Mona Lisa in Glitter & Glue
By Stephen B. Bagley
I have been watching a lot of YouTube lately. I had always avoided it before because I figured it was filled with the generally loud and useless noise that permeates social media these days. (Twitter, I’m pointing at you.) But a friend shared a link to a crafting video on YouTube, and I was intrigued enough to watch a crafter turn 200 straws and a bargain store round mirror into a “sunburst décor item” with a can of gold paint and a hot glue gun. It looked nice, although I did wonder if there is actually a decorating school known as “sunburst décor.” I wouldn’t know since my home decorating school is “Junk Everywhere” and our motto is “Leave It Where It Falls.”
YouTube, with the help of tracking cookies and sinister magic, knew I had watched a crafting video, so they suggested another crafting video, this one involving building a sturdy bookshelf with cardboard and lots of hot glue. Naturally, I had to watch that one, too. I’m nothing if not suggestible. Then another video popped up, and five hours later, I emerged dazed at all the amazing things I had seen.
You might think I would be inspired by all these videos to start crafting. But, of course, you’re wrong once again. Sometimes I’m not sure you’re stalking me as diligently as you should. I tried a bit of crafting years ago and gave it up after a nasty hot glue burn on my nose. (I was looking at a project closely, okay?) Besides, I would spend hours and hours on a project, finish it with a real sense of accomplishment, finally look at it, and then throw it with great force into the trash bin because it was batweaselbutt ugly. I don’t have the crafting genes, and I couldn’t craft jeans, either.
But the people on YouTube can craft EVERYTHING! If you told me that some crafter had made a running replica of 1952 Buick out of pipe cleaners, glitter, wire, cardboard boxes, and a box of hair pins, I would believe you—as long as you mentioned they used hot glue. ‘Cause hot glue holds the crafting world together both figuratively and literally.
Hot glue has advanced a lot since I gave myself second-degree burns while attempting to make a Christmas wreath. It now comes in a rainbow of colors, including glittering metallic hues. And I do mean glittering. Despite the fact that glitter is the cockroach of the crafter world—it gets everywhere and it’s impossible to get rid of—it’s used like it could cure humanity of all our ills. I can’t look at it without remembering that the dust of Mars is also sharp due to the lack of erosion and would deliver a thousand cuts to your lungs if you breathed it as would glitter, except the later would give you the dreaded “glitter-lung” disease that strikes down so many crafters in their prime. This is one of the reasons I won’t go to Mars and certainly not with glitter. That’s asking for trouble as all the astronauts know. Oh, frightening thought: glitter in zero gravity! Let’s see Matt Damon deal with that!
I must mention a disturbing advancement in the hot glue world: they now have low temperature glue and guns! Yes, instead of having use glue at volcanic temperatures that can etch glass, they get to use glue that stings, but doesn’t eat down to the bone. This is just wrong! We are supposed to suffer for our art. SUFFER! If you really want to be the Leonardo da Vinci of the crafting world, use only the high temperature glue. As a plus, the scars will be a wonderful conversation starter at crafting hoedowns and church rummage sales, although you probably shouldn’t expect to date much.
Not that a true crafter wants to date. No, a true crafter wants to spend their life passion on creating a lovely Christmas elf house out of a metal hanger, cereal boxes, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, modeling clay, miniature lights, paint, and hot glue. They also spend hours on their projects. On their videos, they cheat and speed up the action until they’re moving as fast as the Flash. This lures you into thinking you could do the same in a couple of hours when actually it’s a week or month—if you’re lucky. I watched one video where the female crafter was thin, pregnant, and then thin again with a baby crawling through the scene. I just realized the baby was actually crafted, too, but she and the father didn’t make a video of it, I hope.
A big movement among the crafters is recycling or upcycling what would be trash, but is used as crafting supplies—“Trash into Treasure” as it is so charmingly phrased. Regrettably, some of the videos are more along the lines of “Trash into Trash Covered with Hot Glue and Glitter.” You wonder why their friends don’t pull them aside and tell them the truth about their Styrofoam cup and rainbow colored cat litter centerpiece. No, I’m not making this up. Maybe their friends don’t want to hurt the crafter’s feelings and maybe the crafter is still armed with the hot glue gun. Better safe than a trip to the burn unit.
Some people even make things out of hot glue. That’s right. No materials, only hot glue sticks and hot glue. Watching one person construct a lacy bowl out of bronze hot glue, I realized the latest 3D printers are only computerized hot glue guns. Those crafters are simply using hot glue in its natural form. They even use hot glue to create beautiful and intriguing paintings that would grace any wall— particularly if you like “sunburst décor” and who doesn’t? What did you say? Well, you don’t have any taste then.
Seriously, I’ve seen wondrous landscapes, still life, nautical and historical themes, animals, and even portraits done in hot glue. Somehow, the heat and fumes lift the crafters into a mentally heightened state. If Leonardo could have had access to hot glue, we might have seen an entirely different take on the Mona Lisa, perhaps enhanced by glitter and pipe cleaners.
YouTube has many categories of crafting that use materials such as: copy paper, balloons, plastic bags, empty medicine bottles, soda can tabs, compact discs, rubber bands, yard sticks, sticks from your yard, soft drink bottles, pens, plastic and paper straws, broken dinner places, cow horns, wire, gum wrappers, wrapping paper, aluminum foil, modeling clay, gourds...oh, the list goes on forever. YouTube is the place where you learn if all those projects you saw on Pinterest are possible. And if they shouldn’t be made to protect humanity.
But if—for some reason you should never share—you have a box of painted fingernail clippings you can’t part with, YouTube is where to find videos on how to craft with them. You weirdo.
(From the forthcoming book Floozy Goes Forth. Copyright 2019 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. Thank you for reading.)
