It’s Football Season!!

 I like this time of year, not only to the temperatures start cooling and school starts but it’s football season.  Anyone who is a fan has been counting down the days since the

Superbowl game.  For me it means getting out my favorite team’s glass and cup to use on game day.  (I am a Green bay Packer fan. Green Bay, Wisconsin is my family’s hometown.)

A whil3 back I bought a set of cookie cutters which included a helmet and football shape.  Now I didn’t buy these cutters for cookies; I bought them for needle felting (See my blog post “Needle Felting in a Cookie Cutter”).  But I began to wonder what other things the cutters could be used for.  

So here are ten ways to use the football and helmet cookie cutters (but any shape and any occasion will work here).

1- Use the shape to needlefelt an ornament or press the cookie cutter into clay for an ornament.

2- Trace the shape onto a blank card and decorate it for an invitation to your football watching party.

3- Trace the shape onto a blank card but leave the shape plain.  Tell your guests they have to bring the card colored or decorated to the party and a prize will be given to the best card.

4- String yarn or a chain through the cookie cutter and wear it as a necklace.

5- Having coloring sheets with the shapes on it for the children or adults to color if the game gets boring or your team is losing.

6- Use the cutter as a template for appliqué, embroidery or coloring on fabric.  (See blog post “Cookie Cutters are just for Cookies” and “Colored Pencils on Fabric”) 

7- Use the cutters to create different shaped deli meats or cheese for your food table

8-Tic Tac Toe game – Create a 9 patch ( a 3 x 3 square grid) with the squares big enough for the cookie cutter shape.  Pick 2 shapes and make five of each.  You can use paper, card stock, felt, or fabric.  You can also use one shape like the helmet and make 5 from 2 different colors.  Use the shapes as you would Xs and Os in a tic tac toe game but instead of marking a paper, you place the shapes on the squares. 

9- Use them as napkin holders.  If you have just a couple of sports related cookie cutters, add stars, circles, hearts, fall leaves, whatever might be appropriate or fun.  (If the weather is still warm or even if it isn’t, try a snowman). 

10- Oh, yeah, and make cookies with the cutters.

Remember what I said in an earlier blog: cookie cutters aren’t just for cookies.  So go have some fun with football or any cookie cutters.

©2021  Cheryl Fillion

Try something new

Have you ever been given the opportunity to take a class or watch a demo or hear a speech and you thought, no I don’t do that craft or I’m not interested in that subject. Well, go anyway. 

 You never know when going to a talk of something you have no interest in will actually spark an interest.  I belong to a number of crafters groups.  I often see someone prepare a talk or a demo and very few people in the group show up.  “Oh I don’t do that type of craft,” I hear them say.  So?  How do you know if you will like it or not if you don’t see it?

 Maybe you won’t like it but maybe you will.  I went to a meeting once with no interest what so ever in punchneedle embroidery.  I heard how it was done and saw some finished projects and I turned to my friend and said “I want to learn that”.  And now I do punchneedle all the time.  My little 3 heart logo in the corner of the blog is done in punchneedle.   

 Even if you have no interest in something, what you learn might apply to something else you do creatively or intellectually.  I learned to make rings at a meeting of our local Fiber Artist group.  I really have no interest in making jewelry but the technique I learned for the ring I can use to make embellishments for some of my needle felted bowls.

 If the class or demo or talk is being done by someone you know, wouldn’t it be nice for them to see a friendly face in the group?  It takes a lot of time and energy to put together a demonstration for a group (especially a group where you are a member) and it is a little disheartening to just see just four or five people in the audience.

 So go try something new.  You might learn about something you didn’t know you wanted to do.  Or learn about something you might not do but will now appreciate more.  Think of how smart you will look when you can discuss the intricacies of basket weaving at a dinner party. Or just go and be supportive whether the speaker is a friend or stranger. Just go anyway.

 © 2017, 2021 – Cheryl Fillion

 

Gathering Seeds

Before you can start a garden, you have to gather seeds.  Those tiny little things that when planted in moist dirt will germinate and grow into a rainbow of flowers.  Before you can start your creativity project, you have to gather seeds.

 

In creativity, a seed is an idea of what you want to do.  No matter what it is -paint a picture, sing a song, write a poem, decorate a table - you have to start with an idea.  Sometimes, if you are lucky, you are overwhelmed with ideas.  I will have to take fabric with me to eternity to complete all the quilt ideas I have.  That is the only way I will have enough time.  But there will be those of you who won't have a clue as to what you want to grow.  You need the seed.

 

Now with plant seeds, you can gather them from plants that after blooming produced seeds for the next season.  Or you can buy seeds nicely packaged in colorful envelopes in a store.  To gather seeds for creativity, you have to search.  You have to go out and gather the seeds.

 

It's not hard but it does take a little time. I recommend at least an hour a week.  Try to find an hour -preferably by yourself - and go on a gathering. You don't have to go anywhere special, these seeds can be gathered anywhere:  a museum, a concert, a park, a dollar store.  

 

What you are looking for are things that make your heart sing. Let's say you see a plastic flower arrangement that looks cute far away but up close looks tacky.  Take the idea - the seed - and arrange your own.  Use live flowers, use flowers from arrangements you have at home that you are tired of, use the idea and put it on canvas or as an appliqué for a quilt.   The image of that cute but tacky arrangement is the seed.

 

Go some place that makes you feel good. Go some place you have never been.  Try somewhere with a slightly different cultural fragrance, maybe a restaurant or an import store.  If you can't get out of the house, read magazines you don't normally subscribe.  I read lots of environmental, psychological, and quilt magazines.  So for me, a Better Homes and Gardens or Martha Stewart Living is a whole new world.  For you, it may be the National Geographic, Psychology Today, or Newsweek type.  Do anything you can to gather those seeds. 

 

Now this doesn't mean you have to act on them right now. That you have to come home immediately and start a new project. You may want to but it is not necessary. You are just gathering seeds.  They may need to stay buried in the moist dirt of your mind a while before they can germinate. You may find that you need to gather several seeds and are able then to put them all together to create a whole new flower.

 

You can't have a garden without seeds.  You can't have creativity without ideas.  So to allow your creativity to germinate and grow, go out and gather seeds.   And you might along the way want to pick up a couple of packet of seeds for a real garden.  Your own flower garden could help to inspire your creativity as well.

 

© 2017, 2021 – Cheryl Fillion