrastinating from some other "important" task?


The first section - pink and orange.