Craft Work

Being in a co-ed school, there was always an option of choosing the crafts between the one meant for girls and the one for the boys. I had never chosen the ones meant for the girls until once it was made mandatory that girls have to do the crafts meant for them only. It was designing cross stitch patterns on a table cloth.

One day before my craft class, my mother tried hard to make her daughter master the skill. She even bought a pattern book so that I could choose the best pattern for me. But the girly things were never meant for me. Being pretty sure that nobody would be able to complete the work in the specified time, I somehow made sure that the class gets over without the teacher noticing my inability to do it. As expected none of the girls could finish the work on time and the teacher asked to complete it at home. So, I very happily took the work home for my mother to complete it.

But now, being a mother myself, there is no room for escape from the situation. Now, I have to help out my daughter who is very much unlike me as a child. She is over enthusiastic about the projects and crafts she is asked to do. She is a perfectionist and is never satisfied unless the outcome is perfect. So, now I have to struggle hard to cope up with the situation. 

Yesterday and day before yesterday, we, both mother and daughter were busy completing her two craft works - one a car hanging and the other a wind chime. Both the works to be done by beads. The car hanging was easy but was very time consuming and the wind chime needed a bit of innovation. The problem with Akanksha is that she wants to do everything by herself.

The car hanger was done using a bouncing ball, needle point pins, colored beads, colored sequences and a ribbon to hang.

The finished product was as below..

The wind chime was a bit complicated. It was done using the upper portion of a plastic bottle, glass paints, colored beads, marker pen, glass pipe, nylon thread and foil paper..

I helped Akanksha to cut the bottle in a wavy way..

She drew patterns on the bottle with the help of a marker pen before putting paints..

Each edge was marked with a dot to make a hole to hang the beads which were put together on a nylon thread..

I helped her making the holes with a punch..

Akanksha first used the black out liner over the patterns she made and let it dry. Than she filled the inside colors and put it to dry. She was doing one pattern at a time and letting it dry and than again moving to the next. This procedure made her loose all her excitement and was frowning when I tried to click pictures. So no more pictures were taken while the little lady was on action. By the time the whole painting was finished and left to dry both of us arranged the beads to be hung and once the paints dried and the beads were hung it appeared as below....

The first reaction came from the dear father waking up from a tight afternoon nap, "This is a ridiculous color combination". I tried not to listen to the comments fearing that Akanksha might again be adamant to redo it. But to her reaction I was very happy. She replied her father with a yawn, "That's all a 10 years old little girl can do. Nothing more than that". At it there was an outburst of laughter from we, the fortunate parents.