Friday, August 6, 2010

The "Regrettable List"

Carolyn and I found a wonderful needlework shop in Lyon, France! The owner has designed most, if not all, of the needlework patterns and kits in the shop. There was a very cute embroidered wall piece, sort of a reminder board of things to do.

Later I mentioned something I thought should go on my "life list." Then Carolyn and I got to talking about how trendy "life lists" are. We decided that we would each make a craft project with the theme being "regrettable list." That is, it would include some of those things that, when you get to the end of your life and you haven't done them, you're gonna regret it!

So, here is my craft project. (I don't think Carolyn has started her's yet, but she has an idea for designing something in felt.)

I covered a glass jar (peanut butter!) with blue tissue paper. I found a picture of an old clock in a magazine and copied it on my copier. The lettering on the jar was all done on my computer, in Microsoft Word. I have an old version of Word, probably the newer ones do even more. There is a button you can click on called "Word Art," and you can fool around with your text in lots of ways. The font is "Emma Script" which I found on the internet. It used to be featured in Mary Englebreit's magazine. You have to pay for it, it's not one of the free fonts.

The neck of the jar was embellished with beads and little birds I bought a long time ago (I never throw any potential craft material away).


Each plastic straw has a flag at the top. The flags say things like: "piano, records, letters, hammock" and lots of other things I don't think I have time to do, or haven't got around to doing yet. So, every day (hopefully!) I will pick a straw out of the jar, and whatever the flag says I will go do that for 15 minutes! Afterall, 15 minutes of piano playing is better than none at all.

I thought about using narrow dowels instead of straws, but the straws were faster. Painted dowels would be cute, with the flags glued on.

The flags were also made on the computer, in Word. I simply cut the top of the straw and inserted the flag.