My Mother Loved Crafts

For as long as I remember, my mother loved to do crafts. She either got her ideas from various ladies’ magazines like Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, or Women’s Day, or she just made up the craft by reusing items into new things.

One early craft I remember her making: she took a metal coffee can and placed a 78-rpm photograph record on top and placed both in the oven. The record melted down with slight folds into a bowl. She then spray-painted them gold, silver, or bronze. These became useful for candy dishes or holding a potted plant. This is why we have no 78s left in our family.

Every Valentine’s Day, she made a valentine’s box to be used in one of the children’s classrooms. She started with an apple or orange cardboard box and covered it with colored paper, crepe paper, and cutout hearts. Too bad we don’t have a photo of one of her boxes.

For Christmas one year, she made Christmas trees out of egg cartons. She cut out the cup portion of the cardboard cartons and arranged them in rows to look like a tree. These were glued down to a triangular-shaped piece of cardboard. She spray-painted these green, gold, or silver. Inside each cup, she placed small Christmas ornaments and trinkets. Here is one of her trees.

Later, she learned to decoupage and we had numerous old cans, wooden boxes, and other items covered in pretty paper and decoupaged. I have one that is used as a pencil holder. Here is a book and can that my sister found.

The love of crafts has been passed down. All of us six children have a craft gene, though we manifest it differently.

#Women’sHistoryMonth. March is Women’s History Month. This is post one of the women in my ancestry. Some will be direct ancestors, and others sisters, aunts, and cousins.

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