Crafting with Curie

I love all things* arts and crafts. My mom is a costumer and avid crafter. When I was growing up, we would make everything from origami ornaments to beaded jewelry to clay miniatures and so much more. Pretty much any crafting supplies you could think of was hidden away somewhere in our crowded craft room. This was wonderful for me as a kid, as I could bring any random idea to life with little time or money needed to gather materials.

Now, as an adult with bills and rent, living 1200 miles from "home", I've attempted to hoard my own craft arsenal. I'm embarrassed to say how much of the space in my RAV4 was occupied by yards of fabric, paints and pastels, canvases, etc. on the drive down to California. But I was moving to an unknown place, to live on my own for the first time (well, Gunder the cat was with me) and I figured I'd get pretty bored pretty fast without some kind of hands-on activities at the ready.

That said, I still find myself missing many of the materials I took for granted as a kid. Every other week I have to convince myself not to make a trip to JoAnn Fabrics to scratch some fleeting crafting itch in the back of my mind. And for the part --not to brag-- I'm pretty successful! A large reason for that is because I know that I do in fact have plenty of craft supplies at home. But another part of my success is that I've gotten more interested in graphic design and digital media. It's all the fun of creating, but a lot less clutter.

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These buttons are a bridge between the digital and the physical. I designed them on my laptop (a Pixelbook which I adore), printed the designs at the library (support your local libraries!), and put my button maker (a rather hefty crafting tool that travels with me) to good use. I'll admit, I do a lot of tracing, especially when it comes to portraits, so I'm not claiming to be an artist by any means. But I did feel the creative juices flowing in every step of making these, and I'm proud of what I made.

The subjects of these buttons are five women in chemistry from recent and ancient history: Marie Sklodowska Curie, Tapputi-Belatekallim, Alice Ball, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, and Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus. If you're unfamiliar with any of these women, I encourage you to look them up, as each one is interesting and inspiring in their own way. I loved not only making the designs to honor these women, but also reading and learning more about each one.

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So many great chemists get missed in our curriculum, and most of the ones we do hear about are men. While I absolutely think we ought to teach about Pauling and Schrodinger and Faraday, there aren't many opportunities for us to lift up the names of scientists that aren't also units or well-known equations. I get it, GenChem is not a history course, but it serves our students' understanding to provide context to the topics we cover. We as educators can learn about those lesser-known scientists ourselves and acknowledge them in our classes, but it requires a conscious and intentional effort to do so.

*except knitting. No patience for that.