Craft Time with Amy

At crayola.com, you'll find lots of great craft ideas for kids this summer. Party Pinwheels! Big Bright Bugs! And who can resist a Brilliant Butterfly Kite?

Me. Although I'd like to be a crafty mom, it's not in the handmade cards for me. Rotting apple puppet heads aside, I've had many disasters in this department, both while employed as a middle school drama teacher and while sitting at home being a mom. Kids cried. In both cases.

A mom's-hands-off approach works best, I'm finding. Children come up with their own craft ideas, creating one-of-a-kind items such as bookmarks decorated with hair they've chopped from one spot above their left ear. Two days before the start of second grade. As one example.

Or they invent new, necessary enterprises, such as The Honest Paint Company.


Unhappy with paint colors called such things as "Marine Reef" and "Smoldering Coals," the boys and I decided to tell it like it is. With a slogan declaring "the other stores lie!" The Honest Paint Co. turned "Tawny Bluff" into "Bathtub Ring"; "Fireside" into "Dad's Softball Injury"; and "Fruit Punch" into plain old "Pink."

Special credit to Simon, age 9, for renaming "Toasty Fireplace" as "BBQ Chicken," and to Theo, age 6, for calling a certain shade of fuchsia "Your Gums."

Impatient for the official launch of The Honest Paint Co., Theo began his own crafty business on the side, selling paper airplanes and boats.


In the five minutes between setting up his stand and a rainstorm, he turned a profit.


Nothing says summer like a driveway sale. Simon thinks we should add a few more products, such as lemonade, but that seems so ordinary. Plus, I'm not sure how well it will sell next to the bookmarks.

Comments

  1. I gotta get me some of those Honest Paint Co. colors! My pastels have reasonably decent color names, mostly comparing them to nature, but thankfully no "macaroni and cheese" pink.

    Speaking of selling things, has Theo tried the farmer's market? If you guys are down here this summer, he can join me at my booth and sell his bookmarks!

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  2. Actually, it was Simon who made what came to be known as The Hairy Bookmark. Thankfully he only made one, or he might have been bald for that first day of class.

    I hope you're successful! Selling....what?

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  3. Knitting and jewelry, but so far the knitting's not selling. (Washcloths and custom-order [expensive-ish] blankets.) The earrings are probably my best-sellers. I started doing demonstrations, which got a lot more people in my booth and probably a few more sales. I'm pretty much the only person in the market who had simple enough materials to do demonstrations.

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  4. COMPLETELY with you with the crafting thing. I'd rather scrub toilets than 'craft' and oooooo the word 'scrapbook' makes my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.

    I LOOOOOVE the paint renames and I think Theo is the cutest stand sitter I've ever seen.

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  5. Thanks, Kim! But just so you know, I consider you a very crafty person (wink wink).

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