My 7-year-old daughter ranks arts and crafts right up there with oxygen and chocolate. She's gotta have the smell of glue or tempera paint or freshly-cut construction paper in her nostrils at all times, and I won't even try to describe the near-daily scene in my kitchen after she's blown through.
The floor? Bits and pieces of yarn, paper, cardstock, fabric, glitter, sequins, stick-on jewels, stickers, felt, thread, cardboard.
The table where our family of 7 must eat all its meals? Coloring books, boxes, puzzle books, pictures cut from magazines or catalogs, craft how-to books, pipe cleaners, glue, pencils, ruler, paper awl, two sizes of hole punch, stapler, tape (endless rolls of tape), and markers.
Almost every day all of the above get used to design and create a plethora of amazing and unusual objects. My house is full of them, and we joke that we're going to have to rent a storage unit to hold the overflow.
Some of the most recent creations include a shark tank made from a man's shoe box featuring paper sharks and other sea creatures against a backdrop of glitter glue seaweed and starfish, a large green octopus made from a painted paper plate with curly paper tentacles and stick-on googly eyes, a pencil holder made from an old soup can, a whole series of paper dolls -- some human, some cats -- complete with clothes, bedding and other accessories, and a stack of drawings featuring everything from ancient Greek citizens of Athens to cats in high heels and earrings. I can't forget to mention the home-made newspaper with original stories about a tiger rescue and a store that sells maypoles. Or the art exhibit featuring several fresh renditions of classic works by guys like da Vinci (Mona Lisa) and Vermeer (Girl With a Pearl Earring). We actually had to buy tickets to this one using pretend money my daughter had also drawn and cut out!
This evening after we'd finished our schoolwork for the day and I'd sat down to begin my research and planning for an astronomy class I teach, my daughter came to me and said, "I want to do a craft but I need your help."
She was holding up a book I'd found on clearance at Barnes and Noble, "The Princess Book of Crafts."
"I've done all the projects that are rated 'easy,'" she said wistfully. "Now all I have left are the ones that need an adult to help."
I hesitated. There wasn't another adult in the room, so it was up to me to take the hint and stop what I was doing.
"What's the project you want to do?" I asked, keeping my internal fingers crossed that it would be something we could finish quickly so I could go back to work.
"This one," she said, her big blue eyes lighting up with the sheer anticipation of all the crafty fun to come. "I want to make this castle."
She turned the book towards me and I tried not to gasp for air as I saw what lay in store. The required list of supplies to make the "castle" looked easy enough. We had everything it called for. The steps to complete this dazzling homage to royalty of yore were another matter.
Perhaps sensing my lack of enthusiasm, my daughter said, "This just looks complicated, but we can get it done in about 30 minutes if we work together."
Uh, sure. Thirty minutes plus about three more days.
Never one to let the reluctance of another steal her joy, my girl set to work gathering up everything we'd need while I began shutting down my computer. She had to get a box just the right size from her grandmother. I had to find two paper towel cardboard tubes, some Mod Podge, yarn, cardstock, toothpicks, and scissors.
I won't bore you here with the five gajillion steps we then followed but suffice to say the castle as of this writing is about 2/3 complete, which means we have a way to go.
I told my daughter that when the castle is finally finished and she begins to use it as the backdrop for a whole new set of royal family paper dolls she's making, she'd better be sure it doesn't fall into enemy hands, i.e. those of her two younger brothers.
A castle built of cardboard and paper is not likely to survive for very long.
Thank goodness I can't say the same for the memory of building it.
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