Tales from our table
Tales from our table
Craft explosions, jewellery making, map drawing and creative cakes - This months creative projects; successes, failures and the mess left behind.
In these monthly tales from our art table (aka. The Kitchen Table), I hope to share an honest insight into the creative projects we embark on; successes, failures and the mess left behind. Creativity is at the heart of our family life, not just literally because it takes over the place where we eat, sit and talk, but also in the way we live and approach learning together. It permeates everything; mathematics, science, literature, the way we fix things that are broken and solve problems together as a family. So inevitably the paint covered brushes of our artworks will be mixed with the politics of our daily lives in these stories from our kitchen table.
For some context, I have two children, H who is 10 and F who is 7. We currently live life and home educate in South Australia, along with my partner.
This month I had a minor surgery, so I was out of action for a few days and taking it easy for a few more. Although I wasn’t looking forward to the cutting, fixing and pain of having a surgery, I was actually looking forward to having a good excuse to slow down for a few days. On reflection, it is pretty fucked up that I need to go to hospital in order to rest and be OK with others helping me out!
CRAFT EXPLOSIONS
For the last few months we have been going through a bit of a slower season when it comes to our creative pursuits at home. None of us have been feeling particularly inspired, but that seems to be shifting. Maybe it is the onset of spring here in Australia or our natural ebb and flow of creativity. A few mornings ago I woke up to a huge ‘craft explosion’ on the kitchen table. My daughter had launched into jewellery making and painting all at once. The photo above doesn’t quite show the level of mess, there were beads everywhere and lots of squeezed out tubes of paint all over the table.
Far from feeling cross or overwhelmed by the mess, the scene that greeted me at 6.30am (my daughter is an early riser and had been up from 5.30am crafting) filled my heart with joy. I love that she wakes up feeling inspired and creative. I love that she knows what she wants to do and has the skills to get on with it on her own. I love that she had green paint in her hair and was excited to show me what she had been making.
This is one of the things I love about home education and working from home; slow mornings. If we want to launch into a pre-breakfast crafting session, we can. If we want to read for an hour whilst eating breakfast we can. I’m also thankful for these slow mornings because, although my daughter is often all creativity and action first thing, my son really struggles in the mornings. (They have such diverse personalities and needs.) He needs a lot of support and one-on-one attention to help him get going and our mornings are often filled with dysregulation. Taking it slow helps, rushing and pressure are not our friend.
I wanted to share the other side of our mornings to paint a more realistic picture. We are not all creativity and joy, often there is a lot of shouting!
JEWELLERY MAKING
Since her early morning craft explosion, my daughter has continued with her jewellery making. She has been creating pieces to sell to her friends and wants to hold a market stall soon.
For many years I worked in the fashion industry designing and making jewellery, so I have really enjoyed sharing this passion with her. I have boxes and boxes of beads left over from my jewellery days and she loves delving into them. I’m planning on running a few jewellery workshops for our home education co-op, so recently purchased some more colourful beads to inspire the kids creativity. My daughter loves laying all the beads out and designing her own necklaces.
CREATIVE CAKES
My daughter loves cake decorating (and eating icing). For her birthday last month I brought her a cake decorating turntable, scraper, piping bags, sugar decorations and edible glitter. I tried to show her a few things (not that I’m in any way good at cake decorating), but she was like ‘Mummy, I know what to do, I watched it on Pinterest.’ So feeling redundant, I backed off and she did great. She knew all the little tricks for getting the icing into the piping bag without making a mess and was pretty good at piping on her first go.
So this year she decorated her own birthday cake and made the cutest cupcakes, complete with toppers, for Fathers Day.
MAP DRAWING
Last week we attended an awesome map drawing and illustration workshop at our local library with author and illustrator Georgina Chadderton of George Rex Comics. The kids attending were invited to create a map of their own imagined fantasy land. The activity inspired my daughter to continue creating her own maps along with stories at home. One of her maps was of ‘Sweetie-Land’ and another was a magical forest called ‘Forestlandia’.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m feeling pretty good after a few days of taking it easy after my surgery. I’m enjoying the warmer weather that spring has brought. We are planning some camping adventures and I’m excited to be feeling creativity flowing again in our home.
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