She's Crafty.

Every two to three weeks, when I head to my neighborhood laundromat, I find myself with a few hours to myself. Laundry is a chore that I don't particularly love but I don't really loathe it either. While I load up the machines and cycle my whites, darks, and sheets through the laundering process I try and use those hours I linger among the detergent and dryer sheets for a little soul searching. (This is provided, of course, that there aren't crazy folks milling about said laundromat. I will tell you for a fact that it is quite impossible to hold one single thought in your head if you've got annoying tween girl talking lovey-dovey on her cellphone to her tween boyfriend who she just saw on one side of the dryers and crazy, mc-crazy tourettes man on the other. But, that is another post entirely.)

Anyway. Last Fall, I found myself alone in the laundromat on a quiet Sunday afternoon. As I folded my sheets, towels, shirts, and socks I realized I was unintentionally aligning them in a color scheme within my laundry basket. Yellows with blues, blues with pinks and corals, blacks with reds and purples and greens. Maybe it was just random coincidence, but as I pulled my last load from the dryer I realize I had a pretty aesthetically pleasing laundry basket. Which made me think that perhaps I'd been neglecting a certain side of my creativity for too long.

Yes, I write a lot and my job tends to lend itself to a certain amount of creativity. Right then and there though, as I stuffed away my bag of quarters and readied myself to haul my clean clothes back to my apartment, I realized that what I was craving was a chance to actually make something. So, instead of "thinking about that tomorrow" or allowing my color craving lobes to be appeased with laundry, I decided to nurture the little inner creative mind in my brain, the one dying to get out and MAKE. THINGS.

Now a talented painter or potter I am not, unfortunately. But jewelry? Colors? Fashion and aesthetics? That I can hold a wee little baby candle to. I enrolled in a jewelry making class and have spent at least a portion of every weekend since working away on earrings and necklaces and more earrings. Slowly, slowly I'm getting the hang of it. I made a pair last week that I deemed acceptable to give away as a birthday gift; a huge step in my mind.

Last night, I made a ring for the very first time in my life:

I'm hoping the fact that it's a robin's egg nest means spring will find her way to us sooner rather than later.

The other project I've been dabbling in is a little something I'm calling, for lack of a better term, notebook redesigns. I started with a plain old solid black blank book that looked like this:

After a trip to AC Moore and an afternoon of digging through a huge box in my closet where I store hundreds of eye-catching images I've been ripping out of magazines for years, I went and made this:

Which makes me happy every single time I look at it. I doubt I will ever tire of that image; a woman setting off to who knows where, armed with two suitcases and a pretty pink pair of heels.

And for the back? How could I not choose a woman twirling down steps and another that seemed to channel the inner red-haired Parisian in all of us?

I don't know if my style is for everyone and I'm not sure anyone else would enjoy the little trinkets I'm making but I haven't worried about that once. These days my laundry basket isn't folded quite as beautifully but I don't think my sheets mind. When the debate is between pretty gemstones and jewelry and eye-catching images? I think my laundry knows it has to take a backseat.