by Dennis Dalman
Sartell school-bus driver Catrice Etienne has long believed that life should – as much as possible – be enlivened by heaping helpings of fun.
Her children passengers think so, too. They love to laugh at Etienne’s antics – the way she’ll dress up in goofy costumes, the way she cracks jokes, the way she loves her job and being protective of her young riders.
“I get along with kids because I can communicate on their level,” she said, adding she thinks of them as small people, who just haven’t become tall yet.
She has been driving school bus since February 2019.
Besides her school-bus driving, Etienne is also a dedicated crafter who loves making jewelry and other art works, using her sense of fun, whimsy and improvisation as her inspirations. In crafting her necklaces, earrings, bracelets and other objects, she uses all kinds of “found” objects, some of them so ordinary and homely that people smile and react with delight when they see those “throwaway” objects transformed into oddly beautiful new uses. For example, some of her earrings she makes using bottlecaps or tiny playing cards or even discarded pencil erasers.
“I love to go to garage sales to look for stuff to use,” she said. “I buy old pieces of jewelry and use the parts to refashion into my own new pieces. I also look for T-shirts that I can cut apart and use to make quilts.”
Etienne is adept at just about all arts and crafts, and she enjoys teaching others how to make things. At her Sartell home, she holds regular arts-and-crafts classes for friends’ children, usually about six kids at a time. One time, they all painted “happy rocks” they then hid in their neighborhoods for other children to find.
She is hoping to host more fun arts-and-crafts learning sessions for more children.
“I’ve always been a crafter,” she said. “When I was a teen I would love to retreat to my room, my alone time, to work on arts and crafts. My father did macramé weaving so I might have gotten my love of crafting from him.”
Catrice and her husband, Thomas Etienne, have a 15-year-old son. Thomas is a human-resources worker and vice president for Brutger Equities.
Etienne showcases her crafts and other manifestations of her sense of fun on her Facebook page, dubbed “Catrice’s Side Gig.”
She recommends people visit that site to see if they would like to join her classes. She expects to host learning sessions for adults as well as children.
This is Catrice Etienne in one of her many whimsical disguises — a “Kung Fu cat.”
These are some of Catrice Etienne’s earrings, which she enjoys making with found or cast-off objects — in this case, little colored light bulbs.
