(My ceramic apron)

It’s been a really beautiful day here today in Greystones – sunshine, blue shies and little fluffy clouds. I’m still working on my wall painting, but I sense there’s a strong possibility it won’t in fact take five months to complete. I seem focused in a way that has not been my experience in the past. I think my creativity work is effecting even this little project.

(Paper aprons)

When I started my art, craft and design course last year one of the tools we had to supply was an apron. Fair enough, I had lots of aprons for cooking so I used one of them. But although I had lots of aprons to use while cooking I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t use them while cooking. Don’t know why. So I was surprised by how much fun it was to wear them for crafting. Yep – fun. I know – weird.

(Painted crepe paper apron)

Then when we went to France I brought along my favourite apron (you do have a favourite apron, don’t you?) It was natural, crafting was now connected to wearing an apron. Over there putting my apron on seemed to draw me towards the trestle table and work (by work I mean play… with direction!) In the afternoons I kept the apron on for writing the blog post.

(Apron Strings)

Now I think there was a connection between wearing an apron and getting things done. Wearing an apron became an anchor (a strong response to an external trigger) to focussed creative work. And the anchor is still working. Because… the wall painting (I’ve been wearing an apron again and also painting-clothes – wall painting is extremely splatter-y) is definitely getting done.

(And a fuzzy picture of my other ceramic apron)

It was only as I searched for pictures for this blog post that I remembered all the ways aprons inspired my crafting in the past year. I’ve been making aprons in one form or another all this time not realising they were also making me 🙂

I like that, Mairead.