Come Play (Inside) with Me!
{Brenda Schweder}
{My Book}
{ A rare shot of me out-of-doors!}
This week, I took the opportunity to slow down a bit and summertime memories from my life as a five-year-old bubbled to the surface. Even though Mom tried to send us outside to play as often as she could (when did the poor dear have any time to herself with six kids underfoot?), she soon realized that she could count on me to remain quietly indoors if she set me up with some blank paper and a box of crayons—the big box of 64 with the sharpener in the back.
From early on, I was interested in creating. And making things.
And my love of the time-worn has led to a passion for found objects—for taking things that may normally be discarded and breathing new life into them. (I turn scruffy into scrumptious.) Enter the up-cycling and green movements and you’ve got the start to what’s been a fabulous journey with my new travel partner, rebar tie wire, at the wheel.
A bit of a stretch? I’ll catch you up. Girl colors with crayons. Crayons (eventually) lead to a fashion degree. Fashion degree leads to co-authoring Fashion Forecast column in a leading beading magazine . . . which leads to jewelry designs in same said magazine . . . to a book about turning junk into jewelry . . . and a second about turning old junk jewelry into new and fabulous old-new jewelry.
Here’s where you say, “(I’m dizzy) and, what about wire?” And, I say . . . “what’s the natural progression to a flame-o-phobe who has little training in metalsmithing but wants to artistically harness all types of found objects into art you can hang on or about your body?”
The liberal use of cheap and easy-to-work steel wire, of course! Dark, annealed, carbon-coated, flexible, and forgiving steel wire is a hoot to turn and form and hammer and (cold) connect into jewelry (and a belt)—and, of course, another book with all the projects designed, written, and illustrated by me.
This is why the five-year-old red-haired girl wasn’t jumping up and down at the chance to run around outside, or jump in puddles, or catch fireflies. Her then too-little-for-steel fingers were strengthening and her too-naïve-to-know mind couldn’t predict, nor her voice sputter: “Mom, when I grow up I want to author a book about creating steel wire jewelry.”
Instead, she managed—encoded, I’m sure— “I want to be a cheerleader.”
***
Come play inside with me and wrangle some steel wire at
THE CREATIVE CONNECTION.
Through my workshops:
Cage Contender
and
Wrangled Bangles
We’ll play with found treasure, form and hammer wire normally used to reinforce rebar rod inside concrete structures, and learn about what led our five-year-old selves to where we are today, and to where we’ll go tomorrow . . . and the day after that . . . and the day after that . . .
. . . ‘til we’re all grown up.
Gosh, I can’t wait!
oxox!
-b.
www.BrendaSchweder.com
www.Facebook.com/brenda.schweder
www.Facebook.com/brendaschwederjewelry
www.Twitter.com/#1/brendaschweder
***
Now what would a great blog entry be without a great blog giveaway by Brenda Schweder herself?
Simply post a few words about your own five-year-old summertime creation recollection and consider yourself “entered to win” (in a super random way):
1) an autographed copy of Steel Wire Jewelry and
2) a Cage Contender necklace containing a picked-just-for-you found treasure!!
***********
Additional entries:
*Follow WWC and TCC on Twitter
@WHEREWOMENCREAT @TCCEVENT (1 Entry)
*Tweet about this contest (1 entry)
*Blog about this contest and mention THE CREATIVE CONNECTION (1 Entry)
*Have a WWC button or link on your blog (1 Entry)
*Post a Comment on THE CREATIVE CONNECTION BLOG (1 Entry)
Remember to post separately for each additional entry and please only post the amount of entries allowed. Also, make sure we have a way to contact you. This contest ends on Tuesday, June 28th at Midnight (MST), so make sure to get your comments in by then.
One more thing … Facebook rules are ever changing, so we never involve them in any contest we have. However, we would appreciate a "Like" on our THE CREATIVE CONNECTION EVENT Facebook page.
Creative Karma will be bestowed on you!
~THANK YOU~
Five year old summer memories… riding my bike (with training wheels) in the garage with the doors open. Around and around and around… or the Skat Skooter. Those were the days…
Wow! I have tinkered with steel wire but never to that extent – of course winning the book would inspire me, I’m sure!
I did love the crayon box, but I remember painting ceramics at the local part – picked the biggest one so it took a LONG time.
Playing outdoors till it was dark, dodging the bats and laying in the grass watching for falling stars….. We were always a holler away from home!
I remember taking small bits of fabric remnants my mother would give me and a needle and thread in a desperate attempt to make Barbie clothes. This graduated into using shoe boxes, jewelry boxes, and anything the right size, covered with fabric, to make furniture, which I placed in the “Barbie House” (the floor under a dining room chair and the seat of it)!
I used to make stuff out of pottery clay…paint it..just have lots of fun. I also liked to draw pictures on poster board of princesses using my outliner marking pen :) Love and hugs from Oregon, Heather :)
I have a WWW link on my blog. :)
I used to take my dad’s work socks to make sock dolls, complete with hot pink yarn hair along with hours spent drawing my own paperdoll dresses with crayons. I’m STILL making dolls to this day ;-)
i had a shrinky dink type setup for bugs and something else I can’t remember – made little smelly rubbery things. Really fun. And my spirograph! love crafting…. and drawing and coloring. Now I own a craft store to help others love it, too
followed @TCC on Twitter
followed @WHEREWOMENCREAT on Twitter
My biggest memory was glueing cotton balls on a picture of a lamb and my mother sending it to “Ding Dong Bell” and it being shown on TV. I was over the top with excitement about my creation. I still get excited about mine and others creativeness. Hoping to win these creative pieces.
Carting around my book bag which looked remarkably like a little briefcase and scribbling drawings and pretending to write cursive.
posted on TCC blog, too.
When I was five-years old I was racing BMX bicycles in races with my step-father’s team. Of course their uniforms were blue and yellow, but mine was made for me specially in purple and pink :)
My Dad was stationed at Ft. Lewis,Washington in 1980, the year I turned five. Playing outside, probably eating a mayo sandwich, I saw a house on fire, “far, far, away at the top of a big hill.” I remember sitting and looking at the clouds of gray and making up a story in my head about this old house and the little girl who lived there. As I’m sure you guessed I was wrong, it wasn’t a house on fire, it was a volcano, but my desire to create stories never died. I went on to get a degree in Writing.
I tweeted the giveaway-hope this link works. http://twitter.com/#!/mvemother
Following TCC and WWC on Twitter.
I’ve got a WWC button on my blog.
Posted on TCC blog. http://www.thecreativeconnectionevent.com/bend-it-shoot-it-design-it/#comment-266
My best five year old memory- I loved staying with my grandma and playing “store” with all the old goodies that she collected over her life time. I would love to win this fabulous book!
Made mud pies in the shade and decorated them with fuschia flower ballerinas…such a contrast of browns, magentas and hot pinks…it was a just me and the mud..with huge amounts of time used to create texture in my sacred pies using little twigs, old forks and pebbles… I eventually ended up an artist of fine art gourds, relief prints and encaustic collage…but deep in my soul…think I would have adored creating in clay :>)
As a child on 17 acres of mountain property with lots and lots of trees and a small quartz crystal mine. I was never at a loss for things to do! I remember climbing the Madrone tree With a ragged crystal and sitting there carving for hours. It was like having my own chalkboard fort. I drew lots of circles with squiggles on top, and called them my diamond rings! I must have been about 7 or 8 yrs. old. Now I love to draw (design) my own jewelry and then make it. I used crystals for years, but have changed my style recently!
I found this from my facebook links to WWC.
We lived in the country and my mother did not let us hang in the house much. In the summer she would actually lock the screen door, the old wooden kind with a hook, so we would not run in and out. At 5, I think I was hanging around the barn cats, petting the calf ect. But later when we moved to town I spent my time reading and at the library and drawing and sewing and not a lot of time outside.
I turned 5 in 1954. We didn’t have alot of toys back then. I remember playing with dolls that were almost as tall as I was. My Mother had saved coupons from the grocery store to get them for me. They were a bride in a white lace gown and a bridesmaid dressed in a beautiful pink ruffled gown. I think my favorite color has always been pink because of that beautiful pink gown.
My last summer in Roanoke, Virginia, at the age of 5, I took colorful chalk and designed oversized gameboards on the sidewalk of “the hood” where I lived – a street of little boxy houses, but I lit up the streets with large pictures. I was trying to recreate a game show called “Video Village” – it was pastel and splashy, and from the wild place in a shy little girl’s heart…now, at 57, so many years later, I realize that was my kindergarten….that and rollerskating…and running towards the little old man in the horsecart who sold donuts in the morning. I still have colorful fun making a living in my music studio.
I grew up with a woods nearby. In the summer you would find me climbing trees, making forts with twigs and branches and leaves…and blankets.
Shoot, I don’t recall creations, but I do remember one notable destruction: I was given a small plastic ship, something out of a toy vending machine. It was very bottom heavy, but it floated. I liked my ship, but I was dying to know how it could both be heavy AND float. I couldn’t bear it anymore, so I broke it. To the bottom of the boat was glued a big chunk of lead. Oh, I also kept a pet spider to whom I fed Valentine Sweethearts–my shortest-duration pet ever.
My summertime creating always included mud pies. My sisters and I made them on top of old wire spools that we turned into table and chairs in our clubhouse :-)
I follow on twitter
I have the WWC button on my blog
Oh boy beautiful, please count me in, thank you!
Can’t specifically think of activities 50 years ago. Instead I remember a few wacky gift wrapping projects I came up with as a kid. One was wrapping pen nibs for my brother in peanut shells. Why? They fit. Another was creating a swimming pool with diving board on a box lid.
I was 5 years old in the early 50′s and everyone smoked then, including my Dad. In kindergarten, I made an ashtray for my dad out of clay and painted it red. I will always remember that.
Your book looks totally awesome. Thanks for the great giveaway!
Ohhhhh, please enter me. I have always loved working with metals and this book looks totally awesome…would love to win it. thanks so much…bb
Summertime for me was spent in Phoenix AZ. I remember being outside a LOT with my best friend. We were two peas in a pod! That is also the year I learned about mixing primary colors – wowsers – you mean I can make new colors by mixing two or more together! I loved to color and paint and make crayon shavings to glue on to paper. Thanks for the giveaway!
I remember playing with the Etch-A-Sketch, the Easy Bake Kitchen, the Shrinky Dink, and always changing my Barbie doll clothes. Lovely wire jewelry, and anyone would be thrilled to own some.
This is crazy, but my memory tells me that my five-year-old “creations” were making soups. I used to sit at the creek bed with my plastic buckets and mix my ‘ingredients’ of leaves, berries, a little mud and lots of water. Crazy, huh?
My friend and I would make a tent on the front porch and color, have pretend tea and dress up our dolls. I love anything with wire! Thanks for the opportunity to win a prize.
Creepy Crawlers! I had that, too. Plus incredible edibles. So fun.
I remember loving Colorforms and Etch-a-Sketch. I also remember coveting my neighbor’s set of really cool markers!
I have the WWC button on my blog!
What a wonderful story! Gosh, that 5-year old me was a long time ago! But I do remember wallpapering the walls of our playhouse with paper dolls. Boy did I get in trouble!
At five I lived outside as a tomboy with dirt under my nails, skinned knees and was working on conqueering the jungle gym. Maybe it is time to find her again.
Wow, it’s been so much fun reading the comments, remembering things from childhood. I was the quiet kid with lots of cats and kittens around. I could sit for hours with them, dreaming conversations. I didn’t become “crafty” til I met my husband, whose parents owned a hobby shop. He helped me to see that anyone can be creative, and everyone has an artist inside them.
Just found your blog this a.m. thru your button on another blog. Love the ideas. I’m now a follower.
I’ve added the WWC button to my blog.
I don’t remember myself at age five other than being in pre-school. On photos I see that I have played a lot outside, and there are still drawings made by me from that time period. My dog Susi was always included. :)
The button is on my blog. :)
I “liked” on FB, but couldn’t find the post on Creative Connection to comment there. :(
Fabulous! I’m really liking those bangles!
Don’t forget to join my fun give-away! All you have to is come by and leave me a comment on Thursday’s post!
I’ve been collecting items for just this technique. I need to learn more. Thanks for the opportunity.
I loved water color paints.
i dug into natural clay
i found down near the river bank
and made small but fat & gloppy dishes
for my doll~babies.
then i set them out to dry quickly
in the hot florida sun.
sometimes i would paint them
with the dried Kool~aid mix–
cherry or grape.
:-)
today?
i am playing
with an online Plaster Studio workshop
given by judy wise & stephanie lee.
its like those 50 years
in between never happened…
Very nice, thanks for sharing.
Five year old me was an indorsy type too..and I still am to this day. My random summertime outdoor memory was mashing pine needles and flowers in an attempt to make perfume.
Thanks for entering me in the giveaway!
I was the same way as a kid–I remember making “fork flowers” out of yarn woven through the tines of a fork. Actually, that sounds like something I would still make today…
Erin S
i can remember finding some of those brass connectors, the type with the button top and the two “legs” that you would put through the punched hole – it compelled me to make my own articulated “doll” out of cardboard.
nice blog. I have “liked” your FB page.
At 5 I remember riding horses with my Grandmother and spending endless hours looking through her drawers and drawers of jewelry. She had so much jewelry it was incredible. I mean an entire dresser with filler with tray after tray of jewelry. Wish I had some of that now to redo!
When I was 5, I divided my creative time between writing stories and making doll clothes–no needle or thread, but I was a master at the 3-armhole-dress style.
After school was out for the year, my teacher parents took us camping for the whole summer. Unable to master tying my shoelaces my mother resorted to teaching me to macrame – I remember sitting in a folding chair by the campfire, waiting for our potatoes to cook and making macrame plant hangers out of twine from the local outpost.
Growing up I remember having made several “pies”…creativity always started with unedible ingredients (i.e. pine needles) with just a touch of edible (i.e. fresh picked raspberries)to finish. Those were some fun summers!
Ha! So long ago – I do remember liking to color in a coloring book and was so proud to color inside the lines. Then there were the family trips to Wisconsin relatives’ farms – the chicken coop, the fences – all steel wire. Many years later I’m now interested in playing with steel wire!
I remember hanging out in the shop with my father, handing him screws and such. He and I would make little cold connection doodads and hang them around outside by the pool with the windchimes.Wish I had them now, some of them would be really cool pendants.Ah, sweet,sweet summers and my dear,dear father….
Most of my five year old memories are still activities…playing tag with lightening bugs, riding ponies at the farm, bottle feeding lambs, napping with the kittens…my five year old self was busy dreaming up my adult self and, almost a couple decades ago at age 40, my dreams came true. I’m now farmer and shepherd at Thistle Cove Farm…dream a little dream with me….
I recently found a cake topper that was a circus tent on my 8th birthday, and I am 66 now! I think I know where the china animals are put away, and I’m on a mission to find them. I have started quilting this year and have my jewelry baubles down… however,you have inspired me to pull them out and multi-task! I just need more room so that I can leave all my projects out. Still dreaming after all these years!
I love the look you have created and am a fellow found objects lover. Congratulations on your book! My five year old self was making “houses” in the lilac bushes or in the dirt with sticks and rocks. Decorating is still my passion.
Gosh I too hated being outside, I was severely allergic to the sun (still am) so I stayed inside except when it rained! I remember my mom (who was an artist) buying a wallpaper book and she used the pages to cover boxes for fabric and then letting me use it to cover the walls of a cardboard box that I turned into a doll house. I proceeded to make furniture and cover it and then the house was used for my Skipper doll that I got for my 5th birthday – before that I used the paper dolls that were in the McCall’s magazine she got. Would so enjoy your re-purposing book and jewelry :)