art
Family-themed art is a look into one's living room; it depicts celebration, crises, and the quiet moments of familial interactions.
Gnomes
Gnomes are not just for children! These elfish figures with there individual expressions and personalities steal the hearts of adults as much as they do children. Gnomes are similar to humans in their family structure. The men marry, have children, and most prefer to live in woodland settings. They have close family units. Gnomes are seven times as strong as humans and so hard work poses no problem.
By Judy Worsham5 years ago in Families
My Piano
When I was a little girl only 12 or so one day I came home and my parents bought and organ, the type with many instruments. I was one of six but a very quiet person. But for hours I played that organ, and I taught myself to play and read music. I played for hours at at time. One day the person who lived next door came over and ask my mom, who is the concert pianist. It was me! But it started earlier than that when I was a 3 or four my mom had a piano in the house. I would play for hours playing that piano. My baby brother was born, and he played the piano with me. He is still an entertainment to this day. Something happened when I was 12. One day I came home, and the organ was gone. I was only 12 I did understand why it would be gone. I later found out later that it was returned to the maker for nonpayment. Then I became an adult and I said I must find my joy a piano, so I saved all my money and then I bought my own piano. It was so beautiful. I would play for hours at a time. Then one summer I met my second husband and we moved, and many changes happen. You guessed I had to sell the piano however, I was so happy because that piano went to a little girl. I know you wondering let me set your mind at ease in high school I had a private male of course Piano teacher, his name was Roger Spot and he is dead now. He was unique because not only could he play, but he also played with some of the greats. Roger was like a father figure; he had no eyebrows he had a hairless face. The next piano was interested because that one I gave away I bought from the father of a Piano company; he was dead. His Son in Los Angeles sold me the most beautiful Piano for only 900 and it was fully tuned. It was a strange time, but I would play for hours and soon after I got it my stepdaughter came and I met her for the first time. I wrote her a song on my new piano. The birds would sing with me daily as I played my instrument.
By Wanda B Henry5 years ago in Families
Littles Pieces Make The Big Picture
From the age of 12 I began to spend time in my father’s office/makeshift studio in the basement of our home. It was a three-story greek-style house with white walls and blue windows. Most of the homes in my neighbourhood in Tunis, Tunisia were built that way. A stark contrast to the earth-coloured brick-built London home I live in today. My father was a diplomat by day and an artist by night. His heroes were the likes of Rex Lawson and B.B King. His studio was in the same space as the children’s living/play area; tucked in the back corner, adjacent to the small but loud laundry room and opposite the door that leads into the garage. Whenever I was home from boarding school, my days stated early and finished late. I would watch copious amounts of television and spend hours in his studio playing his guitars and writing songs. Every evening, after the sun had died, I would be jolted back to reality by the sound of his Mercedes CLK320 shouting at the gate. I’d quickly rearrange everything as I had found it and plant myself in front of the TV again. My younger brother reminded me of this recently. Somehow I had forgotten those years. Memories leave when you don’t give them attention. Especially the foundational ones – that era is the backbone to my entire life. When I left home for good, I took that basement studio with me. Till today the walls of my mind always have words written in white chalk and black ink – crossed out, underlined; stanzas, paragraphs, poems – finished and unfinished. All those hours and years I had given to that basement had given me something in return, love and power. I had fallen in love with words. But it took 16 years to learn how to manage her power.
By Azuoma Obikudu5 years ago in Families
Hands To Work
“HANDS TO WORK, HEARTS TO GOD,” read an embroidery on my mother’s dining room hutch, tucked behind her spools of thread and stacks of phone messages scrawled out in hurried script. My mother always admired the dedication to quality and craftsmanship in Shaker design. Many of the furniture pieces in her home were Shaker style. Simplistic, yet functional, this made for a wise choice when raising seven children. As the youngest of the bunch, I got to stick around while everyone else headed off for their miscellaneous endeavors. I spent a lot of time in that dining room looking over the items that represented my mother’s love for crafts. This embroidery she made years before I was born with the saying synonymous with the Shaker lifestyle proved to me that there’s a rich history in craft practices. One that I was only beginning to discover…
By Sam Tannenbaum5 years ago in Families
7 Bins of Fabric
I remember watching as a young girl, watching our Filipina Seamstress making outfits for my Mom and taking that inspiration to my Raggedy Ann sewing machine to make clothes for my dolls. That started my love of sewing but unfortunately, it didn't stick. I had forgotten over the years how much I enjoyed sewing and making things. I managed to make a few projects over the years but mostly the machine collected dust as marriage and kids took over my creative attention. Then May 29, 2020 changed things. I received the call that my Mom had passed away suddenly and without notice. She was in her sewing room surrounded by her many treasures and fabric. She was actually working on a quilt for one of her grandkids for his graduation and also planning a quilt for my daughter’s wedding that was put off because of… well COVID. So in the midst of the pandemic, I had to travel out to Oregon from Maine for my Mom’s funeral and to clean out her craft room. My stepdad didn’t know what to do with any of it and I needed to have her things surrounding me. It took a week to go through everything and get it ready. There were days in that week that I would just sit in the middle of everything and just sob, a creative loving soul gone too soon. In a 7X7 cube I packed up her treasured embroidery machine, all her sewing knick knacks, gadgets and 7 large bins of fabric and sent it off to the basement of my “in-laws” house in Maine..... and there it waits for me.
By Barbara Klein5 years ago in Families
The legacy project
I’ve always considered myself a creative. It’s in my genes (not my jeans), really. My mother always joked that it skipped a generation with her, but she sold herself short. She marched to the beat of her own drummer and she oozed creativity out of her cool, hippie chick self. Think long flowing hair and skirts, embroidered denim jackets and handmade silver jewelry. We lost her too soon, but her legacy is alive and strong .
By November Rawlings 5 years ago in Families
The Rain Star Babies Paper Doll Story
Who would have thought that tapping into my creativity and a pair of good scissors would help me find my happy zone and greatly impact my healing journey. My name is Nathalie, I’m an RN by profession with proclivity to arts and crafts on the side. When I became pregnant with my first child back in 2005, I wrote “The Rain Star Babies”, a short fairytale-like story about babies inspired by my pregnancy and I started illustrating them with a goal to turn it into a real book. Juggling motherhood, a career in nursing and my book project was not an easy feat, my favorite project was put on the back burner.
By Nathalie Lopez5 years ago in Families
My First Doll
My three brothers and I grew up in Central Java, Indonesia.I was the third child, and we were all two years apart. My parents would only buy toys that all of us would play with, and those toys were for all of us together. We had army toys, matchbox cars, marbles , kites…. but we never had a doll.
By Melia Raharjo5 years ago in Families
For the Love of Cardinals
Two of my earliest auditory memories are the gentle pop and dragging noise that my grandmother’s cross-stitching needle and thread made as she worked on her projects, and the accompanying snip snip sound when she finished a block of color and cut the floss from the frame. My grandmother was a skilled crafter, a product of a childhood spent in Depression-era Appalachia. She could turn anything, even nothing but a few scraps, into a beautiful decoration or a useful tool. She quilted, crocheted, sewed, and more, but the talent that stood out the most to me as a child was the cross-stitching. My aunts and mother all had framed cross-stitch wall hangings and dishtowels that my grandmother had covered with intricate designs. A common theme of her projects was Americana, but birds and flowers made frequent appearances too. These beautiful works of art flood my early memories, even though I was a child surrounded by handmade crafts of all varieties.
By Katarina Kurtz5 years ago in Families
