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| Glittery Snowflake hanging ornaments |
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| Oversized gift tag |
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| Oversized gift tag |
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| The group displays their reindeer cards. |
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| JoAnne Biswakarma, DSCC director, livens up the party with confetti. |
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| Curlicue Reindeer Christmas Cards |
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| Happy New Year hand held signs |
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| It's time to party! |
It seems impossible to believe but next week is Thanksgiving. NEXT WEEK!! It feels as if I was just setting out seedlings and applying sunscreen last week. Time is truly moving faster and faster every year. Ugh, that means I'm getting older and older just as fast. Hmmph! On to happier thoughts.
Our upcoming class will be the last session before the Thanksgiving holiday and I have created a cute little turkey decoration. It's rather small, measuring only 2.5 inches tall by approximately 4.25 inches wide, but what this little fellow lacks in stature, he makes up for in attitude. His body is a small pinecone. His head features an open beak with a nice wattle and wide eyes, but it's his tail that steals the show, made up of 28 individual paper feathers highlighted with contrasting ink. Even the back of his tail is fancy, adorned with a lacy half medallion. A full medallion is used as a stand for this fancy fellow.
I haven't posted in a long time, not because I haven't had anything to post but, on the contrary, because I've had too much going on. Unfortunately, not all of it has been good. In the past six months there have been at least five funerals, three of which were family or friends close enough to be family. I kept up with my senior crafting class during that time to keep myself from dwelling on sad memories, knowing that the sadness would pass and life would go on.
There are many more photos on my Facebook page as well as on my Pinterest board, Crafting with Senior Citizens. Why don't you check them out and make a comment or two? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Since my last post, there hasn't been whole lot of crafting going on. That's because I was away for three weeks tending to my daughter who was recuperating from major surgery, and caring for her two young sons. Those boys very nearly put me in traction, they are so rambunctious, but I managed to hold my own and tame them somewhat.
We continued the floral theme with a cute little hydrangea gift box perfect for filling with sweet treats or a small gift. The box was topped with a beautiful paper hydrangea painstakingly created by pinning one floret at a time onto a styrofoam hemisphere. Once again my crafters met the challenge head on and were rewarded with a unique gift.
I conducted a class in the art of masking to create a simple scene through the use of inks, cosmetic sponges and rubber stamps. I created a few samples of the scene using different color combinations from the limited palette we have to work with, then demonstrated how the scene was created. Then I tasked them with creating their scenes and, true to form, they came up with interpretations I never would have imagined. The scene was then used as a focal point in a minimalistic card.
For Valentine's Day, we did a project I call The Queen of Hearts. The ladies were told to decorate a foam crown to express love, then I set them loose on a table loaded down with stickers, glittered foam, self-stick rhinestones and all manner of bling. My seniors, magpies all, love all that shiny stuff and they had a ball decorating their crowns. They were then displayed on the center's walls as part of the Valentine's Day decorations.
There was also a swing card class, also known as the flip flop card, so named because it is cut in such a way that a central panel swings around upon opening the card to reveal what is on the back. You can be sure you won't find that at a Hallmark store.
Our latest project was the one we all enjoyed the most. I cut a memory wire bracelet apart to create individual rings that were used to make beaded key rings that can be worn on the wrist like a bracelet. After years of collecting beads, I had literally thousand of beads at my disposal, at least half of which I placed on the table for them to use. The sight of all those beads must have made their creative juices flow because they dove into the project like excited school children. They liked it enough to make two rings each, many of which were intended for grandchildren, nieces and nephews. This was one of the biggest classes to date, so much so that a couple of late comers had no place to sit at the table and had to walk away, sad to miss out on the fun. You can tell from the smiles on their faces that they really enjoyed themselves.
In the midst of running a household, preparing and conducting a weekly crafts class for senior citizens and ferrying my elderly parents to a variety of medical appointments, there is very little time for me to do that which fulfills me in a personal way. Yes, the senior crafting is wonderfully gratifying but I am keenly aware that I do that primarily for them, not for me. So every once in a while I have to take a step back and do something to satisfy my inner creative beast.
Recently, I came across some new cutting files by one of my favorite artists, Monica Bjork. She creates the most intricate cutting patterns for paper crafters. The best part is her files are free! She gives them away to anyone who wants them. In checking out her newest files, I found this wonderfully detailed file in her Lattice Files category. One look told me I wanted to use this file as the basis for a Valentine's wall poster. Here you can see the before and after photos of my endeavor. I was very pleased with the way it came out. None of the elements were mounted on foam tape to make them stand out. I used ink shading and manipulation of the paper to make them pop off the page and appear three dimensional. The finished size is 12" x 12".
The Christmas and New Year's celebrations have come and gone but at the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center we're still in the holiday spirit. With our sizable Asian contingent of members, we always make sure to celebrate the Lunar New Year. 2017 is the Year of the Rooster and the official start is January 28 but we're wasting no time in crafting some decorations to get our celebrations off to a beautiful start.
No Asian celebration is complete without lanterns so for this project we created a faux lantern adorned with an ornate rooster on one side and the corresponding Chinese symbol on the other. I took pains to use culturally traditional and appropriate colors and to make sure that no one assembled the kanji symbol incorrectly or inadvertently placed upside down. (Of course my Asian ladies knew the proper orientation.) I was complimented on the accuracy of the symbol by my Chinese crafters who painstakingly placed every stroke in its proper place. Everyone was a bit disappointed when I told them the lanterns would not be going home with them until the end of the month as they were created to decorate the center but they all proudly handed them to me so they could be displayed. As you can see from the photos, the Asians weren't the only ones who enjoyed creating the lanterns. One of my crafty ladies learned to create a beaded rooster to celebrate the New Year and she gave it to me. I absolutely love it.
