Being a school teacher is a mixed bag for creativity. On
the one hand, it gobbles up a bunch of my time. On the
other it gives access to vast amounts of material. Some of
these you can easily imagine -- old student papers that I
can roll in my sculpture sticks, cardboard, pencils that
students leave (more on that later).
But one thing you might not have thought of is sheet of
photos from myself given out by the company that takes our
pictures for the yearbook. Well, where there is a resource
there is an opportunity for creativity and mischief.
It is always a good idea to stay in the good graces of a
school librarian. I often come in and give the best
version of my bizarro routine. It amuses her and helps me
get some of the crazies out before I turn on my Zen-robot
routine for the students. One example is how many origami
frogs I have made in front of her [1]. I take almost any
dumb piece of paper we get sent and make a frog. The first
time I used the principal's copy code, I took a photo copy
of my hand giving the middle finger, showed her that, and
then turned that into a frog (middle finger buried within
the design of the frog, of course).
[1] I prefer the term paper-folding, but that's neither
here nor there.
So what was I to do with these glossy sheet with different
sized photos of myself? Well, I was going to throw it
away, but the librarian asked me why I didn't turn into a
frog? The real answer was that I didn't really initially
like how that glossy texture felt, and while this is just
one more indication that I probably somewhere on *the*
spectrum, I have learned not to tell people these things.
However, I am so mildly on the the spectrum that people I
can usually follow people's suggestions and not lock up.
And so I pulled that paper out of the trash -- how's *that*
for some junk punk? -- and folded into a frog, with my
photos on the outside.
I then realized this would serve my turn quite well in my
Project Mayhem, Christmas edition -- ie I am going to give
it as a present to my mum.
This got me started on making a package, a perfect excuse
to work with the sculpting sticks I have recently been
experimenting with. I was able to make two circles that
fit each other pretty well out of my sticks, and then
connect them so they are a real container. I am probably
going to line the outside with holiday wrapping paper, or
I guess I can use old student papers and then paint it.
The container *is* much more work than the frog toy in
question. But what mother doesn't want some pictures of
her only child?
Next topic! Pencils.
I have mentioned Phillip Stevens before. He has a YouTube
channel where he makes things, with a strong emphasis on
hand tools and what people with very little financial
resources can do.
He lives near a school and so he is able to source small
pencil stubs, which he then uses sticks cut from scraps to
make into pencil extenders.
Note 1: here in the States, what with all of the
carelessness of affluenza, the pencils I find are usually
way longer than what he finds. I am more likely to find a
full length pencil than a real stub.
Note 2: But I did find such a stub yesterday, so finally I
was able to do the short work on making a pencil extender.
Note 3: You know what grinds my gears? Pencil sharpeners.
Because pencils were foregrounded in my mind, I thought to
myself "can't I just sharpen them with a knife?" This had
never occurred to me, though web searches showed it is
perfectly obvious to a bunch of people, in particular
artists because it lets them get a larger surface area
exposed to make sketching easier.
I worked on the technique some last night, and I don't
think I'm ever going back. I'll probably just bring dull
pencils from school home and sharpen them with a knife in
batches and bring them back for my cup so I can allow
students to borrow pencils that they left on my floor
earlier in the year.
- +
I love to hear from people. My email is the handle minus
"net" (so, a work by Voltaire that starts with "c"), at
sdf.org.
While we're adding boiler plate: this work is hereby in the
public domain. Do what you want with it.