Bloom or Bust: The Celebration of Spring Begins

Stylized hydrangeas

(Click on any photo to see a larger image.)

This has been a rather productive weekend for me. And well it should. After all, I sequestered myself in my basement workroom on Saturday for 15 hours, breaking only long enough to eat (such a bad habit), go to the bathroom (another time waster) and play the occasional computer game to take a break (time well spent).

 For this year I have made "light", both as a relative measurement of weight as well as an element of energy, my theme. In a previous post, I mentioned how my first senior craft project of the year was intended to start the new year off with light. If you have read any of my other blogs, you know I'm a gardener and a lover of nature. I love the advent of spring with its promise of warmer weather and its beautiful array of colorful flora and fauna. In my recent series of projects I have incorporated both light and nature through images of flowers and butterflies. Both are light in terms of weight, both are colorful, color being the chromatic expression of light energy, and both represent beautiful aspects of nature. This kind of work puts me completely in my element.

Detail of Floral Border Panels

One of the things I do at the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center where I volunteer is to seasonally decorate the main activity room.

This weekend I decided to create flowers...lots of them...for the purpose of decorating the center for spring. I was inspired by a recent purchase of craft foam flowers intended for a young child's craft project to create some colorful border panels to be placed along one of the center's walls above eye level.  As I was putting the flowers together as intended by the manufacturer, I realized there was so much more that I could do to make them more interesting so I colored, scored, folded, and glued. The more I embellished, the more invested I became in the project and the more pleased I was with what was taking shape. Here you can see some photos of the four border panels I completed this weekend as well as some stylized hydrangea blossoms that were running around in my head, begging to be created.

No post concerning the senior center would be complete without some pictures of my lovely ladies. Here you see them showing off the flowers they made during a recent crafting session. Just look at the beautiful bouquet they created. Those flowers are almost as pretty as the women who crafted them.

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