Artsy, Craftsy Fun...Who Me?!

Woohoo! This non-artsy, craftsy mom has spent the last day and a half doing projects with/ for my daughter and her class and I’ve loved it! Yesterday and today we were working on t-shirts painted with a seascape in her classroom. The Room Mom and I painted the stampers the kids chose, then they placed them where they wanted on their shirts. After the kids part was done, us moms worked our artistic “magic”(and for those that know me, you know I have virtually none!) with puffy paint and glitter paint. We bedazzled those beautiful t-shirts and gave them a little more personality to match their owners. We were so proud, and the kids love them! Unfortunately I did not take pictures, so I’ll have to get some when the kids wear them on the last day of school and show off my artistic ability.

Last night was a creative craft night as well, as Bella and I were coming up with a gift idea (yes, I’m totally a procrastinator too!) for one of her teachers whom she would see for the last time this year today. I was telling her she needed to hand write a nice thank you note, and she wanted to buy school supplies to help her teacher out. We put our ideas together and decided to write a big note on a poster board thanking the teacher and telling her how wonderful she is…with school supplies! We wrote things like “Coming to your class is the highlight of my week” and inserted highlighters in place of the word. And we came up with “you’re a cut above the rest” and inserted scissors. I have to say Bella was so creative with the poster and made it totally hers. My perfectionist self wanted to do it all for her, of course, and make it neat and perfect (not that I could); but I resisted and just let it be hers. And an amazing thing happened. It was imperfectly perfect, Bella was thrilled with the outcome, and her teacher loved it and her creativity!

I am so proud of myself for relaxing and enjoying these projects with Bella and her friends, for being able to accept the imperfectness of each, and for appreciating the beauteous work of art that each one is. I make no promises for future projects, but for this time it felt good to see the big picture and recognize that part of the joy and beauty of the project is the excitement of the doing. I realized that I was much more concerned about the perfect placement of the little fish on the t-shirts than the first graders were. And I wanted Bella’s poster card to have beautiful straight hand-writing, but her teacher appreciated that it was her own. I have a long way to go before I can be considered an artsy craftsy mom, and an even longer way before the perfectionism lets go, but I’m taking baby steps, and I’m good with that.

Artsy, Craftsy Fun...Who Me?!