Nature vs Nurture

I know this seems to be a funny concept to blog about, but I do have a point so please bear with me. As a teacher, it seemed like we studied the Nature vs Nurture concept to death at University. Personally, I believe that for true greatness, both need to be present. Just because you have the propensity for a "thing" in your genetic make-up, you need to be exposed to, and immersed in "it", for "it" to reach its true potential. So for me, "it" is my creativity and craftiness.

Some of my earliest happy childhood memories are of my mothers sewing room (oh how I envy her, to have had a whole room to do her craft things in, though when my 2nd brother came along, when I was 7, it was sadly turned into a bedroom for him for a few years, until he became old enough to share my other brothers bedroom and it once again became a sewing room). I used to love opening up her material cupboard and picking up a piece of material and rubbing it along my cheek. I loved the feel of the different materials, silks, satins and flannelettes were among my favourites. My other childhood memories include her mixmaster (again, another item of hers that I would so dearly love, to one day have one of my own), and the different smells from when she was baking.

My mother passed away when I was 11 under some pretty tragic circumstances, but not before she exposed me to sewing, cooking, baking, knitting, crocheting, macrame-ing (if that is such a word), paper-folding, lampshade-making, candle-making and many other crafts. If she was alive today, I know she would be into scrapbooking and cardmaking in a big way also.

And so, even though I might have inherited her "creative/crafty" genes, it was also through being immersed in all my mothers creative activities that has shaped me to be the crafty mumma that I am today. All 3 of my boys seem to have inherited some of my "creative/crafty" genes and love to watch me when I have my crafts out and love to show off their albums or give my cards to their friends. And even though none of them have wanted to be involved in the crafts I do, they are all starting to develop their creativity in their own individual areas. My 7 year old loves to combine his love of lego and star wars to build the most awesome star wars vehicles and planes. My just turned 5 year old has only recently started painting and drawing his favourite TV characters, particularly Herbie (the Love Bug) and Wall-E. The amount of depth and detail he puts into his pictures blows me away. And the baby of the family, who is 2, has just entered that wonderful age where they love to experiment with anything and to copy everything we do, so all the scissors, pens, textas and paints have to be put way up high, otherwise we find bits of really important paper suddenly cut into tiny pieces, or wonderful "artworks" on the sheets of his bed, or the walls of our (rented) house.

Welcome

Well I have finally done it. Entered the blogosphere or the world of blogging, that is. I want to use this blog as a way to show off some of my "craftiness", the creations that I make. I try my hand at most crafts, but particularly love scrapbooking, card-making, OTP/BTP products, as well as hand made candles and soaps. I haven't really gotten into selling my products yet, but it is on my "tuit" list. You know, the round one. "A round tuit". I love giving my products away, but that doesn't quite pay the bills, so I'm probably going to have to either stop making or start selling soon. As creativity is such a vital part of me, I cannot ever see myself not doing something crafty, so selling it will be.