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The Wall Phase

Monday, March 31st, 2008 by Alyice

Having lived in a rental all my life I couldn’t wait to “do what I wanted, when I wanted, and how I wanted” to my new home. I must admit that painting on the walls was a bit scary at first. “What if I messed up?” “What if it turned out ugly?” “What if I later changed my mind?” Luckily, I had a very supportive husband who answered all my what ifs with “Then you start over. You paint the walls with a primer and paint the walls again—until you get it right.”

Once I got started, however, there was no stopping me. It was literally exhilarating and freeing to paint on the walls. There was no one telling me that my walls could only be white. There was no one telling me that I couldn’t paint scenes or animals or designs on the walls. There was no one telling me that things had to be a certain way and that’s all there was to it. Nope, I had creative freedom and I took full advantage of it.

First, I gave each room its own distinct color of paint—no more plain, white walls for me! Then I went back to each room and added a little character by stenciling and painting designs on each and every wall. My son loved dinosaurs so I painted an entire mural using both freehand and stencils. My daughter was still very young so we simply added a beautiful angel border to the top of her wall. The family room was adorned with creeping vines. The formal living room had a sponge technique that used five different colors of paint. And my kitchen used glass stencil. My poor husband never knew what he was coming home to.

After completing both my son’s and my daughter’s rooms, I got a surprise request from my kids. “Can we paint the walls, too?” they asked. I wasn’t keen on the idea of having them paint the main rooms but I also couldn’t deprive them of painting their own masterpiece and christening our home, too. After all, my creativity, as far as home décor went, had been stifled all my life and I wasn’t about to do the same to my kids. I knew whatever they created would be something special but wouldn’t necessarily go with the rest of the home furnishings so I prepped the fourth bedroom and turned it into a playroom. I told the kids to get down to their undies and handed them their very own paintbrushes and paint. Once they were done, I went back over the wall with a sponge technique to unify their work of art with the color found on the solid walls.

It was the talk of their school for years! And something they were quite proud of. In fact, they showed off their mural to anyone who walked in the door—even the cement guy!

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The Craft Phase

Thursday, March 27th, 2008 by Alyice

I must admit that the craft phase was probably the most enjoyable artistic endeavor. I wasn’t creating to escape my life, to run away from emotional baggage, or to “find myself”. There weren’t life altering decisions being made and the time we spent crafting wasn’t reflective of my life: past or present. No, our craft time was simply a fun way to bond with my kids.

It seemed that through our crafting projects we grew closer. We talked obsessively about any and everything. We laughed a lot more than usual. We got excited over the simplest of things. And we learned very valuable lessons about “not touching” hot glue guns!

There was even a year when we’d go out to restaurants just to eat muscles and clams. You see every year we made Christmas ornaments and that year we decided to use shells as our main material. You should have seen the puzzled looks on our waiters’ faces. The kids, of course, couldn’t wait to tell them all about the Christmas ornaments they were going to make with them. We even had one waitress ask us to return with an ornament for her tree and one for the restaurant.

It’s been a few years now since my kids and I crafted together and I miss it tremendously. But they’re teenagers now and craft projects just don’t interest them—no matter how much I bribe them!

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The T-shirt Phase

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 by Alyice

After a few years, my aunt ventured out to try new things and one of the crafts she picked up was creating hand-painted t-shirts and sweatshirts. Of course she had a natural talent for painting that carried right over into her hand-painted clothing that would make anyone envious.

She took classes to perfect her drawing and painting skills, then would call me over for a week-end of trial and error. Now, when I say trial and error, I mean it. I was horrible! That knack for drawing I had as a young child was lost and I just couldn’t seem to find it again. And believe me I tried.

Luckily, my family and friends were encouraging. They not only asked me to make them shirts, but they wore them! Yes, they wore them! Now, if I were a small child, I could see proudly wearing something I created, but as an adult or teen with fashion sense…

My biggest fan was my mother. She was very encouraging. She’d ask for very specific things like her favorite character, Garfield, or my childhood favorite, Tinkerbell. She’d even ask for holiday-themed sweatshirts. My mom had always been disappointed that I put my art aside as a young child and would often ask me to start back up so when my aunt got me back into painting and my mom saw how much it relaxed me, she encouraged me to keep moving forward with it.

Truth be told, I am not even sure why I stopped creating as a child. I don’t know if someone ridiculed me or teased me to the point of walking away, if I simply lost interest, or if I was really “anal compulsive” back then and couldn’t handle the stress of not getting everything “right”. All I know is that I stopped and that when I picked up painting clothing, I had discovered how “anal compulsive” I really was!

With painting statuary, it was relaxing, invigorating, and fun. There was already a shape that could be transformed with just a little imagination and lots of patience. But painting clothing was entirely different. There was this blank canvas that required some real talent on my part and as much as I loved the time with my aunt, I found painting clothing to be very stressful. I was so preoccupied with trying to get everything right that I zapped the fun out of the entire process.

Eventually, I walked away from painting clothing, but picked it back up five years later when my first child was born. He was a messy eater and spit up a lot—as all babies do. His clothes were constantly getting stained and I couldn’t see throwing them out simply because of a “stain”. But I also couldn’t see him wearing them so I bought a child’s t-shirt board and began creating little pieces of art.

I still wasn’t great at it, but my kids loved mommies’ new creations and eventually asked to get in on the act. Through painting with my children I learned to “just have fun” with the process and to appreciate the thought behind each piece. It was more important that we build memories than it was for me to “get it right”. After all, I wasn’t doing it for money—it was simply something fun to do with the kids and for the kids.

We had so much fun creating gifts for the grandparents; especially when it came to memorializing their little handprints. We continued painting clothing on an “on again, off again” basis for the next few years, but eventually moved on to other crafts.

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