Okra: Dinner AND art!

One could have found nearly anything one wanted during Bloomburg’s huge Cullen Baker Fair last week.

How about an “okra” fairy, “okra” angel or “okra” Santa Claus. Maybe an okra Christmas tree ornament.

You get the picture. Lisa Smith is a craft artist who makes things from okra. She and her daughter Caroline Heflin had a vendor’s table at the fair.

Daughter Caroline is also creative. She draws and colors her mother’s okra creations. They make beautiful designs for envelopes, gift package decorations or framing. Hand-drawn and painted. They are items you keep not discard. This is the key.

Lisa has been making her okra art for 25 years. The way she acquired her skill is instructive.

“I had a garden and would grow okra. Lots of it,” Lisa begins to tell. “One season I grew so much I didn’t know what to do with it. So the okra got old and crusty sort of like a gourd. I looked at them and, rather than throw them away, I thought. What can I do with these? There must be something. Some way I can decorate them.”

Lisa found the shape of the dried okra was just right for being an angel. So she made some angels, then some fairies. The shape and size were just right for a Santa Claus on the Christmas tree.

Caroline tells she found her mother obsession “a little weird, but I liked them and so began drawing and painting them.”

Both Lisa and Caroline show their work online. They are part of a world-wide sale possibility for hand-crafts called Etsy. Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce network focused on handmade or vintage items and crafts.

At this online marketplace, sellers can list and sell their items from among many categories and around the world. The main requirement is that your things must be handmade.

Lisa’s online store is Okrey Dokey. Caroline’s is The Dapper Dillo.

And if you should go online and look for Lisa Smith and Caroline Heflin, you might find one of Lisa’s angels you like and a card from Caroline which might read, ‘The angels are thinking of you.”

Just for information, Lisa is a former kindergarten teacher now living in Avinger. Caroline is an interior designer with an architect firm in Little Rock, AR. `