Anyway, painting little birds was fun until lots of people wanted me to paint specific little birds for them and I found myself spending all my free time hunched over a little canvas wearing clothes covered in paint. In other words, I liked it when I was doing my own thing but really didn't like being told what to do creatively. That sounds like I'm pretty spoiled, I know, but I insist that I was always grateful that folks liked what I was doing enough to actually pay me to do it. And I've always been sure that there's plenty of people doing things they don't really love for a lot less money than I was making off little birdie paintings.
Still, HAVING to do it all the time caused me to take my ball and go home. I stopped painting mostly. I figure when I want to paint, I'll paint. And then I bought this bracelet. It was months and months ago that I bought this little leather cuff with words stamped on a metal plate on it for $45 online. I kept looking at it thinking, "I bet I could do that." And a few months passed and I took an old belt and punched some holes in it and bought a set of metal stampers and messed around and it didn't work so I put it away and got busy with something else. Then our church challenged us by giving us each $5 to generate something good for mission work and Olivia wondered if we couldn't buy some more belts at Goodwill and give it another try, maybe even sell them and make money to return to mission projects through church. If we combined my mom and dad's $5 with our family's we'd have $25 to start with and maybe we could turn that into something.
I can't figure out why all of our best ideas involve me doing labor in a sweatshop sort of manner, but I had to admit it was a good idea. Selling bracelet cuffs could easily multiply into something that might help someone else. So I raided the accessory section of the thrift store and made a few worth selling and in less than a month, we'd made $300 to donate for supplies for the FBC Youth's trip to the Dominican Republic in the summer. That's something to be proud of I think.
So now I'm just tinkering away with making more bracelets because my friend has invited me to make a few more for a craft fair and I've got some custom orders to finish. If it's true what my therapist says about not speaking some things into your life, maybe it's conversely true that a word reminder on a wrist might also bring good things into a life. That's why I like ones that say "Peace" or "Be Still" so send me some words and phrase ideas and we'll try it. I don't know how long I'll ride this wave of bracelet making so make sure and get yours now before I get all grumpy and have to wear reading glasses all the time and stop playing again. The one I wear most frequently is the 25:40 one. It's a reference to Matthew 25:40 and so it reminds me that, "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me."
Here's a picture:
