Our Refuge

Our homes should be a refuge for us. We often come home exhausted, and home should be a place of rest and rejuvenation. Retailers the world over seem to understand this concept, and home decor departments are full of items that remind us of being at the spa. The bedding departments tout the benefits of turning our bedrooms into a retreat.

And even paint departments offer color pallets and swatches that are supposed to elicit a feeling of peace. But there is one more area that I feel really makes a huge difference in our homes (and particularly in the way our homes feel): the art we have on our walls.

I’m a huge fan of decorating blogs and Pinterest. I spend hours getting ideas from them so I can make my home beautiful. When I walk into my home, I want to feel at peace, uplifted, and like I have arrived someplace special.

When I was in college (and dirt poor!), I accomplished this goal by putting 3×5 cards with favorite inspirational quotes and images on my dorm room wall. They helped me feel grounded and reminded me of what really mattered. I feel like all our homes should help us feel the Lord’s Spirit.

Religious Art Can Help Us Stay Focused

Abide With Me by Liz Lemon Swindle

The world is a busy place with many things that call for our attention. How do we keep ourselves focused? Well, just like my dorm room, our home decor can really make a difference.

In my home, I have a picture of the Savior titled Abide with Me by Liz Lemmon Swindle. She is an LDS artist, and in this picture, the Savior is smiling.  There is a special feeling that comes over me when I see the Savior smiling at me. I imagine that anyone of faith would be uplifted imagining the Savior is pleased with them and their offering for that day.

On another wall, I have a picture of my husband and myself on our wedding day. We got married in an LDS temple, (the holiest place on earth for the LDS people) and that temple features prominently in the picture. Every time I see it, I remember the feelings I had that day.

I remember feeling like a princess marrying my prince. I remember the love of family and friends who came to celebrate with us. And I remember the special, sacred atmosphere of the Lord’s holy temple.

It reminds me that I am lucky to have found the love of my life and that I have a responsibility to be worthy to enter God’s house, the temple. And it reminds me that I want to teach my children about choosing a mate wisely and that I want to teach them to love and serve the Lord.

Words as Decor

I also love inspirational quotes in my decorating. A favorite of mine is a constant reminder to be a more patient and kinder mother. The words “Let them be little” are above the door of our playroom. And when the noise levels get too high, it’s that quote that reminds me to take a deep breath before doing anything else.

A picture of the Savior surrounded by little children also reminds me that God values this time in all children’s lives; that I have a sacred duty to let them be children and not make them grow up too fast.

Family Art

Our inspirational art doesn’t have to be from the typical places. I am blessed to have many talented family members. We have works of art on our walls from some of those talented people. They are of special value to me.

My husband’s grandmother was a well-known artist in Canada with works that still hang in museums. For our wedding, she gave us a painting of an angel hugging a young woman. My grandmother-in-law could never have known how that painting would strengthen me.

She was a Christian who believed in life after death, and she was bearing her witness through her art. Her inspiration for the painting was her sister’s recent death. But it has been a huge comfort to me as I have experienced my own losses. It’s a beautiful reminder that life goes on after we leave this mortal existence, and that God is here with us when we need Him.

Personalize

To read more of Patty’s articles, click here.

A few years ago, we decided to create a family mission statement. My husband and I decided on one together, and we put it on the wall with vinyl. I love it. It reads, “‘Be the Rainbow in someone’s cloud.’ – Maya Angelou.” I see that sign daily. And, without realizing it, I find I’m treating others differently. I feel more motivated to make a difference. And what started as a unifying family activity has made a real difference in the attitude and philosophy of our family life.

Our home decor should be an extension of who we are. It can remind us to be a little more patient. It can lift us up when we are down. And it can remind us of the reason we do what we do. Pictures of temples, inspiring quotes, and even children’s art all warm a room and give it more purpose.

As we work to make our homes more of a heavenly place, let us remember the wonderful images of the Savior and inspirational art from around the world, because there is strength in reminders from heaven. I’m so grateful for all the inspiring artists out there and for their works that make my home a beautiful place to be.

Patty Sampson

Patty thrives on all things creative. You’ll often find her in the garden pretending she is a suburban farmer. She loves meeting new people, and is devoted to her friends and family. In her heart she is a Midwesterner even though life has moved her all over the country. She believes in “blooming where you’re planted” and has found purpose in every place she has been. She has a deep and abiding love for the Savior and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And she loves editing LDS Blogs because it is a constant spiritual uplift. Not many people can say their job builds their witness of the Savior.

My aunt is an expression of color. She seems to make a statement: I’m here and I matter. As an awkward pre-teen, I used to drift in and out of the perpetual fog that distorted a healthy concept of self. I was not someone who wanted to be noticed, probably because I felt so insecure. But my aunt was the image of self-assuredness. The color she used spoke of this confidence with boldness.

Her life lacked color for years—in fact it started with the grays and blacks of war. She was born in Germany when World War II began. She suffered from starvation, bombings, air-raids, poverty, and loss. By the time the war ended she had lost her father, her baby brother, and her country. The family was left on the communist side in East Germany with no freedom in their future. They fled to West Germany and ultimately to the United States.  There was but one thing left to do—rebuild a lost life.

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before. (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Happiness, Your Heritage”, October General Conference 2008)

With such devastation in her formative years, my aunt could have remained bitter and gray. Her foundation was based on misery and heartache. But something inside of her said, “No. I will not allow my life to continue this way. I will start over with a clean slate and create with a palette of pure color.” She searched deep within her heart and found the strength to rebuild.

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty. (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Happiness, Your Heritage”, October General Conference 2008)

My aunt made up for her devastating childhood with determination, guts, and ultimately glory.  The color she incorporated in her home was just a symbol of the many fine attributes she refined, despite her war-torn foundation. She took interest in the arts, education, travel, literature, and crafts. She learned to speak up for herself, for others, and for causes she believed in. She was excited about people and listened to what others had to say. The color in her life was not limited to her interests—it took light in attributes of compassion and deep understanding as well. Everyone should have an aunt who listens, who cares about their interests, and who truly loves them. My aunt did not have children, but she has a heart full of love for me.

I can only imagine the struggle her life must have been, especially with a foundation of agony and grief. We all have days of sorrow, but not all of us have had such devastation. Still, feelings of inadequacy can bring even the happiest person down. Bouts of unhappiness need not cripple a person in their daily lives. Bringing happiness—or color—into the lives of others is a wonderful way to overcome sorrow. President Lorenzo Snow expressed a similar thought: “When you find yourselves a little gloomy, look around you and find somebody that is in a worse plight than yourself; go to him and find out what the trouble is, then try to remove it with the wisdom which the Lord bestows upon you; and the first thing you know, your gloom is gone, you feel light, the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, and everything seems illuminated.” (Conference report, 1899.)

My aunt continues to do this for me—she brings happiness to my life by virtue of her colorful disposition. Visiting her when I was young gave me a sense of color I never knew before. The pure foundation of white provided stability—a starting point from which to jump. In a sense it was a symbolic washing away of the bitter past, creating a clean slate from which to start a new life. Adding the color said, “Here is the life I was meant to have. I will make it beautiful, because I matter. The sky’s the limit to my possibilities.”

While against the backdrop of infinite creation we may appear to be nothing, but we have a spark of eternal fire burning within our breast. We have the incomprehensible promise of exaltation—worlds without end—within our grasp. And it is God’s great desire to help us reach it…He sees you as the being you are capable and designed to become. He wants you to know that you matter to Him. . (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Happiness, Your Heritage”, October General Conference 2008)

To read more Devotionals by Nanette, click here.

How is it possible for a woman from a war-torn country to build a life of compassion and goodness? It is inherent in all women the seeds of divine creation and motherly nurturing. It is a gift from God. My aunt was blessed with a witness of this divinity. And despite the trials of her life, she took that witness and let it blossom into a colorful garden of virtue for all to enjoy.

Nanette ONeal

Nanette O’Neal loves the gospel and is very happy to share her testimony on LDS Blogs. She is a convert to the church and still feels the spirit burn strong within her heart. She graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts with a degree in music education and has taught children and adults in the private and public sphere for over twenty years. Nanette continues to study the gospel and the art of writing. She writes weekly inspirational articles on her blog and is currently working on an LDS fantasy novel series, A Doorway Back to Forever. You can find her at NanetteONeal.blogspot.com. Nanette has a wonderful husband, talented son, and three beautiful dogs.

The embalming process is fairly simple. You just need a canopic Tupperware container, and a needle or safety pin. I have some thread through the needle, because it adds some nice leverage when you are trying to poke through the egg shell. When you are poking at the egg shell, don’t be afraid to be firm with your pointy implement of choice. Egg shells are tough.

If you are having trouble getting the needle through, try using a very small screwdriver, of the sort used to adjust glasses. Make a hole in the top and the bottom, and really wiggle that needle around inside. You want to break up the membrane and yolk of the egg.

You’ll notice that this hole is rather larger than the one on the top. This is to make everything come out easier. How you may ask? Blow through the top hole and into the canopic Tupperware. The egg white and yolk should slough out easily, provided the exit wound is large enough. Stand there a moment, admiring the strangely hollow calcium deposit in your hand. Ponder smashing the shells over your own head, or others as a prank. Remember to rinse out the shells with water, you don’t want it to start to smell in a couple days.

Look, all clean and dripping water into the carton. Seriously, these will drip for a while. One of these eggs will be abandoned. Can you guess which one?

Get out your trendy walky-talky variant and call out, “Crafting supplies! Assemble!” You might not get the A team, but you will get a team. My team consists of Ribbon Ribboff the Russian rhythmic gymnast/grillmaster, Woody of the Elmer’s Glue Gang, and the Acrylic four! You may notice what looks like a square piece of bread with a hole in it. That is my handy dandy painting stand made out of salt dough, because what is a crafting article without wasting food? What about the egg innards from before? I fried them up in a large pan with bacon bits. Not wasted.

Starting off simply, I wrapped ribbon the long way around the egg, and glued it at the top and bottom. Keep in mind, there may be water still coming out of the bottom of the egg. Be sure to reapply glue if that is the case.

After waiting a bit for it to set, I made another loop.

Then a loop around the middle, and some that only reached that loop. It really helps to glue on the convergent spots, making everything below more firmly anchored as well.

Different egg, familiar paint. Egg shell is such a nice color that I decided to do some outline sort of bird figures. If you don’t like how part of your painting turned out, get the needle from before, and scrape away the paint.

Since I only had fall colors, I decided to make a phoenix. It looks a little wonky, but I added more and now it looks like it does in the header for this article. Taken together, there is a nice progression from egg to bird to fire chicken, and so I took a toilet paper tube and cut it a bit more than in half, thus creating a nice height progression.

Eggs Fabergé can be an exquisite art, gifted to Russian royalty, or it can be a fun afternoon activity. It turns out you don’t have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, you can make them into art instead.

Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to ldsblogs@moregoodfoundation.org. Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.

Answer time: Which egg did I abandon? The middle, right one.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.

Looking at a beautiful oil painting or sculpture is inspiring and uplifting. One of my favorite pieces of fine art is the Pietà by Michelangelo. He was a master. To me it is remarkable that he could fashion sheer rock to look so graceful and delicate—perhaps even elegant—while at the same time, capturing sorrow amid serenity with size, placement, and arrangement.

Art is a wonderful blessing.

Reading a well-written piece of literature can change your life. Short, concise writing is much more difficult to compose than wordy, lengthy prose. We have wonderful examples all around us. I treasure the songs my son writes. He captures emotions we have always been trying to put into words then sets them to music. You can think of many more of your own.

Another allegory is one cannot criticize molten ore because it is not shiny, strong, and useful. Until going through the smelting process, ore does not have the characteristics and qualities we seek.  We cannot criticize its current state because it has not yet become the very thing for which it is destined—steel. Life is the process and exaltation is the destination, and our capacity and worth remain intact despite life’s obstacles. We face challenges and think our worth is diminished. It is not.

A symphony starts with a single note. I believe your capacity and worth is of infinite value, because the orchestration of our lives has not been left to chance or good fortune or even ability. The Conductor of the symphony of our lives is Jesus Christ, the literal Son of God. If we will but let him, he will turn our weaknesses into our finest features. The Great Plan of Happiness is great because it is perfect and accounts for every need. And because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, through our obedience, we have the chance to become like unto our Father in Heaven. Moroni 7:48.

Figuratively speaking, you may feel like an acorn now, but your destiny is to become an oak tree. We will grow into the people we hope to become and achieve all the qualities for which we long. The righteous intents of our hearts will all be fulfilled. Our Conductor is a master at creating harmony, life, love, and joy. We can become experts by following him, but even then a plan has been established so that we can recover when we fall. I’ll say it again; he is an expert at creating harmony.
If you are reading this and thinking “I know this is well meaning and all, but he is talking about others. This doesn’t apply to me. I am an exception.” You think you can’t, you won’t, you aren’t. Well, if you don’t believe me, let’s see what others are saying:

Gordon B. Hinckley – A Chosen Generation
I have great confidence in our young people as a whole. I regard you as the finest generation in the history of the Church.

David Bednar – Strength to become perfect
The enabling power of the Atonement strengthens us to do and be good and serve beyond our own individual desire and natural capacity.

Jeffrey Holland – You’re the greatest
We think you’re the greatest. We are immensely proud of you…Be faithful. Be courageous. Be worthy. Be clean…What we are talking about is how terrific you are and how terrific your life can be if you will live the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Sherry Dew – You Were Born to Lead
A common theme of patriarchal blessings given to men and women your age is that you were sent now because our Father’s most trustworthy children would be needed in the final, decisive battle for righteousness. That is who you are, and it is who you have always been.

Jesus Christ – Embrace the Gift
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16

What every spouse wants, what every family, household, and nation needs are people who appreciate and understand the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in the midst of hardship. Our capacity to change the world and improve the lives of mankind starts with helping us all recognize our value and break through the distractions that tell us differently, motivating those who hear the message to embrace it and create harmony.

Someday we will look back on the hardships that we face and life’s seemingly endless difficulties, and we will see an intricate web of plans to build, strengthen, and help us become the people we are really meant to be. It’s much bigger than us alone. Each of us represents a kingdom.
During this journey, we can’t criticize the imperfections of our earlier days, because it was on their backs that we build the achievements that we will attain and those we now enjoy.

Our flaws are given to us so that we can grow from the process of overcoming our weaknesses and revel in appreciation and glory that comes only through the Son–which is the great plan of happiness!

When I was a young man and attended youth conference or Education Week, we were told that we had a great work to do. Now I know why. We have been called to parent the greatest generation of young people that the world has ever known.

From President George Q. Cannon: “When we went forth into the waters of baptism and covenanted with our Father in Heaven to serve Him and keep His commandments, He bound Himself also by covenant to us that He would never desert us, never leave us to ourselves, never forget us, that in the midst of trials and hardships, when everything was arrayed against us, He would be near us and would sustain us.”

We are not the composer of our destiny, He is.

You too are a work of art. His masterpiece.

Additional Resources:

Head on out there and dance

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Ye Must Be Born Again

The Old Violin

The Touch of the Masters Hand

‘Twas battered and scarred,
And the auctioneer thought it
hardly worth his while
To waste his time on the old violin,
but he held it up with a smile.

“What am I bid, good people”, he cried,
“Who starts the bidding for me?”
“One dollar, one dollar, Do I hear two?”
“Two dollars, who makes it three?”
“Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three,”

But, No,
From the room far back a gray bearded man
Came forward and picked up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet
As sweet as the angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said “What now am I bid for this old violin?”
As he held it aloft with its’ bow.

“One thousand, one thousand, Do I hear two?”
“Two thousand, Who makes it three?”
“Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone”, said he.

The audience cheered,
But some of them cried,
“We just don’t understand.”
“What changed its’ worth?”
Swift came the reply.
“The Touch of the Masters Hand.”

“And many a man with life out of tune
All battered and bruised with hardship
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
Much like that old violin

A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on.
He is going once, he is going twice,
He is going and almost gone.

But the Master comes,
And the foolish crowd never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the Touch of the Masters’ Hand.

– by Myra Brooks Welch

Walter Penning

In 1989, Walter Penning formed a consultancy based in Salt Lake City and empowered his clients by streamlining processes and building a loyal, lifetime customer base with great customer service. His true passion is found in his family. He says the best decision he ever made was to marry his sweetheart and have children. The wonderful family she has given him and her constant love, support, and patience amid life’s challenges is his panacea.

I decided to start with a snake. Tubes are relatively easy, and if you make it wavy, it looks like a snake. I cut into the leg of the pants, getting two roughly similar pieces and some odd gray fabric I hadn’t realized was along for the ride.

From there, I got a needle and thread, and started hand-sewing the two pieces together along the sides. A possible technique to use here is to poke the needle through the fabric from the same side every time, looping back to the front. In general, look at the hems of your clothing, and see if you can’t figure out what the path of the thread and therefore the needle is. At any rate, I sewed the pieces together, leaving the mouth of the snake open. Ostensibly, this is where I should have worn a thimble, but it was never the same finger that the needle pricked – the spiteful thing.

Here’s where you can learn from my mistake. See, that gray cloth which will be the inside of the snake’s mouth, should be on the inside of the mouth right now. I thought I was being clever, but no. When you turn the snake inside out, you can also turn the weird little pocket the gray fabric makes inside out. That way the entire snake is round and photogenic. Also, make sure to sew one gray mouth bit on both mouth flaps on the original snake. They are the hard and soft palate, I guess.

Looking at that snake, I feel as though it belongs in Nightmare Before Christmas. If that’s an aesthetic you are going for, that’s cool too. Now, that is one hungry snake. To keep it from devouring the souls of your sleeping roommates, try stuffing it with the very fabric from which it was cut. You can use cotton batting, like what you might find in stuffed animals and pillows, but I knew my stitching wasn’t particularly tight, so the stuffing would show through.

You’re a crafter, Harry. At any rate, wrap some cloth around a chopstick or pen and stuff it down the snake’s throat. You may find that it won’t reach all the way back, so you should bunch the snake up around the chopstick and push the material off into the dark bowels of your misshapen creation. You may need to pack it in with the chopstick, and then stuff more cloth after that. Once the body is firm, put some of the scraps into the little mouth pockets from before. This will give the snake a sense of maturity instead of appearing as a sock-puppet.

Crikey, what a ripper! Sadly, I only thought of that quote once while making this thing, and did not say it aloud. At any rate, once you have everything stuffed, it’s time to sew the mouth shut. Specifically, at the back of the throat, where the pocket edges meet.

Like so. You can even attach a wire hanger to the bottom of the snake’s jaw, and you will have yourself a Muppet. Now you can entertain younger relatives, quote Indiana Jones, and throw snakes at people. Use this power wisely, and you will gain great influence throughout the land.

Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to ldsblogs@moregoodfoundation.org. Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.

3 cups powdered sugar

6 Tbs cocoa powder

¾ cup powdered milk

½ cup of butter (one stick)

½ cup corn syrup

1 tsp vanilla

Chocolate playdough is pretty simple. Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the wet in another. Make sure to really beat the butter-syrup-vanilla mixture, until most of the lumps are either gone or small. It should look like this:

The powders should look like fluffy hot cocoa mix; in fact, you should try it as hot cocoa. It seems like it would work out well. At any rate, add the dry to the wet in 1/3 increments; a lot of the lumps will mix out as the combination thickens. A quick note here: powdered milk can be rather granular, and give the dough a rougher texture than what you may want. Try to get some milk powder that is very fine grain, or perhaps run it through a wheat grinder. Maybe go without entirely and substitute in some flour?

It should look like this, which is to say, the best part of a brownie, the soft middle. At this point, powder a surface with flour and/or powdered sugar, and knead the dough until it smooths out a bit and looks shiny.

I added a little oil to this to keep it from sticking as much, and it still needed a fair amount of kneading and powder infusions. At room temperature, the dough is pretty soft and still a little sticky. The solution is to toss it into the freezer for a little while, perhaps 30 minutes? As long as it’s cold it’s stiffer, and ironically easier to work with. Now what do you do with a drunken sailor? You can flatten it out an use cookie cutters, or shape a heart by hand.

If you want to make something a little fancy, take a piece off and flatten it into a long rectangle-ish thing. Curl the end back and up a little to make a little bud, then roll the strip of dough up. Next, grab some more of the dough and make petals like in the picture above, the thinner the better. Apply those petals to the sides of the roll, and keep going until it looks like a rose.

Oh yeah, you got romance in the bag. For some other ideas, scroll back up to the picture at the top of the article. I personally recommend that mustache; everyone loves fake mustaches. Keen-eyed readers may notice a rather large thing on the left. Your hawk sensibilities have you salivating, because that is a rabbit. Yes, not only can you surprise your loved ones with roses and mustaches, you are now ready for Easter.

Cute enough to eat, eh? In fact, if you have done everything this far, and not eaten a bit of the dough, you have my admiration, tinged with fear at your inhuman self-control. For those wondering, the flavor is rather familiar; this dough tastes like a tootsie roll.

And there you have it, a way to salvage whatever mistakes you may have made on Valentine’s Day. Of course, like Christmas, it is important to carry the spirit of the holiday with you always, giving your loved ones handmade chocolate sculptures as you are moved to do so.

Hmmm… it also looks like poo, so there may be some pranking opportunities there. Food for thought.

Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to ldsblogs@moregoodfoundation.org. Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.

Now, I said popup book, but I will mostly be working with pulled tabs and other things. For instance, what I have done here is cut little holes in the black paper. The tabs are made of black paper as well, except for the very tip, which is white. This way, when you pull the tab, it looks like a white dot is traveling from one hole to the next. Keep in mind, when you pull the tab, you have to have black paper behind so that the holes keep that illusion of motion and stillness. That backdrop also helps keep the tab in place.

Are you ready for some popup action? Are you? Okay, you are. First, fold the paper in half, then fold the crease side at an angle. Open it back up and reverse some of the fold lines, and you get this. It’s a pretty bland popup, but we’ll fix that.

Is he a dot, or is he a speck?
When he’s underwater does he get wet?
Or does the water get him instead?
Nobody knows, Particle Man

Asking the deep questions, this song. So, to get those lovely waves, put your piece of paper on a cutting board and get your old friend, Mr. “Raise the stakes” knife. Cut wavy lines, bonus points if they are symmetrical, and push in every other wavy part. Not pictured here is gluing the paper to a piece of white printer paper for a background. It totally happened later though.

Triangle Man, Triangle Man
Triangle Man hates particle man
They have a fight, Triangle wins
Triangle Man

Some tension enters a song otherwise dominated by carefree accordion solos. Seriously, look it up. Particle Man’s tab is pretty much the same as the ones before. Triangle Man, however, wiggles around at the end of a tab that passes through a curved line cut in the paper. On the back, I also taped a band of paper over the tab so that it can’t go crazy wiggling around. As for the dramatic triangle vs particle fight, Triangle Man is simply on a little L tab that slides him along a horizontal slit in the paper. Particle man is a square glued to the paper for reasons known only by Particle Man.



Universe man, Universe man
Size of the entire universe man
Usually kind to smaller man
Universe man

The man war has escalated quickly. Also, this is the only popup man, which makes him mighty. When making popup elements like this, it’s good to start with a folded in half paper. That way it’s symmetrical and it knows what to do when the page turns. Universe Man is directly on the crease, and those triangles at the bottom are the only things holding him there. Those folds also are the pivot for when the page turns, so it looks like Universe Man is bowing every time you turn the page. He’s very polite.


He’s got a watch with a minute hand,
Millenium hand and an eon hand
When they meet it’s a happy land
Powerful man, Universe Man.

Unsurprisingly, Universe Man is a hippy. Now, while that page looks pretty static, that isn’t good enough. The circles on the watch actually turn. To accomplish this, I poked a needle and thread through the bottom two circles and the arm (sorry, Universe Man, but it’s for art. He understands.) Then I taped the thread down on the underside of the arm, and as close as possible to the center of the top circle. That way, the two circles below turn like wheels, and the one on top like a circle on a thread. It looks like this:
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|
|
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Except, you know, try to have as little slack on the string as possible.

Person man, person man
Hit on the head with a frying pan
Lives his life in a garbage can
Person man

As if the interactions of sentient particles and universes weren’t deep enough, now we get to the human condition. As for the construction of this page, there’s not a lot to say. The frying pan is on a tab through yet another curved cut, and I had to resort to origami paper and grey cardboard to get the colors I wanted. Oh, and each of these pages is cut down to 11X8.5, which leaves me with handy strips of paper in the same color as the page.


Is he depressed or is he a mess?
Does he feel totally worthless?
Who came up with person man?
Degraded man, person man

Harsh, but to be fair, he does live in a garbage can. This is why I interpreted the scene a bit more lightly, with a little tab that can make him smile and frown. I had to cut through both the head and the paper under the head, but it works. The flap covering the sitting form of Person man is only taped on one side, hence flapitude.


Triangle man, triangle man
Triangle man hates person man
They have a fight, triangle wins
Triangle man

Who saw that coming? Truly, we are dealing with a sophisticated story, not afraid to have the classically noir ending of geometric supremacy. The entire fight scene is filmed on a single tab, all the better to wiggle it around and back and forth to get that shaky-cam effect. In the end, Triangle Man spins around on his thread, pretending really hard to be an equilateral triangle, when he is more accurately an isosceles triangle. Perhaps his feelings of inadequacy about his angles fuel his aggression? There is such depth and convoluted backstory, it boggles the mind. At least now, he is happy.

And so our story ends, where I tape all the edges of the pages together and then to a brown piece of construction paper for a binding. Perhaps someday I will read this to one of my grandchildren, emulating the grandfatherly love and kindness exemplified in the Princess Bride movie. Either that, or I will place this book on a window sill and guests will pick it up and read it.

May you too set an epic song to construction paper and glue, with wiggly bits and more tabs than is reasonable.,

Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to ldsblogs@moregoodfoundation.org. Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.

See the letters? That’s so I can remember what colors go where later on. Also, since black is ‘B’, blue has to be ‘U’, clearly.
C04
Look, a handy little scale on the side to set the order right. As for what you use to cut the construction paper, that is up to you. An exacto knife is traditional, but I’m not sure what kind of cutting board you would need, and I don’t have one. Instead, my weapon of choice is my steak knife. The cutting board is just a cutting board, the flexible plastic kind, for easy clean up.

Now, this may be a bit counter-intuitive, but you don’t cut the construction paper of the color written in the diagram. Instead, you cut the next color up to have a hole for the lower color. Not pictured here is a featureless white rectangle deathly afraid of knives. Joke’s on him; there will be scissors in the end.

I then proceed to ignore the statement I just wrote about leaving holes for the lower color, but that is because I realized I wanted a bit of depth to the streambed. I gave it a darker background, as well as some character flaws. See the diagram up there? Since I have to cut through it to make the shapes in the construction paper, it gets rather frazzled and shifty. Keep a steady hand on it, or it will tear or move right in the middle of a line you were making.

Light blue is pretty simple, just a bit narrower than the shores of the stream, letting that deeper blue in around the edges. Light blue is chill like that.

Green went much the same way. At this point, I trimmed down the edges of the layers in a very broad fashion. This is because paper doesn’t like being cut, and will wiggle and squirm away like a child fleeing the prospect of pants.

So I had glued down most of the elements, but I wasn’t satisfied with the look of it all. Turns out large, uninterrupted blocks of color can be a bit bland. That’s when I decided to get fancy with light blue over there, and carve out a few black circles for rocks.

Looks pretty good, but now the stream is overdressed for the party. While I do advocate improvisational artistry, this is one of the drawbacks. To make up for my addition, I had to add more detail to the other areas of the piece.

Good thing I saved the scraps from the previous cuts. Now, this art form is hardly limited to landscapes; anything with strong shapes will work. Especially mildly embarrassing pictures a sibling takes with your camera.

(What do you call an agreement sent through snapchat? A verbal agreement? A digital agreement? At any rate, my sister okayed the use of this picture.)

Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to ldsblogs@moregoodfoundation.org. Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.

Cut away the corners, giving yourself the tail end of a tear-drop shape. That way it looks more bird-like. Then find the center of balance by trial and error, and mark it somehow. This can be a little difficult, since writing exerts a certain amount of pressure, which will make the whole thing tilt and probably fall if you aren’t careful. It is at the time of taking this picture that I developed empathy for all the left-handed photographers. As you can see, my right hand is occupied, and my camera really wasn’t meant to be operated in a sinister fashion.

Remember that center of balance? That is now the bird’s beak. Cut away the front edge to get that wing shape that is so very important to the illusion of the thing. Having said that, be careful that you don’t cut too deep into the heart of the cardboard, or you may very well end up with a center of balance that is not part of the thing itself.

I hope you saved those cardboard scraps from earlier, because now we are getting topographical. This is also when you can learn from my mistake. As you can see, the wings are pretty lumpy on this side, which makes the trick to the balancing bird a bit obvious. What you can do is to glue the pieces over the wings as you see in the picture, wait for them to dry, then flip the entire thing over and glue the body pieces on the other side. This way the wings will look like they are being swept low, as opposed to arched high. Once this is done, it still looks rather angular and obviously cobbled together. The solution?

Waste food. Yes, that is some printer paper torn up and dipped in a flour-water solution we all know and love as paper mache. It doesn’t take much; I mixed up the stuff in a cereal bowl. Once you have your bird smoothed out, keep in mind that the flour will dry yellow on the paper. If that bothers you, feel free to paint that bird with all the colors of the wind, or your acrylic bottles.

That’s how it looks when it’s dried. You are now ready to entertain nearly anyone for the entirety of their child-like attention span, which is to say ten minutes at the most. After the novelty wears off, make a game of perching the bird in odd places. Alternatively, if you paint it really well, you can glue it to a hummingbird feeder as a decoy. Fly on over, the sugar-water’s fine.

To read more of Brandon’s articles, click the image.

Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to ldsblogs@moregoodfoundation.org.  Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.

At this point, I started thinking of other ways to have cool melty patterns. It turns out that simply laying crayon pieces on some paper and trying to melt them with the thinking man’s flamethrower is a bad idea. They just roll around. What about drawing on some paper, and melting the drawing? Pretty much no difference. No, if I was going to melt that wax, I needed to confine it.

So I broke off some chunks of crayon and folded the paper around the edges. As you might guess, that wax took a little while to get melty. Halfway along, I helped it reach its full potential like a good sports coach; by squishing it flat.

From there, I picked it up and moved it around. I kept the infrared emitter trained on it, and watched the wax flow in different directions.

Is that an eight-legged horse stuck in taffy? Or is it like 90% of those ink blots, and actually a…

Butterfly. There were some lumps left over, so I gingerly scrapped them off and saved them for later. To cover up the surgery scars, the sirocco wind-waker spent a handful of seconds softening the edges.
At this point, I had spent all of perhaps 33 cents of my dollar store crayons. Determined to make up for lost time, I got out the foil.

The only sensible way to shake hands with the devil. Anyways, there is no lamer pun than “do you need a hand?” The best way to pull it off is to be on the receiving end, and to have a third hand on standby, preferably as a piece of art.

There is some irony in Disney’s Frozen crayons being melted here, but mostly I got them because they were large. The ol’ therminator took a little while to melt all that wax, but it didn’t give up.

The little pyroclastic flow simulator that could. You are looking at about a dollar of wax made to look like highly suspicious jello. That wasn’t enough for me. I had to add the other one dollars’ worth of wax.

It isn’t pretty. Those crayons have gone through a soul-darkening ordeal, and I got tired of peeling paper off of ungrateful sticks. In the end, they all melt alike, they always do.

I did make some effort to remove the empty papers from the mold, and it looks like I was picking through a wet ash tray. The nice thing is, wax is relatively easy to get off of your skin, provided you didn’t heat it up too much.

After letting it cool for hours, I peeled the foil away, revealing a rainbow hand. Go ahead, scroll up to the header to see it in its morning glory. Now scroll back to me. Old spice. Australian “odd space.” Now you too can tell your friends, “No, I already got one, and it’s very nice.” French accents are optional, but recommended.

Brandon Quist

Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.