Bow Not Cool

Back when work was fun in the 1960s, people used to have an afternoon drink to tide them over from their  mid morning martinis until they left work at 5:30 pm for cocktail hour. Today we have to suffer through work relatively sober, although luckily for the young, enthusiastic interns of today's fast-paced and exciting workplace, we do have Adderall. But for the most part we need a little something to get us through those long afternoons in our cubicles after the buzz of Buzzfeed has worn off and the rush of HuffPo has subsided like an aerosol crash. And I have found that the natural high from crafting can be just as potent.

During a recent bout of boredom in my workstall, I decided to craft away the rest of the day. With limited supplies and a short attention span I was still able to create something beautiful and unnecessary: a paper bow.  Using a picture from Pinterest I was able to reconstruct something not as similar as I would have liked but a bow nonetheless. This craft showed me that not all crafts are fun, but they are necessary. Here was a paper bow craft that I thought would be simple and fulfilling:

 Here's how I did it:

 I didn't have any square paper, so I made my own. This was the most innovation I generated during the course of the craft.

I folded the paper in half diagonally twice instead of drawing lines. Pretty smart.

I then drew this little box in the center like in the original image. It ended up not serving a purpose for me as I ignored this guideline in the next step.

The next step is to cut a triangle segment from the paper, like so. 

Then snip the lines directly above the cut out segment leaving the triangle shape attached. I did not achieve this on the first try as I ignored the little box I had drawn and cut the entire piece out. Don't do this.

Instead do this.

On the next try I did manage to leave the triangle portion attached. This is where the craft started to take a turn from a relaxing and fulfilling project to a craft that made me reexamine the darkest corners of myself.

Here's where things started heading downhill fast.

Compare this image to the original and it seems like it's on track to becoming a perfect paper bow, but ultimately there were terminal issues with paper size that could not be rectified with scissors.

I eventually made the agonizing decision to fold the bow.

This craft was a struggle. It did not turn out the way that Pinterest said it would. And like most things in life it needed to be cried over and then pinned to a bulletin board. I realized that this paper bow was a metaphor for something. I'm still not sure what that is, but I did learn that crafts can be dangerous and powerful tools for self-reflection. 

Ultimately crying over the shame of not being able to execute a proper paper bow was still more fun than work, so I can recommend this as a work craft.