In celebration of the official launch of GGC’s Crafty Tuesdays resource page with  program-related crafts, we had to allow two of our staff bloggers, Talya and Mary, to dissect the (un)merits of two crafty materials their children use!

What is the Ultimate Nasty Craft Material?

Talya says Beads!

Beads, Beads, good for your art,

The more you use them,

The more they roll under the fridge, behind the bed, and all over the place,

When your craft falls apart!

 Mary says Floam!

Floam, floam, floam – even the name is annoying. (Actually, it was originally called bubble-gak – seriously.) Those foamy micro-beads are annoying on carpet, annoying on hardwood and just well, annoying. (See – the floam is sapping the creativity right out of me.) You’re supposed to be able to shape this stuff into whatever creative form you can think of, a la play dough. But it’s usually too goopy or too dry to work with.

Why is the Craft Material so (un)popular?

Talya thinks Beads are popular because…

Beads seem to be the ultimate craft material as well as birthday gift for girls ages 3 – 11. They’re the catch-all gift because what else do girls want to do but make beaded jewelry, key chains and doo-hickeys? You can’t imagine how many packages of beads my 10-year-old daughter has, including standard shapes, special neon ones, glow-in-the-dark beads and even foreign language ones. Perhaps we should offer them to her Guider for craft material to reduce our ‘collection’? What would the other parents say to that?

Mary believes Floam is popular because:

Fortunately, floam is kind of like that nasty surprise you find in the back of your fridge after vacation – we don’t come across it too often. It’s a ‘sometimes un-treat’ at day camp or when my kidlets go to a friend’s to play. And on occasions, we encounter that rare beast – dollar store floam. Ugh-a-rama.

How do you get rid of this craft?

Talya says that…

We package beads up for the next rainy day craft project! We’ve never had the heart to just throw them out.

Mary says that…

Usually the floam crafts fall apart on their own – hooray – and just end up in the garbage.

So we think it’s a tie on the beads vs. floam debate. Our money is on the worst craft – those plastic Hama beads for making patterned pictures. A craft you have to iron? Are we kidding?  And, uhm, how safe is it to be ironing plastic anyway?

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