Remember when getting a new box of crayons was exciting? Did you like it when you were old enough to get that big box of 48 colors? I always liked to color, but not necessarily in a coloring book. Just give me a big piece of paper and I was happy. I wasn’t an artist and didn’t try to color anything in particular; I just liked to run the colors back and forth across the paper.

I don’t think I’m the only adult who still likes colors. Working as an educational consultant, I carried large containers of colors and markers that were used for various projects during the workshops. I particularly remember one group of high school teachers who got so excited about getting to color that I thought I would have to put them in “time out” to settle them down. Most of their workshops just required note taking; so coloring while learning was a treat.

I could hardly wait for my grandson to come for this past visit because I knew he was finally old enough to work with color. We chose watercolors instead of crayons and had a great time splashing it on the paper. We just worked with one color using the Driscoll Lipscomb approach from The Gift of Driscoll Lipscomb by Yamaka. In this children’s picture book, an artist gives his little friend a single color pot of paint each year on her birthday. She spends an entire year exploring it. I think it’s a good approach for little people and am reminded that “less is more”. Don’t ask who had the best time when we painted.

Color again burst forth over the weekend when I was torching some copper sheet for a necklace. I inadvertently left the torch on the piece too long and before I knew it, the piece was solid black. Yuk . . . another mess up. Since the piece was too hot to throw in the trash, I quenched it in water. To my happy surprise, the copper was a nice shade of red and following an hour in the tumbler it was quite useable. Who knew????? I used the red copper for a disc necklace like those described in the January 27, 2010 post. There was enough copper for earrings and I used some dried corn from an old Native American necklace for the chain. I also used Renaissance Wax to help preserve the color of the copper.  I like this kind of coloring. Staying with the single color idea, my grandson and I did have one other experience – painting with pudding. This was even more fun than finger painting with shaving cream and with pudding, you get to lick your fingers! Yum!  Did you know you can even finger paint your face this way?

It’s really a shame that we have to grow up. I want to go back to childhood and let someone else do the clean up. Unfortunately, I think using the torch to color is about as close as I can get to being a kid again. Yet, I could just go get my own new box of 48 crayons!