Impatience & How-To Personalize Glass Your Glass Bowls

Hullo All!

This week’s lesson is on patience… and impatience…

Before you click away, I’m not going to give you a Sunday-School-Lesson. Instead, we are going to give a little looksee into the history of “patience.”

The origin of the word is derived from a Latin root meaning “to bear suffering” (loosely translated). [Suddenly the reason doctors’ clients are called “patients” makes sense, no?] Anyway, the Romans had their own special way of chastising the easily-excitable and self-motivated people of their time (uncharitably labeled “impatient”). Imagine yourself a young Roman lad or lass, grass stains on your toga's tunic as you explain to your Pa how you failed to catch the goat. He, stern but smiling, might say to you “maxima enim..patientia virtus,” and send you on your way. Thus was the overrated, but illustrious, phrase “patience is the greatest virtue” coined.

Since then, any number of wise (some more than others) people have weighed in with their own commentary on the virtue of patience. St. Augustine considered patience the companion of wisdom. Shakespeare opined, “How poor are they that have not patience!” However, I tend to agree with Ambrose Bierce who said: “Patience is but a minor form of despair disguised as virtue.” And, in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer rejoined wittily to the old maxim with “but virtue can hurt you.”

Have I lost you yet? Before you assume I am just a patience-hater seeking to justify my wicked ways, there are two areas in which I whole-heartedly admire patience: crafting, and vengeance.

As a general rule, I am not a vengeful creature, but I can appreciate the art of others. “Beware the fury of a patient man,” John Dryden warned in Absalam and Achitophel. If that doesn’t just give you shivers up and down your spine, nothing will. “Law Abiding Citizen,” anyone?

On to crafting…

This week I was too impatient to get to the “good stuff” of my craft to sit still and think about my steps before I did them. Thus I learned several important lessons:

1)   Always lay down newspaper.

2)   Always spray paint outside.

3)   Always spray the paint AWAY from your face. (Don’t ask…)

4)   Never allow a dripping bowl to rest on newspaper to dry, instead suspend it.

5)   Never attempt to remove a *delicate* stencil while wet.

6)   Almost never spray paint over wet spray paint.

You do not need to heed my advice, but if you do not you will:

1)   Have a bowl stuck to your table/sidewalk.

2)   Have a house that reeks for several hours *cough* days.

3)   Have oddly colored boogers. (Mine were blue).

4)   Have a bowl with tiny newsprint on the rim.

5)   Have a messed up image.

6)   And your project WILL be messy up and you WILL have to start over.

And so speaks the sage of wisdom, me! Okay, maybe I should say “And so speaks the sage of experience.”

How-To Personalize Your Glass Bowls

Materials:

Newspaper

2 Glass Bowls

2 Different Colors of Spray Paint

Spray Adhesive

Spray Sealent

2 Old Cups (to suspend the bowls from underneath)

1 Stencil (old nylons, ribbons, leaves, etc…)

3 Days’ Patience

Alright, for those of you who are still with me:

What was your most patient moment? 

What was your most impatient moment?

I will give rewards to whoever answers first!