Are you always stepping on Legos?

Raise your hand if you have random Legos scattered through your house at any given time.

How about toys in the dining room, random game pieces in your junk drawer, and various pieces of Barbie's entourage laying around the family room.

Recently these daily annoyances became inspirational art pieces. Huh? What? And no, I have not risen about the daily clutter of life in some zen-inspired moment.

The background of this epiphany....this past weekend I took an advanced pure metal clay class. Pure metal clay (PMC) is an amazing mix of pure silver with a clay binder. You can form the clay how you choose, then fire it in a kiln to release the binder, and then a little elbow grease to burnish/shine it. Voila....you are left with a gorgeous piece of solid fine silver art from a lowly blob of gray clay.

This is where the clutter comes in....we were asked to bring in found objects that we had around our house to make molds of their texture, shape, patterns, etc; to be used with the PMC clay. I don't have anything to bring was my first thought....until I looked around my house for two seconds and realized the potential.

Suddenly you were looking at ordinary objects as pieces of textural artwork. The clutter I loathed had suddenly transformed into an integral part of the artistic process.

The football sitting inside the house, begging to be put away in the garage for months...well, it has a really cool texture to it...so I mold it.

That ugly plastic button from an even uglier sweater someone gave you....it has a great detailed pattern...so I mold it.

The Legos that are forever scattered all around my house...one block has such a cool pattern...so I mold it.

And last but not least...I never noticed the cool details on Dora's treehouse when it was strewn around my kitchen counter...so I mold that too.

Suddenly ordinary items had super-ordinary talents in what they could give in PMC as an amazing pattern, great texture, or simply being themselves.

All in all, our class had gathered a vast array of ordinary objects that can now be immortalized in pure silver, transforming that awkward teenage geeky object into an amazingly outgoing and beautiful part of an art piece.

If only it were that easy in life. Take a look around...you never know what amazing things you might find in the simplest things of life.