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Dear Martha,
Well, you’ve done it to me again. I’ve been ‘martha’d’ for the umpteenth time.
Your November issue found its way to my mailbox. I flipped through it when I had a few moments of quiet. Not expecting to be sucked in by another one of your infamous ‘crafts’.
But, there it was. On page 152.
Glitter painting.
Cruel, cynical person that I am, my first instinct was to LAUGH at the proposed glitter pet portraits. Currently petless, I imagined emailing my mom and asking her for a picture of her cat. And then turning the picture into glitter art. Which I’d mail to her as a (gag) gift.
Would she display it? Hide it? Why would anyone want a glitter painting of their pet? Even if mounted on foam core with a lovely grosgrain ribbon border in a complementary color.
BUT. And there’s always a but. Then I flipped to page 156. And saw the cards. Maybe not a pet portrait. But perhaps a shadow box with a glitter photograph of my home? (Except it’s not really MY home). Or maybe a Christmas card with a glittery nature scene?
And, within the hour, I was at Michael’s, chomping at the bit to pick up the lengthy list of suggested supplies. Except your ‘fine glitter in assorted colors’ kit costs $40. I could only imagine the height of the professor’s eyebrows if I told him I’d spent $40…on glitter. For the purpose of making glitter cards. The word preposterous came to mind.
Savvy shopper that I am, I decided to use a 50% off coupon that I had. Though it meant waiting three days – until the 25th. All weekend long I thought of the ‘fine glitter’ kit I was going to buy. For half off. Patting myself on the back for my awesome frugality.
I daydreamed about making all of my Christmas cards by hand. Maybe opening my own glitter card business. Not really.
At 4.45pm, I arrived at Michael’s, with my coupon in hand. Do you know what happened, Martha?
Apparently all the the other magazine subscribers in Calgary got the same issue and ran to Michael’s to get their ‘fine glitter in assorted colors’ kit. There was not a single one left.On Thursday there’d been five or six. On Sunday, none.
Also, there was a 25% off sale. So, even if there had been a kit on the shelf, I couldn’t have used my coupon – it’s only valid for ‘regular priced’ items. No double dipping in the discounts at Michael’s.
So I did what any reasonably minded individual would do. I bought four containers of glitter. Spending more than I would have for the whole (discounted) kit. I haven’t mentioned that fact to the professor, yet.
I bided my time until my two year old was safely ensconced in his crib. I sat at the table with my five year old, envisioning the awesomeness that was about to occur.
Except it wasn’t awesome. It was annoying. Glitter is perhaps the most invasive of craft materials. It cannot be confined, no matter how careful the crafter tries to be. Unless of course you have a hermetically sealed craft room. Which, you probably do.
But I don’t. I have a dinner table. In the middle of my house. And ‘fine’ glitter is even more invasive than regular (cheap) glitter. Within about five minutes, the rugs in my hallway resembled a glistening sandy beach at twilight. My eight week old baby had glitter in his eyebrows. Which, admittedly, only enhanced the brightness of his eyes. But still. The professor and I looked like shinier, less dewy versions of Britney Spears. (Before she had kids and married Kevin Federline and shaved her head).
Even the two year old, who wasn’t present at the festivities, ended up with glitter on his upper lip.
The cards we made…..were fine, I guess. Of course, once they’re mailed to their intended recipients, all the glitter will end up in the envelope anyway. I’m just guessing.
So here’s a suggestion for you. I know these are tough economic times. And magazines are shutting down faster than you can say ‘Domino, Wondertime, Gourmet and Cookie’. And adding to your staff is probably not in the budget right now.
But, because I think it would be such a valuable addition to your magazine, I’ll offer my services for free. At least initially. My ‘why your proposed good thing is….a bad thing’ services.
As you’re sitting around your weekly planning meetings, sharing ideas for crafts in future issues, I could conference in via Skype and be the naysayer, the devil’s advocate, the voice of reason. You’d say ‘glitter’ I’d say ‘impossibly horrendous clean-up’. You’d say ’superglue sculptures’ I’d say ‘costly emergency room bills’.
Trust me, it would be a good thing.
Last Saturday night, as I was standing in the kitchen blowing my brains out, all I could think was: Martha did it to me again.
It had recently dawned on me that the Easter holiday was approaching. Maybe it was random talk of Lenten sacrifices, or the grocery store aisles filled with candy, plastic grass and cheap straw baskets that tipped me off.
Easter, this year, is a bigger deal to me than in years past. Because, this year, the holiday is all ‘on me’. Not being a big holiday person, I’ve been content to let the grandparents call the Easter shots the past three years. They’ve made the ham, organized egg-hunting excursions, and produced boiled eggs and bowls of colored vinegar water.
But now that we’re in the frozen tundra, we’re grandparent-less. Which means, this year, unless I come through with a new sweater, or a little basket or some hidden eggs…or something, my kids will get nada come Easter morn.
So I made a mental note to remember to put together some Easter baskets for the boys. Which, of course, involved having to ascertain the exact date of Easter, since I can’t be counted upon to shower on a daily basis, much less know the dates of holidays.
But part of me thought that wouldn’t be enough. There needed to be…more. It needed to be the best Easter. Ever.
And of course, Martha Stewart was more than happy to offer a few suggestions to that end.
The April issue of Martha Stewart Living arrived two weeks ago. And, once again, the cover featured some lovely looking craft that I knew would be the death of me: dyed egg ornaments.
I read through the instructions on how to blow out eggs, aka, make tiny holes on the top and bottom and force out the contents of the egg. I bought five dozen eggs at Costco, we gathered supplies and began our egg-blowing adventures after dinner.
Egg number 1, cracked in my hand while I was diligently trying to make a tiny hole in its top. Egg number 2, was retrieved from its carton by our resident Hen and accidentally smashed on the table. Before anyone could even try to make a hole in it.
Which is when the operation was moved to the kitchen. And why I spent my Saturday night blowing my brains out. Naturally Jason got roped in, as he knew he would. And he spent his Saturday night blowing his brains out too. Except, he made bigger holes than I did, and was approximately three times as fast at placing empty eggs back into the carton.
I’d envisioned a plethora of beautiful, colorful eggs. But after blowing out a few, we decided twenty was a nice, round number. We could always make some more.
Next year.
For some reason, whenever Christmas rolls around, I feel compelled to start making gifts for the people on my list. It seems like it’s the ‘meaningful’ thing to do. (To stress yourself out, and lash out at your family in anger and frustration, that is.) And every year, when the gifts are finally finished and wrapped, I vow ‘never again’.
I don’t even know how the ‘homemade gifts of 2008′ saga began. I learned about freezer paper stencils in a craft book; and walked past a display of Ugly Dolls at a bookstore……yada yada yada….I decided that all of my nephews and nieces should get an amorphous stuffed creature and a stencilled t-shirt from their aunt Nicola.
Right now, there are seven nephews and nieces on Jason’s side – including my two. And there are two more on the ‘docket’ for 2009, which made me think that – based on numbers alone – 2008 was the year to attempt handmade gifts for them all. Probably for the last time, since the kids are only getting older each year, and at some point, stencilled t-shirts and stuffed creatures – or homemade gifts of any kind – just won’t do.
After racking my brain for a suitable design, I decided to make stencils with a star, the individual’s name and the year. In my mind, I could just picture all the cherubs posing for a group photo wearing their adorable shirts made by their favourite aunt.
And then I started actually using an x-acto knife to stencil names onto the paper…
My cutting skills are pretty bad. I remember helping Jason make architecture models as an undergrad, and being completely unable to execute clean lines – instead producing jagged, slanted windows and walls. Luckily this usually happened at 4am on the day of a presentation, which means he was too pressed for time to harp on my incompetence.
I started with my own children’s shirts, figuring it was okay if theirs looked ‘kind of crappy’. The x-actoing was easy enough for letters like H, and N. Not so much for G, O, C, S and B. And of course all the names were at least five letters. Seriously – if only our wretched siblings had named their children Jim, Sam, Bob, or Ann, things might have been a bit easier. But ‘Isabelle’ and ‘Bennett’ and ‘Sophia’ nearly put me over the edge.
After hearing a few too many late night expletives, and after trying his own hand at ‘Isabelle’ (with atrocious results), Jason offered to put me out of my carving misery by laser-cutting the designs onto the freezer paper. Which saved the day – sort of.
I set to work one night, ironing the stencils on the shirts, having taken great care to put the right stencils with the right sized shirts; pairing the red paint with the boys’ stencils and the green with the girls’. But, apparently the stencils weren’t particularly sturdy as I realized once I’d peeled the paper off the dried shirts, the next day.
Four of the shirts looked bad. Really bad. There were lumpy stars and letters bleeding into each other. ‘Aiden’, ‘Sophia’, ‘Olivia’ and ‘Isabelle’ looked like they’d been painted by an infant. Even with my glasses off…from far away…..they looked bad.
I was mad. At myself; at the fragile stencils; at the Superstore who didn’t have any more white shirts in stock.
In the end I had to buy (different) white shirts from Wal-Mart for the oldest girls. And the price tag of my once affordable craft, quickly skyrocketed into ‘sort of pricey’ territory. As I wrapped up the shirts-and-creatures combinations, I vowed ‘never again.’ Which is what I said two years ago when I made everyone felted wool animals, despite not being able to sew a straight line on a machine….
On the first day of Christmas, my true loves gave to me…..a queasy feeling in my tummy.
It was nearing 8pm on the 30th of November. The advent season was upon us, and the advent calendar Jason and I had briefly talked about making, did not yet exist. Quelle surprise! as the French/Canadians would say.
I charged my better half with finding some ideas on the tinternet (as we call it). ‘I found something,’ he called out. ‘It’s basically a bunch of envelopes hung on a string.’ Without having seen the example, I was left to imagine a series of white business envelopes hung on a string. Intrigued, I started scheming….maybe I could make little pockets of felt instead and hang 25 of them on a string? I was just about to get out my sewing machine when he showed me the example he’d seen.
Oh, colored paper envelopes. Well THAT seemed MUCH simpler and less time consuming than sewing individual envelopes of felt. Bien Sur!
And yet, the little ‘fast’ and ‘easy’ project kept me busy until midnight. Nearly four hours. The envelope template offered was too small for my taste, so I had to manually enlarge it. Which yielded crooked little envelopes that wouldn’t shut all the way. I then had to trace 25 envelopes on various papers and cut them out using child scissors. Surprisingly time consuming – at least for this novice. And then having to individually number each envelope? Priceless.
So, basically, the intended consumers of said calendar are not allowed to touch it – so I can re-use it next year.
I couldn’t leave bad enough alone. My yucky wreath was taunting me every time I walked past it, so I (inspired by a little pep talk from the queen of beads – Ms Katie Hacker) decided to rip the thing apart and give it another shot.
Which, as ever, seemed a lot more straightforward than it actually was. Starting with simply removing the blood-tinged cream ribbon. I’m pretty sure it took me about two minutes to wrap the wreath and it took me about ten minutes to take it off said wreath. Then, I started taking off the wretched beads. Within about five minutes I’d gashed three fingers on my left hand. Substantially enough to still be wearing band-aids 24 hours later.
So I did what I always do when I face a craft crisis, aka an unfortunate collision of ‘idea’ and ’skill’. I summoned my husband.
Lucky for me, an episode of ‘the office’ (British version) was playing on the laptop where I was working. It hypnotized him into forgetting that I’d just handed over that silly wreath and begged him to de-bead it. He grabbed some pliars and began the arduous process, chuckling while Ricky Gervais did what he does best: act like an imbecile, cringe-inducing, manager.
‘I hate beads,’ Jason muttered halfway through. If he hadn’t been so busy looking at Ricky, he would have probably given me the evil eye. It is, after all, my fault that he hates beads of any kind.
Several Christmases ago – dare I say eleven (?!!) – Martha Stewart Living’s December issue hit the news stands. Actually, it hit the recycling bin at Ball State University, which is where I found it upon leaving work one day. In all of her holiday issues, Martha features a special craft that is beautiful and looks ‘very simple’ but is sure to make your blood boil and possibly ruin your marriage. In 1997, the ’special’ craft was a beaded ornament.
I took one look at it and had to make it. Despite utter lack of skill or proper tools.
I don’t recall the how’s or the why’s, but I ended up stringing a gazillion beads using a needle and sewing thread. Resulting in permanently damaged retinas, I’m sure. These tender strings of beads were then applied to styrofoam egg and circle shapes using tacky glue. Ta-da.
I vividly recall tacky glue on every possible surface – my fingers, my face, my hair, the wrong side of the beads; and beads that would fall off strings when the tenuously tied knots gave way; and more temper tantrums than one person should probably have in a lifetime. I also remember Jason staying up with me until 3am in my mom’s kitchen while I finished some of the wretched ornaments for co-workers and, the following year, in-laws.
Due to lack of tools and materials, we had to come up with an alternate way for making loops from which to hang the ornaments. My starchitect came up with a plan…which worked better on some than on others. Which means I still have half a dozen beaded ’shapes’ that won’t be hanging off a tree any time soon, unless I put them in a plastic bag and hang the bag on a branch.
Lesson number 1: don’t read Martha Stewart Living. Lesson number 2: buy ornaments from Target. Lesson number 3: don’t marry for love or money – marry for beads.
Of course I’m being a little facetious. I really do love these ornaments – even the ones that can’t actually hang on a tree. And if we hadn’t made them, we wouldn’t have been able to bore every person we met since 1997 by telling this story.
Again, and again.
I don’t know what distinguishes a ‘crafty’ person from a non-crafty person – other than the obvious ability to make a craft. Is it patience, vision, finger dexterity, a mysterious as yet undiscovered craft-gene? All I know is I am on the non-crafty side. Or, more accurately, the crafty-wannabe side. Rather than the bonafide crafty side. I’m not in possession of patience, vision, finger dexterity or any kind of crafty DNA.
This was apparent to me on Thursday. I arrived at a weekly gathering of women, only to be informed that we were going to make a craft. Ordinarily, the thought of making crafts in group settings sets of a series of deep inward (slightly audible) groans on my part. I mean, if given the choice between making a tacky craft and not. I’ll choose ‘not’ every time. If given the choice between an exercise in frustration and ‘not’, I’ll choose not.
But, to my surprise, the finished product that our craft leader hoisted above her head, actually looked appealing. A little wreath for the front door. [Truth be told, when she first displayed the beady ring, I momentarily thought it was a fancy crown. And there was going to be a ceremony in which a very special woman got to wear the crown...or something. I was quickly disabused of that idea.]
Nevertheless, I got a little excited at the thought of displaying a handmade-by-me beady wreath on the front door.
We were each provided with a golden metal ring, a sufficient amount of plastic berry trees, floral tape and ribbon. And off we went.
My initial excitement faded very quickly; roughly ten seconds into the wreath making. I couldn’t quite figure out how to wrap the beads ‘just so’ or how to keep the white floral tape from sticking out like sore thumbs on the golden ring. And, speaking of sore thumbs, I’d also managed to puncture both of my thumbs within minutes and was bleeding all over the white table cloth. ‘This is the craft from hell!’ I remarked. The three women around my table, unfamiliar with Nicola humor, looked up and smiled thin smiles.
I looked around the table at said women working diligently on their own wreaths. Their wreaths looked good. Quite good. No one had bleeding appendages or scarlet dots on their portion of the white tablecloth. It’s almost as if it was ‘within’ them…a mysterious knowledge of how to place beady wires around a metal ring, and have the finished product look good.
One of the women at my table, who finished her wreath in about ten minutes flat, tried to give me advice. ‘The beads should all go in the same direction.’ ‘Don’t use so much tape.’ ‘Don’t wrap the ends around it too much.’ She eventually gave up when it became apparent that no amount of coaching was going to land my wreath on Martha Stewart Living’s website.
In the end I opted to wrap the whole thing in ribbon, figuring it would serve two purposes: mask the gold ring, which I didn’t like, and cover up the white tape that was visible to the naked eye from two hundred yards away. (It wasn’t until yesterday that I noticed the ribbon is stained with the blood of my hard work. Not attractive.)
As my blunt coach remarked: ‘It looks almost presentable enough for a front door.’
But not quite. Which is why it’s hanging on a wall in the house.
