Hi Everyone
As I’m writing this post, I’ve just gotten back from spending some awesome time with my sister and her family. Yesterday (26 October) my nephew turned 5 and today was a great time to catch up with my nephew, my sister and her family and celebrate 5 years of my nephew being with us!
One of the really cool things with spending time with my nephew, is that he’s really into art and being crafty! At the moment he’s really into water colour painting and drawing and experimenting with colours. This area of art isn’t my strong point, so I found it really fun to experiment with my nephew and have fun working with kid logic. For example, we had fun figuring out what would happen if we mixed a dark blue with bright yellow and how much of each colour we used to make the final colour. We also found that the paint brush would be very thirsty for some colours and not so much for other colours.
As I’m reflecting on today, many things are coming to mind. I’m remember what it was like to have that kid wonder of ‘what if’ and not worrying about the result, because we don’t know what it will be and therefore we have no expectations. When I was in late primary school, we had the friendship bracelets.
It became so much of a craze that I remember making a number of them and selling them at school for about $0.50c (50 cents) to about $1 to $2 depending on the complexity of the design. I remember spending many nights in front of the t.v. with one end of the bracelet pinned to my pant leg or the bean bag and I’d be madly tying the knots in preparation for the next day. Below are a couple of the bracelets I’ve held onto. They’re quite simple in comparison with some of the others I’ve made and sold.
It’s also important to note that with the selling of these bracelets, I had a limited market because I went to a small country school. When I graduated, there were a total of 74 students in the entire school and 8 people in my year. So my market was pretty small and there was someone else making the bracelets as well. Mine were better though!
In high school I was very much into writing and wanted to do something with that. I did a fair bit of cooking and craft classes to get my creative fix and did a bit of cross stitch at home. It was also at high school that I was introduced to quilting and photography. It was pretty cool developing the film in photography and learning how the whole process worked. I also knew early on that with photography, that if I had to do portraiture and tell people how to pose in photos, that I didn’t want to take it any further. I really don’t like telling people what to do and how to look to get a particular result. There’s also the pressure of getting the picture taken in a quick and short period of time and to that’s too much pressure.
I digress! I can’t help but wonder what things my nephew will be interested in and how everyone in his life can help to influence him in a positive way. I’m curious about whether he’ll stick with painting or progress onto other forms like pastels, charcoal and pencils. Or move onto mediums like pottery, origami, woodwork, metalwork and photography.
The really cool thing has been seeing that the creative flair remaining strong in my immediate and extended family. My grandparents on both sides of my family were creative with their photography, knitting, painting, gardening and music. I remember my grand father on Dad’s side, bringing out the piano accordion or mandolin on Christmas Eve and would play us some tunes. Sometimes he would sing as well. There was a few times there where he had tried to teach some of my cousins and I how to play the mandolin . My fingers were too small at the time and they haven’t grown much since!
Many of my aunts are creative with their painting and gardening and one of my uncles has taught himself to play the guitar. One of my cousins is/has been in a number of different bands and has performed on stage with his band. Another cousin of mine is creative with her hairdressing and make-up artistry. Meanwhile, my sister and her fiance are creative in their own rights with their talents in music (drums and possibly guitar), pottery, drawing and photography.
So my nephew has no escape from this strong creative flair and I can’t wait to see what comes of it!
The XStitching Runner 