[-craft, kids-]

here’s a fun activity to do with or without your kids!

by Suze Corte

Spring is in the air, so we know you’re going to want to make some of these hanging delights to brighten your porch, balcony or sunroom.

This is a tried-and-true project that’s fun for children and adults of any age. We are giving away our secrets, here, so the least you can do is dig in and have yourself some fun! You have to let your project dry overnight before you complete it on Day Two.
So if you’re into INSTANT gratification, see Optionalities*.

Materials:

Yarn-any color
White glue (like Elmer’s)
Liquid starch
Bowl
One-inch brush
White tissue paper
Colored tissue paper-Spring colors, torn into random 2-5 inch shapes
Nylon fishing wire
Hole puncher
Scissors
Spray starch (optional)

Day One:
Cut off a long piece of yarn 14-18 inches for each Floaty Tissue Paper Delight. You’ll probably want to make at least three.
Tie the length of yarn together and knot it so that you have a circle of yarn.
Mix together in your bowl: 1 cup of glue, ¼ cup of liquid starch and ¼ cup water.
If the amounts are not exact, that’s okay. You can have tons of fun no matter how the mixture comes out.* If the mixture becomes lumpy, add more water and/or glue.
After you have your mixture the consistency of very heavy cream, you’re ready.

Lay out two sheets of white tissue paper on your worktable, one on top of the other. Drop your yarn circle into the glue mixture and coat it all over. Mix it around with your hands for sensory fun.

Take the yarn out of the glue mixture and plop it onto your tissue paper. It will be drippy and that’s fine. This is a messy project. Begin to form a shape with your yarn circle. Make a large shape, fairly simple, with lots of open space in the center of the yarn. It can be a heart, a nebulous shape, a bird, anything!

Once you’ve got your shape ready on top of the tissue paper, dip your brush into the glue mixture and very lightly brush glue onto the yarn and the surrounding tissue paper. If you brush too briskly or too much, the tissue paper will tear, so a light, springy touch is what you’re after.

Take your pieces of torn up colored tissue paper and lay them down onto your yarn circle, overlapping as you go. This is willy-nilly placement; don’t worry about being exact. The pieces can flop over the yarn onto the white paper; that’s perfectly okay.

As you’re laying out the colored pieces, dip your brush in the glue again and again and use a light stroke to make the paper stick. You can brush right over the top of all the tissue paper. If some of the paper tears, you can “mend” it with another piece of tissue paper.

When you’re done, there will be about two to three layers of tissue paper. Keep it light! Next, place two more sheets of white tissue paper on top of the colored layer. Brush over this lightly, as well. Make sure it’s all nice and sticky and gluey. Hang your creation up to dry. We use a drying rack and clothespins. It might drip, so put newspapers underneath to keep the floor clean. If you want to make this nice and stiff, you can apply some spray starch at this stage. Experiment!

Day Two:
Your tissue paper creation should now be dry. Cut around the shape just barely outside the yarn, cutting away the excess tissue paper. You will be left with your interesting shape ready to hang. Punch a hole in the top and hang with nylon fishing filament. Watch how your Floaty Tissue Paper Delight plays with the spring breeze! Make lots and hang them all over your special space!

Have fun and let us know how this turns out for you!

*Optionalities: If you’re really into sensory experiences, transform your glue mixture into “Gak” once you’ve made your Floaty Tissue Paper Delight. Just add more liquid starch until you start getting a solid mixture. It will be slimy and fun. This will wash off hands with soap and water and lasts if you store it in a sealable plastic bag. We hope you have loads of fun, and that playing with all of this frees up your creative spirit!

about the author: Suze Corte is a pre-school teacher with many years experience as an art teacher, primarily to young children. she is also an artist and writer and contributing editor to The PCQ. More of her artistry can be seen at her flickr photostream or click on Suze Corte in the tags to see all her PCQ posts.

Originally published in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: inspiration

Suze Corte is a writer, artist and pre-school teacher in Houston, Texas. In 2007, she was chosen as be the Houston Area Association of Educator’s of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year and the Texas Association of Educators of Young Children’s Teacher of the Year. Congratulations, Suze! It is a well-deserved recognition.

[-practically mperfect-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche said that and I - with quite a bit of creative chaos in my life - completely understand what he means. Chaos - if we tone it down to a buzz of unrestrained energetic activity - can be an inspirational muse. However, chaos is hardly the only thing we need for creativity.

Creative chaos will not get a zine out - on time or otherwise. “Quarterly” doesn’t mean much to the chaos swirling in one’s soul. Chaos doesn’t know a single thing about html or how to put in a link that works. And chaos can’t write an essay for anything in the world.

Chaos does not keep up the blog entries.

Chaos cannot re-write a novel.

For those things and more, you need another “c” word; a word with a lot less magic, a lot less pizzazz, a lot less playfulness. You need consistency. This, folks, is the practical side of being practically creative. And it - or the want of it - comes up frequently for me.

Like all creatively conscious people, I adore those brilliant flashes of creativity when disparate ideas and materials come together in a new and exciting way. This stimulates and energizes and feeds on itself. So, if I occasionally feel those brilliant flashes, why worry about something as dull as consistency? Because not only does consistency accomplish tasks that chaotic creativity can’t, it also feels good to accomplish daily goals. Chaos cannot accomplish long-term, complicated projects. It takes consistency. It takes showing up for work, day after day.

For about a month after the first issue of the year came out, I was “showing up” to the Practically Creative blog most days. It was fun and creatively stimulating for me and, I believe, for others. I had plenty of gloriously creative raw material thanks to the Practically Creative flickr group. It didn’t take much time and I always felt better after doing them. It’s similar to the way I feel physically after exercising. Often I resist, but I always feel better when I do it. With the blog-roll I was on in February and early March, there was no reason for me to think that I couldn’t continue doing consistent daily blog entries forever. No reason except self-knowledge and experience. By now, I know myself pretty well.

Chaos and consistency don’t easily coexist. In my life and I think, the lives of many artistically creative people, chaos more often than not bests consistency in hand-to-hand, day-to-day combat. Even if we just call it moodiness, it’s enough to get us off track. So what can we do about it? We need both ‘creative chaos’ and consistency and they are close to being mutually exclusive!

We have to do what it says at the top of this article. We have to learn to accept our shortcomings. Consistency isn’t a parlour trick like a white rabbit conjured out of a hat. If it’s not in us as a natural attribute, then we have to practice acceptance, but we also have to foster more functional habits. It is a balancing act - think tightrope walker’s skill rather than a magician’s trick - to accept who we are. To embrace the strong parts of ourselves, those parts that are capable of giving “birth to a dancing star” while also repeatedly disciplining ourselves to show up so we can finish and bring our creative projects to the world.

Getting down on ourselves because we fail only gets in our way. The goal is not perfection. It is progress. Guilt and self-hatred come from that perfectionist thinking and will keep us from showing up tomorrow if we let it. Only a balance of self-awareness and the steady goal of making ourselves better at consistency will help us achieve a finished product.

Writer, Stephen Nachmanovitch said this about creativity:

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.

We will, more often than not, miss that brilliant flashpoint if we haven’t shown up for the work. That’s consistency. We have to work when we aren’t inspired. We have to work even when we feel uncreative. We have to do it when it isn’t intuitive. The experience of it being “play” instead of “work” will follow from that consistent effort.

Whether or not we finish our creative projects - whether, for instance, my novels get re-written or my blog gets an entry today - isn’t going to make a difference in anyone else’s life, but it will in our own. Even if consistency isn’t our strongest trait let’s vow to continue working on the habit of showing up everyday.

Maybe today there will be a brilliant flash and, just maybe, that star will dance.

Originally published in the July 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly
© 2006 - 2007 all rights reserved