I remember as a child visiting my aunt, an artist, who decided to show me some of the basics of painting flowers on diminutive clay pots.

She used light, careful dotting motions to create lilacs, ajuga, and honeysuckle, and gently parted the hairs of her small paint brush to create the petals of daisies and tiger lilies.

While I remember watching with undivided attention, the skill needed to create these tiny gardens was beyond my 6-year-old fingers. My flowers were blue and black blobs with abbreviated stems, and the space I needed to carefully pen my name in paint on the pot took up the majority of the surface. I marveled at how easily my aunt could decorate her pot and then scribe her name in an easy script with white paint.

Still, the activity was important enough to stick in my mind, and the results, while not Monet, still rest on a small shelf in parents' house - perhaps gathering dust, but seemingly immune to semi-annual clutter clearings.

The lesson I learned was in any craft project, perfection is not the goal, but rather the experience and the bonds made between pupil and teacher. I was reminded of this lesson at Christmas, when members of my family were proudly presented with gifts painstakingly made by my two small cousins, with a little help from their crafty mom.

Using similar clay pots (the common, red-clay variety found cheaply in most garden centers and home supply stores) and a newspaper-lined kitchen table, as my aunt and I once used in my youth , the would-be artisans had covered their pots not with paint, but plaster of Paris, smeared on with spatulas with no regard for clean lines. Into the plaster, dozens of bits and baubles were placed - marbles, bits of glass pieces from the craft store, sea glass, broken jewelry, even pennies.

The results were chaotic and messy, and therefore perfect. Without any guide as to how such a gift should be made, the pots were each one-of-a-kind and reflected the personalities of each child. Some were decorated with deft precision, every piece carefully selected and placed in the plaster. Others were hurricanes of color and texture, as if handfuls of supplies had been picked up with two small fists and thrown at the pot, just to see where they might land.

On the bottoms of the artwork, my cousins had carefully signed their names with paintbrushes, using the same sprawling script that I once had, which forced the signatures to spill from the bottom of the pot and crawl up the sides, melting into the plaster.

My mother was particularly impressed with her pot and planted an unruly ivy in it, which still sits in her greenhouse, proudly placed on a small stool.

No rules, no parameters, and the thrill of the experience. That's what made those gifts a hit, not the skill it took to create them.

Another lesson was tucked into the lumpy, imperfect coating on the pots, too. I mused, what more is life than a beautiful mess?

Learn more about this author, Jaclyn C. Stevenson.
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