A Beautiful Art Deco Grate Crayon Rubbing

 I've been looking at the grate in this building for years and years in Bangor, Maine. Recently I decided to do a crayon rubbing of it. No building was harmed in this process.   

So this past Thursday, I took an hour to do a crayon rubbing. The Green crayon is a little more wax-y than a black crayon. I think next time I will try black. This is part of a community texture gathering project done to be offered to the library. 

If you need supplies, Gravestone Rubbing Supplies has a special kind of paper which is perfect for doing crayon rubbings. 

More to come on the community project! 

Lessons in Melting Crayons

I'm continuing my journey in melting crayons to make palm sized crayons for crayon rubbings. I did a test where I melted inexpensive crayons and Crayola brand. The inexpensive crayons work well enough in crayon form but they did NOT melt as well as Crayola crayons. If you look at the test comparison below - the cheap crayons are the ones which are kind of lumpy, and the Crayola was much smoother. As far as silicon cupcake pans go, I liked the ones that are singles not in pan form. I used an Oxo brand. My goal is to make 100, and I think I will be done by the end of the week. This is for a project with a local library. More on that to come! 

 

Real Energy Only™️

Today, when the markets were plummeting, I had a dark chocolate with my coffee. These are wrapped with pithy sayings on the inside. Today's read, "Good energy only!"  If I were making chocolates, and making wrappers with sayings printed on them, I would edit this one to "Real energy only!" 

When I read the wrapper before I edited it, a phrase my mom from Georgia used to say went through my mind: "They can kiss Ol' Maude backing up!"  My mom was a sassy and colorful character. 

There's a reason that Kate Bowler's book Everything Happens and her social media resonates with me. It's honest. It acknowledges the totality of life. Hard things happen. And to pretend they do not is to hide from reality, and perhaps miss some solutions. (Just ask AI the question "what are the pros and cons of positive thinking?")

It's true that what we think about influences our actions, and that influences our lives. But I'm on Real Energy Only™️  which acknowledges what is happening. We celebrate it or we mourn and do our best to solve problems. We don't ignore. 

There's a whole lot of reality going on right now, and we cannot ignore it. 

Making Palm-sized Crayons for Gravestone Rubbing Techniques

A crayon rubbing of a heuchera flower stem.

In the days before cameras, paper copies of gravestones were taken using crayon rubbing techniques. Historians and genealogists used these copies to prove birth and death dates for people. Doing crayon rubbings of old gravestones is discouraged by some now, because some stones have been damaged in the past by multiple rubbings weakening the stones. Some cemeteries do not allow people to take do gravestone rubbings. It's always best to ask and it is always recommended to protect historical markers so it's as if you've never been there. 

I'm working on a project where I will need a lot of palm sized crayons for working with children and other people, and the budget won't allow to buy the professional palm sized crayons. So I decided to try melting down old crayons to make them. 

I used a silicon muffin tin for this project, and an oven. First, I peeled the crayons. This can be therapeutic, or soul-crushing. I took a craft knife and cut through the length of the paper to make it easier to peel the crayons.

Then I broke them into pieces and sorted them into color families in a silicon muuffin pan. 

I covered a baking sheet with tin foil, and put the silicon muffin tin on the covered baking sheet. I preheated the oven to 275 degrees Fahrenheit. Then I "baked" the crayons for around 12-15 minutes, until all the crayons were melted. The cups on the outer part of the muffin tin melted first. It took a while for the middle sections to melt. I could have stirred the wax at this point, to make the color consistent. But I kind of like the striations. 

After they came out of the oven, I let them cool and harden 

for about 30 minutes while I was doing other things. 

Then I popped them out of the muffin pan. 

       That part was fun! 

The above work like crayons do, because they ARE crayons. I tested them out, and they work for my purposes for the group project. Having said that, if I were only going to be doing this for me, I would buy an official one like those sold at Gravestone Rubbing Supplies.

    

Not Feeling Christmasy? Remember Christmas in 5 Ways

I repost this 2011 post every year early in December because *I* need to read it.

But it seems to resonate with others, too.

God bless you all.  

(This is a repost from Christmas 2011, but I thought it bears repeating). 

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that
 he was not feeling very Christmas-y. 

I replied, 

"Define Christmas-y."

I'm not trying to discount his feelings.  What I mean is,  

"What makes you feel like it's Christmas?"

When we don't feel Christmasy it's because we're comparing our "now" with some memory from the past or some image that's presented in society. And often it doesn't measure up. Sometimes we have real reasons that we're feeling the Christmas blues. Maybe we're lonely or depressed. Maybe we're overwhelmed and harried.

Many years ago, when my son who is autistic was small, I had to adjust my views of Christmas. In my growing up, Christmas was about a big toy opening fest on Christmas Day. I thought I would bring that to my family tradition when I had kids. But my son at the time had no interest in toys. So shopping for Christmas presents highlighted that the path we were traveling was a different one, and I didn't know the way. Sometimes I still feel that twinge when I walk the toy aisles. Going to Christmas events was either impossible or very hard when my son was young. My husband and I spent quite a few family Christmas parties off in another room sitting under a blanket with my son, who was completely overwhelmed. I was sad during this time. And I felt lonely. This wasn't the expected path. I had to come to terms that the Christmas season for us was going to be different from what I had envisioned. It wouldn't be a recreation of my childhood Christmases. (Edit added in December 2021 - my son really enjoys presents and Christmas now! He especially loves family gatherings.)


Here's the manger scene  as set up by our son with autism.... I'm not changing it. 

Yesterday I saw a friend at the grocery store who wasn't going to be able to do all the things that Christmas brings because of a busy work schedule.  My suggestion to her?

Pick 5 Things to Do

Pick 5 things to do that if you don't do them it doesn't feel like Christmas. And forget the rest. That list will be different for everyone.

Here's our list:

1. Get a Christmas tree and decorate it as a family.
2. Listen to and sing Christmas carols.  Pandora.com is great for this.  Type in your favorite Christmas carol, your favorite artist and listen to lots of wonderful Christmas songs.  
3. Hang lights.   This year we hung some colored outdoor lights that remind me of the giant ones that used to hang at Granddad's house when I was very small.
4. Make cookies and/or cinnamon dough ornaments.
5. Read the biblical Christmas story at Bible Gateway.   Matthew 1:18-25; Matthew 2:1-12; Luke 1:26-38; Luke 2:1-20.  

Of course, there's more. I didn't put presents in, and we do that. But you get the idea. Make a list that is YOUR list of what preparing for Christmas means. For some people, it means putting up 12 Christmas trees around their house. For others, it means volunteering.   

Accept Your Un-Christmasy Feelings    

Accept that in this year, you may feel like the tired shepherds away in the fields working the graveyard shift. You may feel like Joseph trying to find a place for his family to sleep in a strange city. Or like Mary, waiting and wondering what is to come. Perhaps you're the harried innkeeper trying to wedge in another paying customer. Or maybe you are like old Simeon and Anna, who had been waiting a long, long time for the birth of the promised Messiah.

Christmas still came for all of those people,
despite how they were feeling. 

Tis the Season for Gingerbread

Tasha Tudor's grandmother's gingerbread recipe is below. I want to compare it to my own great-grandmother's recipe, pictured above. There are some similarities.  I made Great-grandma Minnie Lee's recipe a couple years back, and it tasted good.  It wasn't cake-like but quite dense. I wonder if she used self-rising flour so I will try her recipe sometime to check that out. Her children loved the recipe above. 

Tasha Tudor's Grandmother's Recipe: 

Makes 24 servings

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 farm-fresh egg, beaten
• 1 cup light molasses
• 2 1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup hot water
• 1 1/2 cups dark raisins

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease two iron cornbread pans (12 pieces each) or, if you do not have cornbread pans, two 9 ¥ 9-inch square cake tins.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and the molasses, then sift in the dry ingredients and mix the batter well. Add the hot water and beat until smooth. Stir in the raisins.

3. Fill the prepared tins or pans half full, place them in the preheated oven, and bake the gingerbread 25 to 30 minutes, or until done.

Documenting What IS

Summer in Maine is a very short season, meant to be celebrated and enjoyed. We've been juggling things, as people do. Art got set aside for a while in the process. 

Summer is over now, so to prime the pump, I pulled out some supplies, and did a quick example of a crayon rubbing for a larger project I'm working on. This is the flower stem from a heuchera plant. It was made using a red Oldestone wax rubbing cupcake onto simple copy paper. I'm reproducing what nature has made, so I can't call it my art - at least not yet, until I use it intentionally in a larger work.  I have some ideas I'm working on.  I love how the bloom stems look like a briar stitch on an old crazy quilt. For now, I am "documenting what IS" in more ways than one.