How It's Always Been Done

Scrambling around the house trying to package up a bunch of crosses I had recently finished was not on my agenda for today. Usually everything is in its place. But the packaging items were out and I needed to wrap a gift.

For some reason, I thought opening up the drawer and closing it again repeatedly would have some sort of magical re-appearance of items.

Anyway.

Someone - a very awesome someone- had requested 10 crosses to be made and I wanted the presentation to look great. I was not going to be present when they received it.

I have been creating these crosses for awhile. They are each made by hand and are very unique. (You can read more about that in THIS post.) Because of their uniqueness, I couldn't just wrap them up in anything.

So here I am, scrambling around, trying to make them look presentable to no avail. My mindset needed to change. My craft dresser was not going to handle the abrupt drawer openings and closings...

Hmmmm. (Brain gears turning.)

The box was ready. I save boxes all the time for these types of giving occasions. There is no reason to buy a new one for every project. That's why I thought the tissue/wrapping paper would also be easy.

How can I be out of tissue paper?

Mindset slowly changing.

Looking everywhere for tissue paper, or something to stuff into the box, I realized I had a pile of D's fancy work shirts in the sewing room that needed to be mended. But ONE, miraculously, was a shirt practically new, highly starched, it just had this unfortunate, un-mendable tear. I was holding onto it for some-time sewing project because the quality was so lovely.

Eureka! I have my box filler.

I ripped up the shirt into the packaging size and filled the box as needed, carefully placed the crosses into the box. This looks good. I then closed it up.

Now to tie the box with a literal bow. I opened my ribbon drawer - yes, I have a ribbon drawer (poor abused craft drawer at this point) with tons of ribbons all shapes, sizes, and colors - but none of the ribbons seemed to work. To fancy, not the right size. Using the shirt as filler was too creative to just throw any old ribbon around this thing.

Ribbon was... too obvious.

The torn up shirt was staring at me. I saw the button hole portion of the shirt. It's long like a ribbon. Quickly, I grabbed that shirt and ripped it off. (Another EUREKA!) . It was exactly the perfect length.

That, my friends, became the ribbon – frayed edges and all!

The look of this box makes me so happy! I think too often we do things for the sake of "that's how it's always been done". There has never been a more annoying phrase, in my opinion. This mindset ruins innovation and ingenuity – 2 things of which I celebrate.

This phrase has kept the status quo on way too many things. It has hindered progress in businesses, households – the ART WORLD. It has made things... safe and comfortable. Both of those things are the enemy to creativity.

Since I work in branding in my day job (entrepreneur life of Topping Consulting), it has always been second nature to make something cohesive. This gift was made by hand, re-purposing scraps, not normally for the type of craft. It had a polished but humble look. Therefore, the packaging needed to be just that. I re-purposed a high-end shirt – not usually used for packaging.

Closing this up, I swear.

I want to send you out on your day today, to reconsider something that you have always done "that way" because of being on daily auto pilot. Try it some other way, try that weird food, rip up that shirt... drive down that other road.

Have a good day now.

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Last blog I talked about using AI as a dictation method for writing these blog entries. That is still in progress. I hate typing, but this one was typed AND edited. Today's disclaimer is a reminder that all this is human made writing – even with the em dash usage. All errors and thoughts are my own. Thank God!