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I can't draw or paint to save my life, which is somewhat distressing since art runs in my family. One great grandmother was an art teacher, another was a painter. My grandfather wrote poetry to my grandmother, who was a prolific oil painter, and before that she knitted and sewed—quite well, too. My dad was a musician, and my aunt collects art. I write and knit, but, as I said before, I can't paint or draw at all. Nevertheless, the urge to create is not to be denied, so I set to work creating a few projects to spruce up my house. I started small. I bought six small wire mesh boxes from The Container Store and spray painted them red, and once they dried, I used them to store teabags. I liked the idea of creative storage, and since my house is an exercise in wasted space, I figured creative storage ideas was about right. I moved on to my computer room. My yarn stash badly needed organizing, and, inspired by colorful spool thread racks, I bought some wire baskets to house my yarn according to color. On the wall above the baskets, I hung a rope looped over a few hooks. From the last loop of the rope, I tied my skeleton key collection. Finally, I hung my small ship's wheel clock—about three feet off the ground since that's where my eye falls when I'm sitting at my desk. With my room well on the way to resembling anything but a generic magazine picture, or a typical room with posters and prints on the walls and nothing to add character of its own, I set about decorating the walls in the rest of the room and my bedroom. That was how I got the idea for the checkerboard project, which triggered ideas for other projects. |