I have begun so many blog posts lately only to feel uninspired and forced, like it was pure drudgery. After starting yet another one this morning, I gave up and asked myself, how can I make this fun for me? Then I heard cheers of laughter from next door.

I went out to witness the joys of snow engineering. My neighbors were creating a sledding ramp with a jump at the bottom. The kids weren’t getting air off of the jump, so the ramp had to be steeper. This was achieved by turning two garbage cans upside down as a launch platform and then building the ramp to the top of them. The project was a ton of fun for everyone, especially Riot the dog.

When the sledding had exhausted the kids and they headed in for cocoa, I decided to continue my happy snow day by attempting the mini-masterpiece assignment for the coursera.org online course Ignite Your Everyday Creativity from SUNY (The State University of New York).

The assignment was to turn a household item, they used a light-switch plate as an example, and decorate it any way you would like. I didn’t have a spare light-switch plate, but I did find an old ultrasonic spider repeller.

Large, black, monstrous wolf spiders think my house is the greatest. I, however, do not enjoy their company. After much debate, I thought we had come to a truce, when I agreed they could live in the shop, but they don’t respect boundaries. So a while back I invested in a few of these supposed wonder-gadgets. When plugged into the wall, they make a noise  humans don’t hear that repels “pests.” Obviously, my wolf spiders did not consider themselves pests because they weren’t bothered at all.

My creative idea was that perhaps the spiders aren’t drawn close enough to the gadget to hear its lovely song. This inspired my “mini-masterpiece.” Using a few odds and ends I had in my art supply bin, I got to work.

As I worked, my mind happily wandered to my writing projects, and as I waited for the glue to dry, I jotted down some notes. Right here is the real purpose of this post. While I was making my spider diva, I was having fun while my mind continued to work. It’s important to enjoy other creative outlets instead of solely focusing on your writing, or its possible to suck all the fun out of it. This fun, silly project made me want to write a blog post, plus I am pretty pleased with my results.

I wanted my spider  to be reminiscent of the wolf spider to draw them in, so I looked up some close-up images and replicated the three-rowed eye configuration, the long, scary arms and the furry looking body. As you can see from this close-up of the finished product:

The finished Spider Diva still fits in the socket and the light came on, so it still “works.” I haven’t seen any wolf spiders approach it, but it’s supposed to repel them, so I’ll assume I’ve fixed the product.

Happy Creating!