" Sixty-Seven Years of a Creative Impact" by Susan Pearl

I took time (pearls take time) to listen to a local news report about a workshop for teachers.

I noticed a container filled with new freshly sharpened colored pencils on a table and some blank papers laying beside it.

I thought, " Oh good, more pictures to be drawn by children."

"More pictures to be enjoyed and proudly displayed on the refrigerator held in place by decorative magnets."

Then I remembered a creative moment I had as a small child.

A volunteer lady helped me with it.

She supplied a magazine picture of a skier skiing down hill.

The picture showed the backside view of a skier skiing down the steep snowy slope. 

We glued the picture to be the background of an opened cigar box.

Then we filled the box with sugar.   The sugar was white and glistening which made it appear to be an  immediate extension of the snowy ski slope and the placement of a very small mirror-

     WOW! ---the mirror instantly looked like a beautiful finger lake.

She had cut some tiny sprigs off an evergreen tree and we stuck the sprigs into the sugar-

     transforming the sprigs into tall evergreens around the finger lake and dotting the landscape. 

We left an area with just snow (sugar) to line up and be an extension of the sky slope in the picture.

Then it was like magic ---I noticed the tracks in the snow made by the skies in the picture and I had a creative idea come to me.  It was exciting, it was new---it was something I had not seen before but I knew it should be and I knew I could do it.

   I took two fingers and made two ski tracks across the sugar to connect to the tracks in the picture and HOORAY! YA! It happened!! We had a 3D picture!!!! It had motion! We were on that snowy ski slope----it was a very inspiring moment in my childhood.

I don't know if the volunteer lady ever knew the what huge impact she made in my life                              that day, sixty-seven years ago.