Project 24: Looking through a toilet paper roll lotus flower

With the start of a new school year, I am also starting to teach yoga and also recommitting to blogging. I came up against discomfort with vulnerability* in preparing for both. Will people think I’ve lost it, making toilet paper roll crafts? Why is it that I think it’s cool when other people do it, but when I do it, I feel afraid to show that I am the same kind of crazy to the world? I’m learning to go ahead and trust my kind of crazy. So here I go.

I was collecting toilet paper rolls to donate to a day camp, but found that they no longer wanted any. So I had half a year’s worth of toilet paper rolls and decided to make something myself.

Initially I made a couple of large flowers and even spray painted them. I hung them on my garage outside and then along came a severe summer storm which washed away a lot of the school glue and left me with petals and broken  and warped blossoms. I kept the pieces, and dried them and looked at them again today. They may not be salvageable, but it works well as toy for planning another piece of wall art. This time I just used paper clips. Maybe the perfect way to put together outdoor wall art. Temporary, changeable, quick and easy and repairable after a storm.  Really, it’s not ideal outdoor art when the joining is done by school glue. Another thought was to stitch it together, but I am liking the changeable art idea. I am running out of paper clips, but I will hang it outside once again.

Here are some freaking neat projects to do with toilet paper rolls with or without kids…

Firstly, the inspiration for my project:

Photo from the blog Myrtle and Eunice

*Vulnerability. I was listening to a talk by Judith Lasater at the Divine Feminine Yoga Telesummit website. She mentioned that vulnerability was in fact a position of strength. When you are porous to the present moment, thus vulnerable, you are in tune with intuition and all senses, you are most able to protect yourself if necessary. Intrigued by vulnerability, google showed me this TED talk by Brené Brown called, The Power of Vulnerability.