I am not a crafty person. I don’t mean the kind of sneak-crafty but I rather Pinterest crafty. Unless God Himself comes down from heaven and suddenly blesses me to paint neatly and draw straight lines, you will never see any of my “work” on Pinterest (or any other cute-crafting site for that matter.)
For some of you who know me well, you might dispute the claim above. But let me clarify– while I am not crafty– I am creative. I do believe there is a big difference. In my case, I can use limited resources to reach a goal in a unique way… but that doesn’t involve crafting a super cute wreath that anyone would ever want to hang on their front door.
I do like attempting to craft– at least in a creative kind of way. It can be a stress reliever and really gets me pumped up about life. But I have to have a goal, usually involving other people. Let me give you an example.
My creative side got motivated on Monday afternoon. (Mainly because I want to procrastinate on anything that required writing and/or dish-doing.) I had been thinking about doing something for the girls in our Foxtrot company (I am Family Readiness Group leader) for several months. Apparently, Monday was the day.
So I got to work. As FRG leader, I pretty muchly have zippo for a budget, so my goal was to make something close to free-ish. I rummaged through my box of random, leftover craft supplies. Talk about a box of craziness. Ribbon, acrylic paint, puff paint, super glue, fake googly eyes, felt, toy army soldiers, scraps of material, pipe cleaners… You name it.
It took a little while to figure out how I was going to make them all a legitimate copy of the Drill Sergeant Spouse’s creed for little to no moolah. (Plus it was late in the afternoon and I wanted to avoid the store if at all possible.)
I found cream colored and silver shiny cardstock leftover from our wedding invites. I was out of black printer ink (naturally) so printed in blue. But I wanted this little project to look “army-ish” and last I checked, “cream” wasn’t exactly an army color. I dug around in my paint… Had green acrylic paint… Only brown puff paint…. but no black. Sigh.
Fortunately I remembered my elementary art days that black paint comes from mixing random colors together… So I grabbed the brown, green, red, blue and yellow in hopes of creatively achieving my mission.
I wanted to give the background paper a camo look. Sponge painting. But we didn’t have a sponge. (Seriously– this is how my “craft” projects usually go.) I dug around under the sink and found a green SOS pad. I chopped off an end, went to work mixing and dipping paint.
Then… I didn’t have glue. (Super prepared, can’t you tell?) I had used all of my rubber cement on the last crazy project but failed to replenish my supply. I made a frantic phone call to a neighbor asking about the glue situation. She was confused, but said yes, she could solve my adhesive issue. (Whatever happened to just borrowing a cup of sugar?)
Long story still long, I was able to create this makeshift masterpiece, thanks to the laminating efforts of my husband and his buddy. (Apparently army guys are experts at hand laminating stuff… They got really excited about helping me finish this project until my husband’s friend stopped mid-lamination and mumbled something about doing arts and crafts. I sweetly reminded him that they were drinking beer as they laminated, so it was still very manly. Problem solved.)
The final project wasn’t perfect. But they were made for my Foxtrot girls with love… It made me think about how God made us– we aren’t perfect but we are made with love. I am so thankful that God made me creatively crafty.
Thankful for Miscellaneous craft boxes,
SGK
“Live creatively, friends…” -Galatians 6:1 (MSG)
PS: Have you done anything super creative or crafty with limited resources lately? Share it! Maybe it will be my next “project.”
