Falling Out of Love with My Favorite Craft Store

I am probably one of the last people anyone would expect to complain about Hobby Lobby.

On Wednesday night, I went into Hobby Lobby to with some girlfriends. After a few minutes of shopping, I noticed a nausea rising inside of me...Hobby Lobby was grossing me out!

Now, nothing out of the ordinary, really… No offensive people, music or bad smells. It was the whole store as an idea.  I was struck by the shear EXCESS of beautiful junk everywhere and as usual, there was a 50% markdown on much of the merchandise (whoopee!).

I began to realize that I was in the Mothership of Cheap Trendy Knock-offs.

I looked around and everything I saw was a knock-off of some craft idea or art trend from finer stores and social sites like Pinterest and Etsy. 

I walked in and saw giant fake flowers as tall as me...thinking... "Hey, I remember a DIY tutorial on that a few years ago using tissue paper."

There are the mustache-clad, dapper-looking animal portraits printed on fake vintage book pages. (A knock-off from an Esty artist who was copied on Pinterest and then mass-copied and faked by factories overseas.)

There are the "retro" metal signs, the chalkboard paint furniture, burlap home decor items, rivers of chevron "fluff", the isles and isles of cake pop supplies, a scrapbook city, goofly blown glass animals, garden gnomes, fake flowers, antler/cowboy rustic stuff made out or resin, and fake “American Pickers” style crap everywhere!

I was swimming in the vomit of our collective American vanity.

To be fair, lots of retail stores are doing the same thing.  My dearest store, Target, is a bit guilty but I usually don't find it distasteful mostly because they ride the tide of actual designers.  They are on the "cutting edge" or so to speak.  Other stores do the opposite and bring in the rear by chasing trends and copying real innovation.  However, not even Walmart makes me feel as sick as Hobby Lobby. 

Why am I being so nasty?

These items have NO SOUL.  These are mass produced copies of someone else’s original idea… someone else’s painstaking effort, someone else’s genius.  These are massed produced in some place like China and sold for a fraction of what it the originals are worth… Cheap, tawdry, and empty.

When I look at my turquoise Abraham Lincoln bust on my mantle, I remember the garage sale where I found it.  I remember the thought process of choosing to paint it that color.  I paid 25 cents for it.  It has a story.  It is one of a kind.

my blue Lincoln

The table in the corner I painted, it has a soul because I RESCUED it. 

The real living plants on my shelves have LIFE.  They need my care. They have a “soul’ too.

This hung in my great-grandmother's house.
I don't know how old it is.

I can’t just do “surface pretty”. The things in my home must tell a story and must feel authentic.  They are a reflection of meaning in my life. Sure, I have stuff from Hobby Lobby around my house. If it is here, I probably felt it was a good reflection of my style.  In fact, I have a few things that I actually love. But, copying trends for the sake of "fitting in" or "looking hip" feels bad to me.  I want out of the Matrix.

So, Wednesday night, I left the store, disturbed.  I didn't buy anything.

Maybe it is because, I am so hungry for authenticity.  I think we all are.  Are you tired of the retouched filtered selfies,yet?  Are you tired of the "wheel in your gut" telling you that you HAVE to have granite counter-tops or a giant fondant sculpture for your toddler’s party? I don't want to be a lemming. I don't need companies trying to make me feel ashamed for being "out of style".  I recognize the "game" and I'm not playing.

Don’t you love being in a home that...just is…  just is BEAUTIFUL because it’s someone’s home.

The most yucky parts of Hobby Lobby, for me, are the canvas art isles,and as an artist, I feel like I am in the belly of an “ART” whorehouse.

The prints are actually very beautiful and very cheap. I’m an artist by trade. In this economy and in the rural area where I live, it is really hard for people to justify paying for original art.  Besides,  I would need to charge a good sum of money to let go of one of my “babies”.  I can't compete with factories and neither can most artists.

So, go ahead and knock yourself out with the giant poppy “painting” over the fireplace… everybody is doing it...really, I can't afford to paint for so little.

...and the decorative cross isle....

(ANGRY TYPING THIS PART)

MY SAVIOR DIED ON A CROSS.   It was a horribly beautiful act for mankind.  The cross is deeply precious to me and not just a sentimental logo.  I cringe at the things they do to and put on crosses.  It feels so sacrilegious to decorate a symbol of execution with glitter, camo, zebra print, rhinestone, or cutesy sayings on a cross...especially if all you want is a cool looking wall that will impress your Christian friends. Note: there is a difference between sober, tasteful elegance and flat-out tacky vanity.

Compare it to this: Let’s say you have a precious porcelain cup handed down from your grandmother.  It is the cup she let you use when you had tea parties as a child. It is also one of the only things that survived a house fire that tragically took the life of your parents.  It is so much more to you than any old cup.

Now imagine one of your kids scooping poop out of the toilet with it.

Imagine your daughter bedazzling the hell out of it.

Imagine your husband spray-painting it and gluing it to a birdhouse.

That’s only a teeny fraction of how I feel about Jesus and what He did on a cross for me.  The cross is precious and intimate.

I really could go on forever… about waste, excess, loss of originality, “made in China” and the very beautiful junk they sell at Hobby Lobby. I will probably need to shop there again at some point, but I hope I can avoid it.  I am really glad I am "waking up" and letting go of the whole pressure to be trendy.  I just hope Jesus continues to show me how to be REAL, AUTHENTIC and FREE.

 I wish Hobby Lobby was, foremost,a place for supplies and inspiration. It has changed over the years.  It used to be like "Come on! Create something unique!  We have the STUFF!
It was a place to buy the tools, a place that helps us create genuinely unique reflections of our personal tastes.

Now its like," Look! We already did it for you."

Do we even care that our tastes change because of the media?

Are we filtering what we see and recognizing the attempts to stir up doubt and insecurities in us through magazines, websites, and home improvement shows?

Are we aware that much of the stuff we spend our lives doing, is nothing but a big distraction.  Heck, I would rather sit down and craft than work on our finances.  I want to paint and have my little studio, I don't want to up heave my convenient life to, like, adopt a kid or something!

I digress...

back to the point

I have no shame or contempt for my friends who still love this store.  Shop on without shame.  My beef is really with a culture at large that continues to choose shallow conformity and approval seeking.  The culture that loves to sell us exterior facades to hide behind.

Ecclesiastes is my current favorite book of the Bible because it addresses this idea over and over...

Ecclesiasties 1:3-11

³ What does man gain by all the toil
    at which he toils under the sun?
⁴ A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains forever.
⁵ The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
    and hastens^[a] to the place where it rises.
⁶ The wind blows to the south
    and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
    and on its circuits the wind returns.
⁷ All streams run to the sea,
    but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
    there they flow again.
⁸ All things are full of weariness;
    a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
    nor the ear filled with hearing.
⁹ What has been is what will be,
    and what has been done is what will be done,
    and there is nothing new under the sun.
¹⁰ Is there a thing of which it is said,
    “See, this is new”?
It has been already
    in the ages before us.
¹¹ There is no remembrance of former things,^[b]
    nor will there be any remembrance
of later things^[c] yet to be
    among those who come after.

That about does it. I feel better. I probably should have chosen my words more carefully to keep from offending anyone... but, this is my gut-level honest opinion.

Disclaimer: I am aware that this post sounds a bit judgmental, snobby or self-righteous.  My issue is not with the people who love to decorate their homes creatively.  My gut reaction to the excess and trendiness of Hobby Lobby in general. I am very proud of the stance Hobby Lobby has taken in it's fight against government control.