Christmas? Already?

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Where has the time gone? It seems Hallowe'en was just a few days ago and now Christmas is fast approaching. Well, we haven't been letting grass grow beneath our feet at the Dorchester Senior Center. We've been busy crafting! Just take a look at some of the things we've made in the past month.

We celebrated the beauty of autumn's colors with two different cards. One card featured a bare tree that was covered with tiny, multicolored leaves applied one at a time. The other was an easel card that featured detailed rubber stamped images of autumn leaves and a diagonal border of leaves across the front. The unique construction of this card allows it to stand up like a painting in an easel, hence the name. The ladies liked the easel card so much, I created another one, this time featuring a photo frame.

With the holidays right around the corner, it was time to start Christmas crafts. My crafters really liked the decorated gift bag they created some weeks back so I designed another one for them to make. We followed that with paper ornaments, reindeer gift tags and a Christmas card.

On top of all this crafting madness, I have been doing my annual holiday decorating thing for the senior center. Decorating for Christmas and Hanukkah takes a lot of time because there are a LOT of decorations and because it is a large room. I'll take pictures of the room when it is completed and post them for you to see.

In all of this, I haven't done a lick of holiday shopping or decorating for myself. Time's a wasting'. I'd better get cracking.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Moments to Live For

If you've been following me for any length of time, you know that I conduct a crafting class at #DorchesterSeniorCitizensCenter every Friday afternoon. 

At last Friday's crafting class , we were being serenaded by one of the members who happens to have a wonderful voice. I asked to sing a duet with him and we began a rendition of "Tonight" from West Side Story. A quiet woman sitting at his table, whom I have seen there many times but who rarely gives me more than a nod, came over to me, apologized for not being able to pronounce my name, and then launched into a story about her late husband. He was a military man, she said, and when he got leave time he would call her up and sing "Tonight" to her over the phone as a signal that he would be home to see her and their children that evening. As she recounted her tale, her eyes welled up even as her face smiled at the memory of the man she obviously loved dearly.

Moral of the story: You never now how profoundly the littlest thing you do can touch another person's heart.

#MomentsToLiveFor #GitanaTheCreativeDiva #DorchesterSeniorCitizensCenter #DSCC #BrooklynNY #ArtIsLife

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Another Year Gone By.

The past two months are a blur. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve have come and gone and we're already past the middle of January 2016. Why does it seem that time is moving more and more swiftly as I get older?

Some of the highlights of the past couple of months include gardening. Yes, gardening. In December. In New York City. Early winter 2015 boasted some of the warmest weather in recorded history with temperature hitting 70 degrees two days before Christmas. As a result, my garden was in quite a confused state. My front yard hoop house, which had been winterized with a plastic covering, was now as warm as a spring day and producing a bumper crop of cilantro and some red leaf lettuce. The lettuce was sufficient for a small side salad (yum) and I am still harvesting cilantro for cooking. I find this winter cilantro to be even more fragrant than the warm weather variety.


The holidays would not be complete without some Christmas-related crafting. Although I was busy with many things, I made time for some last minute card and tag making. The tags came from my RTU (Ready To Use) stash of leftovers and I embellished them a bit with gold edging and text cut from gold card stock. For the cards. I decided to go simple. Instead of designing something from scratch, I chose a free ornament cutting file from birdscards.com, mounted the finished ornament on cardstock squares that I had in my RTU stash, and used one of my favorite card styles: the matchbook. The cardstock I used for the card was double-sided so the inside was a coordinating print to the outside. A bit of ribbon, a small ornament and a bow round it out. I printed out my own greeting on my computer, slapped in inside the completed card and, voila!, a finished card. You can find the free cutting files on Birdscards.com's website HERE .

I also made time to create an winter themed over-the-door sign for the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center. A couple of years ago I made a spring themed door sign and I thought it was time for another season to be represented. Again, I used cutting files from www.birdscards.com for the corners and some of the snowflakes. The plan is to eventually create signs for every season so they can be changed every three months.

Valentine's Day is around the corner and I haven't done a thing to prepare, craftwise. I better get moving. Looks like the next few months will be a blur also.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Trying To Get Back Into the Swing of Things

OSA Challenge #260

OSA Challenge #258

 I haven't been playing as much in my craft room as I prefer to and, frankly, I have missed it terribly. Life just kept getting in my way, focusing my attention on things other than my crafting. Recently I have been making a dedicated effort to making at least one card a week, just to keep my hands and mind moving. Sometimes, though, try as I might, I have a hard time coming up with an idea for a card and I end up wasting a whole lot of time futzing around and not coming up with anything. It was time to call in the reinforcements which, in this case, meant drawing on my network of fellow card makers at the Oriental Stamp Art (OSA) Yahoo Group that I haven't reached out to in years. There is a weekly layout challenge that gives you either a theme or an actual layout to use as inspiration in creating a card that is Oriental in nature and contains at least one stamped image. This is exactly what I needed, something to get my creative juices flowing and keep me focused on completing a project without having to come up with something totally new and original on my own.

OSA Challenge #259

Here you see my interpretations for the last three weekly challenges. I loved doing them and the regulars in the group welcomed me back with open arms and hearty compliments on my work. This is exactly the jump start I needed to keep my engine running. It felt so good to create something. Too good perhaps because life jumped up in my face again with more plans to divert my attention. This time it was flooding in my basement work room...three times in a week. Let's see how I can juggle this latest challenge and still find a bit of time to craft.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

UPDATE: The Ladies Are Gonna Like This...

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In a previous post, I posted photos of the necklace kits I was creating for my weekly crafting session with the ladies of Dorchester Senior Citizens Center in the Ditmas Park area of Brooklyn. As I predicted, the ladies really liked working on their necklaces. In fact, I had to turn some people away for lack of sufficient kits to accommodate them.

One of my favorite parts of crafting at the senior center is watching the faster crafters turn and help their slower neighbors. On several occasions I have seen one 95 year old woman turn to assist another 95 year old classmate. It is also gratifying to see young volunteers and nursing students working with the seniors.

Here are some photos from the necklace crafting class. Maybe in the faces of these beautiful people you can see why they make me smile.

Ballo ergo sum - Gitana, the Creative Diva

Crafting with Students Continues...

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After the successful crafting event that took place between the PS 119 students and my crafters at the senior center a couple of weeks ago, JoAnne Biswakarma, the center director, and I visited the students in their classroom to continue working on the display materials. This time the groups were divided a little differently. The needlepointers continued working on their unfinished plastic canvas projects while I handled the rest of the class...nearly twenty 9 year olds...to complete the title board that would appear over the finished display. Actually we worked on two title boards so I would have enough work for all the children to participate. Because there were so many diverse parts to the creation of this board, I was able to have the kids participate in things that they liked to do or, as was the case at least a few times, not give them something that they didn't like to do. There was one young man who was determined not to have to cut anything with a scissor so I was able to have him file notches with a needle file into skewers that would eventually become spear handles .

These same children, who were so well behaved when at the senior center, were little hellions in their own environment. The boys were particularly rambunctious. I had my hands full keeping them occupied and on task but somehow I managed to complete everything I set out to accomplish within the time allotted. In spite of the noise and the running around, the end result was very pleasing. The kids managed to finish their respective tasks and bring it all together to complete some pretty impressive title boards.

Now that they have created all these wonderful items, it is up to me to bring them all together into a display that will make them proud. Although it isn't finished yet, the display is shaping up nicely. All the elements the students created...the flowers, the leaves, the title board...are coming together beautifully. The title board at the top is a representation of the flag of Kenya complete with stripes and Maasai shields. The shields and letters are popped up from the background, giving them a three dimensional look. Even the title board itself is raised away from the display board so it appears to float above it. The leaves and flowers are also three dimensional,  having been strategically folded to give them a more realistic look and  attached in such a way as to have parts of them stand away from the board. Now to add some photos, a little text, some other doohickeys and VOILA! One magnificent display coming up.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva
Design team member for About Art Accents

The work continues...

I have been in a whirlwind of activity lately, so much so that I haven't had a minute to craft a card in well over a month. I'm beginning to go into withdrawal but I think there may be a lull soon that will allow me a moment to unwind and craft. My latest project was to recreate a monitoring testing vest for use in an ongoing research project at the local senior college. I'm happy to say that I completed the vest and will be delivering it to the client tomorrow. The vest, which is covered in panels of Velcro-like hook and loop fabric, proved to be quite a bit more challenging than I anticipated because it kept sticking to itself. Also the panels created extra bulk in the seams, preventing them from lying flat. There was a bit of a learning curve involved here but I managed to come out at the other end alright. Now I'm hoping the client doesn't mind some of the imperfections this learning curve caused. We shall see. In the meantime I have to catch up on some of the other work that fell to the wayside while I was working on the vest like mending, ironing, cleaning, and best of all, CRAFTING! I can't wait to reclaim my crafts table so I can mess it up again.

Ballo ergo sum- Gitana, the Creative Diva

It's been a while...

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You wouldn't know it from the inactivity on this blog but I've been busy...very busy, both artistically and otherwise, which is why I haven't been able to catch up until now. In my last post I was creating invitations for my daughter's Sweet Sixteen birthday party which took place at the end of November. Well, no sooner was that party over than the holidays were upon us and I began a frenzy of creating Christmas cards. Of course ONE Christmas card wasn't enough. Oooh nooo! I had to make several different cards. Here are some of the cards I created this year.



As if cards didn't keep me busy enough, I decided to create some ornaments as well. Many years ago I started a tradition of creating ornaments as gifts. My sister liked them so much told me that the only gift she wanted from me every Christmas was an ornament. This year I decided to create some out of paper, something I had not done before. I was very satisfied with the results, as was my sister. See for yourself. I was so taken with one of the designs I created using Cuttlebug die cuts that I began to write a tutorial for publishing on this blog. As soon as I complete it, I will post it here.



I'm in the midst of pre-spring cleaning frenzy so my crafting is going to take a slight hiatus while I rid myself of a lot of garbage. As soon as I get out from underneath the rubble, I'll be back. See you soon.

Ballo ergo sum,
Always and all ways,
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

On the mend and back in the workshop

My health issues seem to have receded so it is time for me to begin creating again. Although it will be a while before I return to crafting at full speed, I have managed to squeeze in a couple of birthday card projects in the past few weeks. One was a card for my sister who loves Asian motifs, so I stamped and embossed an elaborate Chinese dragon for her. The other was an upbeat card for my daughter's friend who turned sweet sixteen. I made that card high contrast and very contemporary, something a teenager would like. Take a look at the column on the left for pictures. You can also go to my photobucket to see these and other cards I have created in the past year. The link is at the top of the left-hand column.

Ballo ergo sum,
Always and all ways,
- Gitana, the Creative Diva