March is National Craft month and I would encourage everyone to get some friends together, males and females, young and old, and make some shit DIY-style.
As of late, I’d been feeling pretty craft-deficient. I’d purchase a copy of the slickest new ReadyMade mag from my local Borders and feel…well, less than. One of the newer issues actually gave detailed directions on how to make a wood branch table with a glass top which cost $300. An older one gave directions for a rotating sunhouse designed by Todd Oldham. Are you kidding?
That was until I met some other people just like me – creativity hoarders. You likely know the type. These are the people who hoard crafts and never use them because of time or not enough money to get ALL the bells and whistles from some project they cut out of Martha Stewart’s LIVING but when you go to their homes, you are constantly tripping over blank canvases and finding beads in your socks after you leave. Yeah, them. So anyhoo, I’ve met a few of these ladies and we now have what my “best friend” Laura and I refer to as the “Best Friends Club”. It’s funny because we are each about 15 years too late to refer to people as our “best friends” and because we are embarrassingly enthusiastic about everything craft. (Julie and I squealed at this).
I just thought I’d let you know there are other gals (and guys, of course) out there, dying to be invited to your house to glue and cut and fold on your kitchen table but who are not quite ready for their own gallery exhibits.
If you need an idea, have a F*&% Hallmark party and encourage everyone to make their own cards. Make it a theme party. For instance, we all hauled over to my boss’s house a month or so before the Winter Holidays (how was that for p.c.?) to create cards and learn to use ribbon and brads TOGETHER. Believe me, it’s a lot less scarier with some other people around. I am totally afraid of eyelets but Laura and Julie have given me the courage to move through that fear to a higher form of craft. It’s a beautiful thing.
If you’d like some ideas for crafts you can actually make, look at these pictures of cards I made at my own craft party last week or check out Craft magazine. It is full of things you can actually make and with a couple friends, you can catapult through your creative fear and make things you can be proud to share. If all else fails, at least you’re not eating alone on a Friday night and you know your parents will always accept things for the fridge gallery.
-Jessa B.