Craftastrophe

“One’s man trash is another man’s treasure”. You’ve heard that before, right? There are so many people who can turn old junk into something lovely: an old coffee table bought for $8 at a garage sale becomes a fabulous bench, old t-shirts are made  into lovely pillowcases, a very old door is turned into an amazing full-length mirror.

Source: vintagerosebrocante.tumblr.com via Elisa on Pinterest

To me, these people are like Cinderella’s fairy godmother. There’s no magic wand to turn that pumpkin into a beautiful carriage, but these magical crafty elves have spray paint, staple guns, and lots of imagination. I heart them. And I envy them, because I am more or less what stands at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to craftyness – I am, without a doubt, the most craft-impaired person I have ever met. Seriously, I am like the Antichrist of crafts.

I don’t know what it is, really – I can cook, I have good motor skills, I am even a pretty good dancer (did some choreography in my time as well, but let’s set that aside); I was never one to drop things or trip over my own feet. And yet, put me to work at making something crafty and I quickly turn into a major klutz.

The last time I tried myself at crafts was while planning my birthday party a couple of months ago, and decided to make these lovely things (spotted on Martha Stewart.com). In three colors. ’cause come on, how hard could it be?

Source: shop.marthastewart.com via Amanda on Pinterest

Turns out, very. Especially when you are craft-impaired. In which case, instead of fluffy, festive pom poms you get a misshapen creation that mocks you mercilessly. Also, you get lots of leftover tissue paper and crepe paper in various colors.

My husband blames my problem on the fact that I never did crafts with my mom growing up; but as much as I’d like to simply blame this on someone else, I realized that in addition to not having the talent to pull off beautiful handmade creations, I simply do not have the patience required. Ah, the elusive P-word.

Moving on.

Today I brought up all the Christmas decorations I could find and started sorting through them, setting aside the ones I planned to use on our tree and picked out a bunch of them in silver and varying shades of blue. My goal? making one of these:

Source: eddieross.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Eddie′s directions sounded fairly straightforward:

1. bend a wire hanger into a circle – check

2. select about 80 ornaments – only got about 40, but more where they came from, so check(ish)

3. open the circle-shaped wire hanger and start stringing the ornaments on it – I’ll get back to you on that.

It took only about 8 ornaments moving around and really annoying the heck out of me by not  simply staying put looking pretty as good ornaments should, before I stopped for a minute and realized that:
a. I was not enjoying this in the least, and
b. by the time I finished (which didn’t look like it would be anytime soon) I would have spent about six times as much as simply buying one of the pre-made ornament wreaths  I saw at the mall.
Granted, a handmade one is way more special and unique, plus it gives you bragging rights when it comes out awesome and everyone comments on it and asks you where oh where did you get that lovely thing? But when the chances of it turning out great, or even meh, it’ll do, are slim, and you are faced with possibly spending hours creating something that will turn out to be a waste of money and a pretty ugly one at that… let’s just say it’s not quite as motivating.

So I abandoned the project, put the ornaments away, and with a sigh went to ask my Christmas-obsessed neighbor whether she’d help me do something with the  Christmas tree branches I had bough a week earlier in a moment of insanity (or as I thought then, creative genius) and that were still sitting in the shopping bag, on my console table, untouched.

Where does that leave me? Disappointed and bereft of crafty talent… for about 5 minutes. And then I am moving on, looking at more “before and after” pictures on decorating blogs, and saving simple-looking crafts (even though as I have now learned, looks can be misleading) on Pinterest.

Einstein said: Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So the way I figure it, I just need to keep trying different types of crafts, and at some point I should make progress. Or at the very least, the universe will get sick of me being a pathetic failure at such a key feminine art and throw me a bone. Either way, I’m good.

Wardrobe makeover, anyone?

 

 

 

Note: While I would like to be able to take the credit for the clever title, you should know I borrowed from an existing blog, Craftastrophe – which by the way, just shows that I am not the only one who should perhaps consider laying off the crafts

Tagged as: craft-impaired, crafts