The Shadow of Creativity

By:Amber Grumbles

I have always lived in the shadow of my mother’s creative talent. My mother is one of these individuals that can do anything she tries.

My mother has always been artistic. When she was young she drew beautiful sketches. She painted pictures of nature around her.

I remember growing up and my whole house every room every corner was piled with different type of craft material. My first memories of my mothers craft are of macramé twine hanging everywhere. I hated the smell and it was itchy. Then it was cross-stitch. I can remember going into Roses and having to look through all those colors. There were hundreds! Then came cornhusks angels, tole painting, gord painting, Cyprus knees gnomes. Then came her true love and my teenage nightmare!....baskets!

One day when I came home from middle school on the bus my mother was sitting in the front yard with a tree she had cut down herself! She was stripping the tree of its bark and was stripping the tree down to make weavers. I was mortified! I remember yelling "cannot you not go in the backyard!!!

She had basket weaving materials in our front room which was her craft room. Well, if I had a date they had to come into this room first. Well, at times we would have to duck under weavers to get into the living room.

You could never assume that what was cooking on the stove was actually supper. It well could be bark, roots or some other concoction that my mom used for natural dyes to dye her weavers for baskets.

As I got older I of course recognized how wonderful it was to have a mom who could make me beautiful things. Her baskets make Longer Berger look like Easter baskets at Big Lots. They are phenomenal. This past Christmas she wove me a lamp and "turned" the wood to make the bottom and the top of the lamp.

When I had my first child in 1995 by inner craft child was aching to come out. I really wanted to create something...anything. In 25 years of trying crafts of all kinds I could not do any it was a loss cause. I was not creative and why should I bother my mom could make anything!

Well, I attended my first Creative Memory class. This lady wanted me to cut my pictures! I told my mom this was the most insane craft I had ever seen. However, my mom saw this as my line to the creative side of me I could never find.

She called the CM consultant and ordered me ' I want it all kit". Needless to say I have never looked back. I have been scrapbooking for almost eight years now and it has truly touched my life in many many ways.

It has given me the satisfaction of creating something. I think this is so gratifying to look at something you have made and it is beautiful and you get compliments from others. It is something I never had experienced until my late 20's.

It has allowed me to look at my world and my children very differently. My children have a record of their life. They will know their history and they will have books that will allow them to understand how life was when they were young.

Scrapbooking has filled the creative void I felt for many years and has allowed me to find a place in the craft world where I can create, preserve, and give my children something they can carry on from me from now on.




Tomorrow at dMarie Daily: Becoming One of the Family, by Sherry J.