Bring Your Husband To Class Night

My husband is such a good sport. He has put up with my “need to create” for the last 29 years. He is very patient and easy going even though I know that sometimes he doesn’t understand my craving for crafting. He doesn’t say much even though a lot of the time my jewelry making tools and bead stash are sitting on the kitchen counter. I have a day job, so the only time that I can really create jewelry pieces are in the evening or on the weekend. I hate to put everything away and then have to “dig it out” again.

I have a craft room but do you think I use it? I can barely walk into that room. I NEED TO GET ORGANIZED! If I say it often enough, maybe the little craft elves will visit me and clean up my room. I just can’t bear to part with anything - you just never know when you might need it…. I have remnants from many of the craft projects from the past and “potentials” for the future. “It’s a good deal” or “they might run out of it”, is what I find myself saying as I slip the “must have item” into the shopping cart. And if I go into a bead store without a list, it’s all over. I need to have my list with me and I try to stick to the list for the absolutely needed items. And if you’ve been to a bead store recently, you know the feeling – almost hyperventilating, with all the ideas & creativity flowing around you. That’s how my “bead stash” was born!!

I’ve sidetracked from my Blog title…. As I’ve mentioned in my previous blogs, I teach jewelry making at our local high school, Adult Ed program. I really enjoy teaching. The hard part is trying to be creative within a time limit. I usually try to plan in advance which projects we will make in the six week session and have demo’s made up to show the ladies the first night. Things don’t always go as planned.

This last semester, I had all of the projects made up except for the one we were going to do for the first week. I had ordered all of the supplies but didn’t get to make the demo until the Sunday before the Tuesday class. It didn’t look difficult so I figured I’d be okay. We were going to be trying our hand at stamping & texturizing metal – a new technique for all of us!

I had seen a cute free project idea for the pea pod pendant on a copper chain. I drew out a leaf pattern as instructed and traced it on to the back of the copper sheet. I hadn’t purchased any special metal cutters because my husband is in construction and has tin snips, which we thought would work. Problem – you can’t make turns while cutting with tin snips – only straight lines. Here I am rushing to Wal-Mart in hopes that they have something strong enough to cut the copper sheet. Fortunately, they did and we proceeded, or should I say – he proceeded to cut out 16 leaf shapes. Then, he had to drill two holes at each end of the leaf as the instructions required.

The next steps were fun – stamping the words SWEET and PEA on the now trimmed up piece of copper and texturizing it with the special hammer. When I went to bend the leaf shape into a pod, I ran into another problem – I didn’t have the strength to bend the copper. My husband had to use one of his “carpenter tools” to bend the shape in half vertically. My flat nose pliers just weren’t able to do the job. After that, I was able to finish up the pendant on my own – (big deal, there were only a few small steps left). He actually had 3 hours into this project already.

The final problem came to me the night before the class. It dawned on me that if I couldn’t bend the leaf shape into a pod, most of the other ladies in class wouldn’t be able to either. I asked my husband if he would come to class just long enough to bend the copper shapes – now how many husbands would do that? So the next night, he gave me an hour to get everyone to the same point on their pendant and showed up at class for about 15 minutes to take part in MY project (yeah, who are we kidding….). I told the ladies that it was “Bring Your Husband To Class Night”! They got a kick out of his coming to their “Ladies Night Out” and thanked him for coming.

I bought him a Peanut Buster Parfait after class to thank him for all his help (it really didn’t compare but he does like ice cream)!