When was the last time you made something? With your hands?
A couple of weekends ago, the hubby and I made our own pot plants out of paper maché. We obtained, (stole) a bunch of pamphlets from Checkpoint Charlie, a tourist attraction and integral part of the Berlin Wall story, that we just happen to live nearby. The pamphlets are really graphic, so they make for a cool statement. Then we found buckets in a skip out the back and used them as our base.
We are moving from this area soon and we thought it was a great way to take a small memory from our time near the Checkpoint.
And then we started making. Whipping up the paste, tearing the pamphlets into strips and spreading them over our base. No rules, no structure, just pure creativity.
Damn, it was so good!
First of all, it beats sitting on the couch all day indulging in Netflix while clouds are grey, but also, we get an end-product. For free. And it will always be special because it’s not like any other thing in our house. In any shop. We made it.
When we’re kids we make things all the time. They’re mostly crap, and your mother has to pretend to love it, give it the appropriate air time on the fridge, Christmas tree, whatever, before she can sneakily throw it away and claim it’s gone missing somehow.
Now that we’re adults with some level of taste, we have the ability to make things that are actually good. Functional even. So why do we stop making?
Everyone says they don’t have any time, but how many of you just smashed out ‘You’ on Netflix recently? *Puts hand in the air*. I’m not saying never watch TV or scroll social media for endless hours, but also, don’t do that and then say there isn’t any time.
The best part of making these pots was doing it together. It was such a nice way to spend the hours in the same room, without checking our phones and pretending to watch a Drug Lords documentary.
If you haven’t made something for a while, I encourage you to do so. Paint, draw, jam on the guitar, heck, bake an epic cake for all I care. But do something you haven’t done in a while. Something that the child version of you loved doing. And share it with someone. Do it together because it’s so much more fun.
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