As she sits in her room with paint brushes, acrylic paints, and a multitude of calculator cases and jeans sitting in front of her, senior Maysa Redissi gets to work. She starts to paint a calculator case that was given to her by a classmate that day in school to have customized. Each case takes her from an hour to three hours to complete, dependent on the complicity of the design that has been requested for it. 

Redissi has the unique opportunity of being able to incorporate one of her long-lasting hobbies into credit. The IB program requires every full diploma student to complete CAS (creativity, activity, and service) hours. Redissi is aiming for anywhere between 70 to 100 hours for the creativity portion of the project, which can seem like a lot of time, but for Redissi, it gives her a chance to incorporate her passion for art and painting into her education.

“I’ve been painting for a long time,” Redissi said. “My dad kinda got me into painting, and my art teacher recently encouraged me to do more art in my free time. I thought it would be a fun way to spread art in the community and do for my creativity hours for my CAS project.”

Not only has Redissi been customizing the calculator cases, jeans, and shoes of her classmates, but she has been doing it completely free of charge. After discovering the trend of painting calculator cases on TikTok, she knew it was a service that she wanted to provide to the students at Huron. 

“I realized that not a lot of people want to spend money on things that they want to have personalized,” Redissi said. “I thought it was just a great way to give people the opportunity to put a little pizzazz into their stuff – for free.”

Even though she isn’t charging money, the service Redissi is providing isn’t easy or cheap. A tube of acrylic paint can be from $5-$6, and the more projects she is working on, the more that price starts to add up. On top of that, each calculator case can take anywhere from an hour to three or four hours, and jeans can take close to a week to complete with the process of drying. 

“I’ll probably start charging after my project [for IB] is complete,” Redissi said. “Paint can get expensive. Also, some people want me to customize graduation caps and since those take more time, commitment, and detail, I’ll probably start charging for that.”