Monday, July 27, 2009

Which Craft?

A group from Humor Bloggers is following a summer camp theme and writing about crafts today.

Crafts were never my thing but my wife, Karen, is an artist and has had businesses involving both art and craft. The craft business involved painted t-shirts for kids, several years ago. Karen would design and make one and put it on our 4-year old daughter and then take her to dance or gymnastics or music class and wait for the other mothers to ask, “Oh, that is SOOO cute, where can I get something like that.”

It was the cheapest marketing ploy ever and it led to the downfall of her t-shirt empire. The Garment Workers Union found out that we were exploiting free child labor – non-union, no less. They would show up at the dance studio, singing “Look for the union label …. “ and intimidate all the moms into backing out of the purchase. It didn’t seem to matter that we were using an American child when we could have easily outsourced and adopted a Chinese girl.

Our daughter inherited her mom's artistic bent and was also entrepreneurial. However, when it came to selling, her philosophy was, “why spend time and money making something when you can sell what’s already at hand. One day she successfully sold a bunch of rocks from the yard to the exceedingly nice man across the street.

Another day she and a friend got some chalk to draw hopscotch on the driveway but the geese from the nearby lake had other ideas; our driveway was covered in goose droppings. When I arrived home I found the feces had been neatly circled in chalk and a huge sign was drawn in chalk near the street “FRESH POOP FOR SALE”. Karen told me the girls had been out promoting their goods, shouting their sales pitch to passing cars.

I don’t have talent for arts and crafts. I try to create things from the news. Yesterday I read that“Michael Jackson's Prosthetic Nose Is Missing”, which gave me an idea.
I am contacting the Hasbro people to sell them on my idea of a MJ Potato Head Doll


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5 comments:

Unfinished Rambler said...

I like the idea of the MJ Potato Head Doll. Tell us Hasbro's response. :)

Anonymous said...

What a great idea for a Mr.Potato Head!

ReformingGeek said...

Sounds like a winner! Will your MJ potato head come with a IV drip?

Cali said...

Ha, did your daughter really do that? That is hilarious!

JohnnyB said...

Thanks for all your support on the MJ Potato Head project. The IV drip is an excellent idea, RG - anything "sold separately" will boost revenues.

Cali - they really did that (though she would probably want me to add that they were just playing and being silly.)