You've Gotta Have Art

"Art seems to me to be primarily a condition of the soul." -- Mark Chagall

You've Gotta Have Art was an art advocacy campaign during my college days. I've always believed it to be true and am so sad when I see art (music, drama, fine arts) programs cut from our public schools. I'm sad when there are programs in place and they're not taken seriously too. That's not what I want to post about, but when I chose that title it kind of made me go off on a tangent :)

I had one kid at home late last week, while the other two went on a youth service trip, which inspired me to get creative with her. We got out all our goodies to make jewelry and baubles. . . polymer clay, beads, findings, etc. Here's what the table looked like when we started. Doesn't it just make you want to dig in and create???

It did inspire us. Here are a few of the things we created (and some of them we listed on etsy too!).

These are little glass jars we covered with polymer canes we made and cut thin. We're calling them Wishing Jars and we have a little instruction card that goes with them telling how to save your wishes in them :)

These two are cell phone charms made from polymer beads I made.

Then, the weekend happened. We picked up one daughter in Murdock and went to 6 basketball games. We had one daughter come home sick from the youth group service trip. We returned one daughter to the service trip and helped the other get well enough to go to camp a day late. Here is what the table looks like now (and has for the last 3 days).Not so inspiring. But it was fun while it lasted. Just now it's inspiring me to organize my craft supplies and put them away so we have a kitchen table again. I threatened last summer that if the kids didn't get along then they wouldn't get their own rooms and I would keep one room for my "craft" room. They were bickering again this morning on the way (back) to camp. Maybe I should . . hmmmmmm.

You've gotta have art!