My Creative Story: Part 1 Childhood

This is the first installment of My Creative Story.

I didn’t get a sibling until I was almost 7, so my childhood was spent playing alone. I used my imagination and crayons. I created friends and children to care to for. I made stuff because there was nothing else to do and it was fun. I remember being very small, maybe 4 or 5, and playing Light Bright with my mom’s best friend and, obviously loving the light bright, but seeing her bright red nails. I remember thinking about how pretty and how much personality and color was in those nails. That’s when I decided I would always have pretty painted nails and I do. Always. These are the tiny impressions that started my creative journey and it truly had started before anyone realized we were already in the middle of it.Growing up I had EVERY, I repeat EVERY kids craft toy. Spirographs, tye dye, rolling magazines into beads kits, weaving potholders looms, cross stitch kits. If it was a craft in the 90’s I was rocking it in my overalls and scrunchies every day, all day. I was obsessed and my family happily humored this trait by buying me beads to melt and sending me to art camp in the summer.I also spent a lot of time at my grandma’s while my parents worked. My grandma is serious about a puzzle, like the really big hard ones. So she just tells me to come sit down and help her. No ‘you do this giant floor puzzle with 4 pieces kid’, but more like ‘you come help me do this 500 piece puzzle you 5 year old’. So I did. I truly think I owe all my brain power to her and those moments. I also was obsessed with reading. I have no statistics but I truly believe reading, puzzles and art supplies make kids grow up to be awesome, smart, creative and great problem solvers. I still like to raise my fist in my mother’s honor every time someone debates whether or not you should ready Harry Potter to your kids. There is still no book I love better than one about magic and adventure…(oh and unicorns. Those are awesome)Then I start school. My elementary school art teacher, music teacher and the librarian, are still the most vivid memories I have of elementary school. Any class project we did that involved creativity I latched onto and remember those lessons to this day. I was just naturally drawn to the colorful and hands on activities that allowed my brain to move in as many directions as possible. My family’s biggest home decorating joke is that my dad let me pick out the color of the carpet in my room. Duh, purple. In went the purple carpet. To this day: NO REGRETS MOM. When my family got a computer (I’m talking old school where those things only typed on green letters on a black screen) I began writing books about puppies which I quickly realized was not creative enough for me and I wrote them by hand and illustrated them. My wonderful second grade teacher let me read my self published (on ripped out notebook paper) book to the class and then put it in our book rack for all the other kids to read during DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read)!By the end of elementary school I had won a tote bag for reading every Caldecott book on the list for that year. I had even begun writing the test for the Accelerated Reader program to help test other kids comprehension of books. Harry Potter and I are about the same age, so my mom and I killed his books each year. All through middle and high school I had a book in hand. There was no shame in my game. Every babysitters club book, anything about unicorns, teen drama, fiction, fiction, fiction. Again, I believe reading is such a powerful exercise in creative thinking.This is where my creative story and my creative business story intersect. Around fourth grade, I was making those keychains where you lace or weave plastic ribbon to create a log type braid. There are many variations in color, shape, size and design that you can create with them. As my friends began to see my creations, they wanted one too! So for a quarter or fifty cents, depending on the size, etc, you could purchase a handmade keychain from me. My turnaround time was quick too, likely only a day or so to get your completely customized keychain delivered to your seat in the classroom. I came home with ziplock bags full of quarters. Which my mom then taught me to save and take to Wal-Mart to buy additional supplies to invest in my business. Eventually the keychain business died off, but I was not deterred. Making and selling was in my veins now.Around 5th grade my mom got into scrapbooking. Around this time was scrapbooking's real catalyst into the mainstream. She started selling scrapbooking supplies and hosting parties for Creative Memories (PS Still to this day their scrapbooking tape is the only tape we will use. There is none other like it) and this changed our whole family’s creative/creative business story. My mom was amazing! No longer were we just slipping a 4x6 picture into a floral album with sleeves that turned yellow within a year. My mom was cutting up colored paper and photos into circles and making them into a caterpillar on the page! IT WAS REVOLUTIONARY. My kind and generous mom obviously gave me my own supplies and allowed me to scrapbook entire albums of backstreet boys magazine photos and a few photos from a school field trip to one of those places where you ‘see what it was like to live in the olden days’.Regardless of my subject matter choice, I was now a scrapbooker and was hooked, though I didn’t really know where this craft would take me just yet...Read Why I Am Telling My Creative Story and see each part of the story here.