It’s astonishing how often well-intentioned parenting ends with a heart full of regret, very sore knees and something luminous encrusted somewhere about one’s person.

I really wanted to be a crafty mum. We have a crafts table, a whole set of drawers full of craft supplies, stacks of kits and make-your-owns coming out of our ears (crafts being, like so many child-related items, synonymous with All The F*cking Clutter). We even have a dedicated room (case in point) – no longer the sunny, slightly mildewy-round-the-edges, minimalist grown up space it was when we first moved in, the conservatory is now the Arts and Crafts and F*cking Clutter room of the house.

My kids like arts and crafts, I’d even go so far as to say they’ve all, at some point in their childhoods, loved arts and crafts. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly apparent over the years that the arts and crafts they love and the arts and crafts I love are, like a Diet Coke and a Long Island iced tea, just not the same thing at all.

Kits

Emphasis on the junk. My youngest, B, is particularly fond of junk modelling. A day doesn’t often go by that I don’t collect him from school and go to hold his hand only to find his little fist clamped stickily around his latest Beloved Find (read: piece of literal garbage he has picked up from the classroom/playground/dear-God-I-hope-not-the-toilets-but-wouldn’t-put-it-past-him floor) which he must immediately bring home to craft with. Ever since he could first hold a discarded, still sticky, wasn’t-even-his-lolly lolly stick between finger and thumb, he has been a proud proclaimer of the phrase, “I can craft with that!”

That’s now a saying in our house, and not a particularly fond one, probably because the ‘crafting’ of ‘that’ inevitably means turning the conservatory into a cesspit of hell, complete with paint/glue/slime/other non-identifiable-gunge that’s been walked though (usually by me), pipe cleaners strewn haphazardly (not that he’ll actually use them to craft with because, you know, they weren’t sourced from a bin or the bottom of someone’s shoe) and glitter everywhere. So. Much. F*cking. Glitter. I swear the last time so much of a sniff of the metallic pixie dust of Satan appeared, I found it in my bra. In my bra. How?

To give him his due, sometimes the things he produces are pretty cool – like the frog made mostly from sellotape and scraps of green paper when he was four, or the robot he made at school (any creation which involves turning a place that isn’t in my home into the aforementioned cesspit of hell is guaranteed to curry extra favour). And sometimes the things are less cool, as in barely graduated from the term they were originally salvaged from, being junk (if you’re being polite). Luckily he possesses an extraordinarily short term memory when it comes to the things he has lovingly crafted and presented me with and so I have made it almost seven years slyly siphoning off the less-brilliant creations in the name of recycling and the unending endeavour to Cut Down on All The F*cking Clutter.

School Projects

Ah, the high stakes crafting project. So well intentioned, so highly envisioned, so often doomed to failure.

Last year for World Book Day, L (then year 6) decided to make a book in a box, or diorama if you will. She chose the scene in The Golden Compass/ Northern Lights where Lyra is riding the armoured bear Iorek across the ice with the aurora in the background. I duly sourced a small doll and a suitably sized polar bear from our stashes of toys and gave her some tiny fairy lights leftover from one of the aforementioned half-done kits of doom and then something utterly magical happened.

She did the rest herself.

So this year I, in my not-thinking-this-through-at-all wisdom, proposed that A and B do the same for their chosen books.

This is how I found myself kneeling on the cold, unforgiving tiles of our conservatory floor while the luminous air-dry clay slowly affixed itself onto the left knee of my favourite jeans. On one side stood A, bleating that her Harry kept keeling over into his sorting hat like a tiny, partially-air-dried-clay drunken boy wizard, while B wailed from my other side that someone, probably me, had trodden on his Mr Willy Wonka. 

So often it seems to be the case, during crafts, that we start with a Vision of What It’s Supposed To Look Like (and this includes my vision of us all crafting nicely with no one’s jeans getting ruined and no one’s creations launched at their brother’s head for ‘looking at me’) only for a strangely frenetic energy to descend.

Suddenly, everything must be done right away, right now! They need more glue, need the paint, all the paint, gotta have more paint. Yes, yes they are sure they need so much paint, and no, no of course they won’t end up mixing it all together so it turns a sludgey brown, yes they did remember the unfortunate Play-Doh incident of ’22.

So I rush to get the brushes, pour the PVA for this one, tie that one into an apron, pour out some paint, assure them that there definitely, absolutely, 100% truthfully isn’t any glitter left. Here’s some more paint, what d’you mean it’s now too much paint, here’s the air dry clay of the exactly correct shade of violet for Mr Willy Sodding Wonka Mark Two, no that definitely isn’t more glitter over there in that box.

Oh… Yes, yes, it has gone brown. Because that is what happens when you MIX ALL THE BLOODY COLOURS TOGETHER, I DID TELL YOU, NO I’M NOT SHOUTING.

No, I didn’t swear. I only said bloody and that’s in Harry Potter so it doesn’t count. And I SAID NO GLITTER!

Inevitably, this was the point where I hauled myself back to my feet, swaying under the walloping headrush, only to discover the patch of clay firmly affixed to my jeans at the exact moment one of them eagerly proved that look! there is still some glitter left! by waving a tiny tube of metallic doom with unnecessary vigour.

And so, instead of the Lovely Vision of Wholesome Crafting Fun, we found ourselves in a tableau of shattered hopes and dreams: B, glitter somehow now encrusted in both nostrils and one inner ear, moaning that his chocolate waterfall isn’t the right shade of brown and now looks pooey; A wailing that her Harry has been unwittingly bedazzled and now resembles a tiny drunken boy wizard who has run into a hen party on a night out and me bellowing that it’s MY SATURDAY TOO and actually I’d just quite like to sit down with a cup of tea and the Wordle but instead I am TRYING TO HELP THEM MAKE SOMETHING BLOODY MAGICAL.

At which they both looked at me, nonplussed and point out, not unreasonably, “But Mummy, this was your idea.”

It was all fine in the end. B remembered that he was a six-year-old boy and therefore loves poo almost as much as he loves chocolate. We found a whole horde of Harry Potter Ooshies that we decided to use instead of making the rest of the Great Hall Sorting Ceremony out of clay, which I think would have sent all of us over the edge. My jeans were mercifully rescued by Tesco’s Non-Bio Detergent and a bit of Cif.

As for the tiny, wonky, glittery, drunken boy wizard? He still sits on the crafting table. As a warning of the perils of crafting? A momento of the super fun time we had making dioramas for World Book Day 2026? No. Because when I went to throw him away, I was intercepted and prevented by one small, sticky-handed boy and his immortal five words: “I can craft with that!”