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

The Method to My Madness

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The ladies of the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center and I have been busy crafting away our Tuesday afternoons for the past several weeks, creating the prettiest things. We've made cards and created wall flowers for decorating the senior center. This week's embellished gift bag was a big hit. Creating, cutting and packaging a new project every week requires hours in front of a computer creating graphic cutting files, cutting them with a digital cutter and packing everything into individual bags is a lot of work but I do enjoy guiding the ladies through the assembly process and they seem to enjoy it as well. Just take a look at these smiling faces.
 I just never get tired of them.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Back in the Crafting Saddle

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Sunburst Card

As I mentioned in my last post, I have returned to conducting craft classes at the Dorchester Senior Citizens Center. This time around I have a new crop of crafters so I'm hoping to try out some new techniques and projects with them. The first two projects were simple greeting cards assembled from kits I designed and created. Simple projects give me an idea what the participants are capable of and what they like to do.

This week I tried something a little different and had them create three dimensional dahlias that will be used as decorations. The project itself was really very simple...roll and glue square pieces of paper into cones to form the petals, then hot glue them onto paper circles to form the flower. Here's what I learned from this exercise: a) rolling 41 squares of paper into cones takes time, b) not everyone can easily roll a paper cone and glue it into shape, c) not everyone knows what a glue gun is, let alone know how to use one, and finally d) when Access-A-Ride shows up, I lose my class as they run out to catch their ride. As a result, most of my ladies did not complete their flowers but they promised to return next week to finish it up. Nevertheless, a couple of diehard crafters who did not depend on outside transportation stayed and completed the project. They are shown here with their completed flowers.

3-D Dahlias on Display @ DSCC

The prototypes that I completed prior to the class for demonstration purposes as well as those completed by my class were tacked to a fabric covered panel on the wall of the room and are now part of the center's spring decor which I am currently in the process of mounting. In the next post I will have photos of some of the spring decorations that I have put up, some of which I have created specially for Dorchester Center. Until then...


Ballo ergo sum - Gitana, the Creative Diva

The Great Clothespin Makeover and The Potted Plant

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In my last post I mentioned how I squeezed in a teensy bit of time for crafting by decorating some wooden clothespins I'd bought. I like the way they turned out so much I've decided to continue decorating them as well as take them up a little notch. This time I painted them and added some patterned ribbons. Can't wait to see them on my line.

Some time ago I had picked up a load of nail art decals from a fellow Freecycler who needed to get rid of them. I had used them in a crafts project with the senior members of the Dorchester Senior Citizen's Center last year to create tiny refrigerator magnets. They all came out great but I was still left with a big load of nail decals. In a desperate attempt to help use up some of these things, I painted an old, chipped planter pot white and decorated it all around with nail art decals. It didn't come out half bad. Now all I've got to do is stick a plant in it.

UPDATE!! 

My husband has a habit of asking me to give him a young plant for his office whenever he gets a new job. He's been at his current job for a few months but has only now decided to ask for a plant. I decided that I would place a young snake plant in the pot I decorated with paint and decals. I always give him a snake plant because they are so hardy, slow growing and tolerant of many adverse conditions that would kill other plants, particularly that of infrequent watering. He likes the no-fuss nature of the plant. It's a perfect fit for his personality. He also asked for a little sign to keep the sticky fingers in his office at bay so I reached into my RTU (Ready-To-Use) stash and found the blue oval with the white scalloped trim, a leftover from another project. I added text with some press-on letters I had from waaaay back in the day, glued it on to a couple of coffee stirrer sticks and VOILA! -- a cute little sign to keep people at arm's length in a cute and funny way. After all, we don't want to upset the ladies in the office (especially the ones with the sticky fingers).


Ooops, did I just say that out loud?


Ballo ergo sum 
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Getting Back Into The Swing Of Things

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My two year stint as the arts and crafts instructor at the Dorchester Senior Citizens' Center was a wonderful experience. Working with and getting to know those seniors was truly inspirational as well as educational. I learned much about the process of conceiving, creating and implementing a crafting session but I think I learned even more from the seniors themselves. This period was an investment of time and effort that rewarded me over and over again. I have been blessed me with many new friends and it is a time I will never forget.

There was one downside to this experience. The time and energy I expended on the senior crafting projects meant there was less time for me to create for myself and engage in the artistic comradeship I enjoyed with my fellow members of the Oriental Stamp Art Yahoo Group. Participating in swaps and weekly challenges was something I had truly enjoyed and sorely missed. Now that I am no longer crafting for the senior center, I have more time to spend in those pursuits that I enjoy and so I have stuck a creative toe back in the water and have begun participating in the weekly challenges again. So far I have done two challenges (see photos) and already I can feel that familiar feeling of creative electricity coursing through me. I am looking forward to participating in some swaps in the future and continuing my artistic journey to wherever it may take me.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Caught in a Crafty 'Net

Magnetic Mousetrap Clips

I love surfing the web in search of craft ideas, tutorials and artistic inspiration. Fortunately there are hundreds of wonderful sites with tons of eye candy for an artist with a sweet tooth. Suzy's Artsy-Craftsy Sitcom is such a site, loaded to the gills with all manner of crafty ideas. The Plaster Casting with Sand tutorial really grabbed my attention, as did Popsicle Stick Bracelets and Magnetic Mousetrap Clips. They are wonderful sources of inspiration and appeal to all levels of crafters, from the novice to the advanced, and I know I'll be going back to this site in the future.

From time to time I'll be featuring noteworthy craft sites on my blog in order to spread the artistic wealth around. I hope you like them as much as I do.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

"The time has come", the walrus said...

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"...to talk of many things."  Even someone unfamiliar with Lewis Carroll's classic poem, "The Walrus and The Carpenter", has heard those words before. I will do exactly that...talk of many things.

It is with a heavy heart and a tinge of regret that I have made the decision to suspend my craft classes at the senior citizens center. My weekly craft projects have become extremely time consuming and I have other responsibilities that demand my attention. It has become increasingly difficult to come up with a project each week that is simple enough for even the most challenged seniors to complete, interesting enough to hold their attention and diverse enough so that they are not doing the same thing over and over again. Yet there is another, more intangible, reason. I'm feeling jaded and I no longer feel the same anticipation and joy I once did. These are but some of the reasons I must leave my beloved senior ladies.

Here you see a photo of the final project I will be doing with them. It is a card utilizing simple elements on a printed card front. The beautiful designs on these cards make simple die cut shapes and a decorated garment tag take on a more sophisticated look. This will be one of those projects where the ladies will get to choose their own pieces as opposed to having me create individual kits for them. The cards are double sided with an ornate design on one side and a more subtle and subdued pattern on the other side, giving them two options to choose for a card front. The embellishments will all be placed on the table for them to choose from and if I know my ladies they will all be choosing a different mix. With this, their final craft project with me, they will be allowed to demonstrate their own personal creativity and flair. I, for my part, will be photographing them as usual, capturing their moments of cooperation and their smiles.


Ballo ergo sum
 - Gitana, the Creative Diva

CHA Convention Swag

A fraction of my "swag" haul.

DCWV designer series cards

The Crafter's Workshop papers and stencils

Cutting tools from Fiskars.

Chalks and rub-on colors by Craf-T.

A bonanza from Tsukineko

Never having been to a crafts convention before, I had no idea what to expect in spite of the fact that I had done quite a bit of reading about CHA before I went. Although I had been warned by the staff at A.C. Moore that I should expect to receive some goodies, I had no idea I'd be coming home with so much stuff. Apparently seasoned convention attendees come prepared for "swag", the insider's term for the giveaways and free goodies that one receives at these conventions. I saw some people walking around with rolling luggage just for that purpose.

I received beautiful cardstock, inks, chalks, magazines, catalogs, stencils, cutting tools and more from companies like Fiskars, The Crafter's Workshop, Tsukineko, Dies Cuts With a View (DCWV) and others. Pictured here is just a small fraction of the treasures I brought home...so much that I was concerned about exceeding the weight limit on my luggage. (Side note: On the return trip home, I placed my carry-on bag on the luggage scale. It weighed 15 pounds and it only contained the magazines and catalogs I received. The rest of the goodies were in my sister's carry on and in our luggage.) Seriously, it took me four days just to put some of it away and I still have some things in my crafts room that are floating around waiting for a permanent storage place. All this does not take into account the goodies I received from A.C. Moore BEFORE attending CHA as part of my sweepstakes prize! Heaven knows what is going to happen when my big win...the E-Craft electronic cutter... arrives. I suppose I'll have to rent a storage room somewhere.

So what to do with all of this wonderful material and inspiration that I brought back from CHA Summer 2010? Start crafting, of course!! Look for my next post where I'll show pictures of some of the things I've been making.


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

The crafts classes continue...

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Between the volunteering I do for the senior center and a decorating project I'm working on for my daughter's high school, I've been too frantically busy to write about what I'm doing. I'm going to try and condense things here in an effort to catch up.

For a change of pace, we switched from card making and began making other things from paper. Thanks to a very successful visit to Material for the Arts as well as some generous donations of craft materials from private donors, I had lots of new materials to work with. Here you'll see a pretty pink and black memo holder complete with cards for writing little notes. These have small round magnets on the backs that allow them to stick to a refrigerator or filing cabinet.

Then there are two different styles of gift bags. The one pictured here is in a blue floral pattern but the seniors were able to choose from a variety of floral colors including chartreuse, peach and gold. This bag came with a coordinating gift tag and a matching little gift holder crafted to look like a matchbook and perfectly sized to hold a single square of Ghirardelli chocolate.

The other gift bag was made to look like a pale green mini tote bag and features a matching gift tag and a velcro closure. Class participants even got some coordinating tissue paper to place in the bag so they could be ready to wrap that perfect little gift.

The card you see here will be this week's project, a generic birthday card that is suitable for both men and women. It's generally more difficult to choose colors and themes that are suitable for men so this is a welcome change. This will be my final project for this season until I return in September to continue the craft classes. I must dedicate myself to completing the project for the high school in time for the graduation ceremony at the end of June, then spend time preparing my graduating daughter for her transition to college. So many things to do, so few days in which to do them.

Oh yes, the remaining photo. The senior center will be conducting it's own version of American Idol called "Dorchester Senior Idol". The photo represents the scoring paddles the judges will be using to score the participants on a scale from one to four. I created the paddles from some old hand fans with wooden handles by removing the original cardboard fan and replacing it with one that I designed. I just thought I'd throw them into the mix here as well since I had some fun making them. Oh yes, one more thing. I not only got to make the paddles, I'll get to use them. I've been asked to be one of the judges for the talent contest. This should be fun!!

Okay, no more time for chatter. I'm off again to put nose firmly to grindstone. I've got flowers to create and floral arrangements to make and a prom to prepare for and a graduation coming up and...

Boy, I need a vacation.


Ballo ergo sum- Gitana, the Creative Diva

More than Just a Card

If you follow this blog, you know that I am volunteering at a local senior citizen's center. Once a week for an hour, I lead a group of seniors in assembling a card kit that I create at home. Many times I will build in an element of choice so that they don't feel that their cards look exactly alike. Just before Easter, I created a card that featured a verse on the front that said "Easter Greetings" but knowing that not everyone there celebrates Easter, I created alternate greetings that could easily be substituted instead. Those greetings were "Hope You're Feeling Better" and "Where Flowers Bloom, There is Hope".

My story today is about Yolanda, the beautiful lady you see in this picture. She is holding the card she made in my crafts class. Yolanda chose the "There is Hope" greeting for her card and set about to putting the pieces together. As she was crafting, she began to think about who she would send this card to and her thoughts turned to a dear friend of hers who had just undergone a very serious operation and for whom she was concerned. It was only then that she really noticed the verse she had chosen for her card and how appropriate it was for this particular situation. When she spoke about her friend and how perfectly the card would suit her, she became emotional and had to fight back the tears. If she seems a little misty-eyed in the photo, she was. To paraphrase her words, "I didn't even think about what I was choosing when I picked the verse, but I chose the perfect words for her. There is hope."

I highlight Yolanda because this experience is not all that uncommon. For the most part, when one is crafting as part of a group effort, attention is usually paid first to the instructor and then to the task at hand, but if you allow yourself NOT to think, NOT to get hung up on the details and just let your mind relax, a whole new realm of insight is possible. This is what Yolanda felt when she realized what she was actually doing. She wasn't just crafting a card, she was sending a message of hope, and the realization of that brought her to tears.

I regularly inhabit the world of alternate insight and my vehicle is my art. That someone else has been able to visit that world due to my influence is an awesome and humbling realization.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

The Joys of Card Swapping and RTU's

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When I was first introduced to the world of online craft groups, I was interested in the practice of swap challenges. This is when participants create an item according to certain guidelines such as specified color(s), theme, layout, technique, etc. It was an opportunity for us crafters to try something new, share it with others of our own ilk and get some feedback on our work. The group I was member of for nearly two years recently shut down and its moderator suggested we join Paper Craft Planet if we were interested in continuing to swap, a suggestion which I took. In the past two weeks I have participated in two challenges and the results are pictured here. These are all examples of challenges where you have to create a card based on a specified layout or "sketch". The first two cards were created for the same challenge. You can see how the placement of the elements in both cards is the same but the colors and themes are totally different. The third card is for a different sketch challenge that required that the central element be a heart in addition to using the specified layout.

This last card is an excellent example of how you can use little things you may have laying around in your craft stash to create a beautiful card. I like to experiment with different techniques and new materials in order to get a feel for them. Some of my efforts end up in the trash but some of them I like so much that I can't bear to toss them even though they were meant only for practice. I call those pieces RTU which means Ready-To-Use. That is the case with the inked and embossed chipboard heart on this card. It was a successful experiment that was lying around in my stash and perfectly fit in with the requirements of this particular sketch challenge. The polka dot ribbon came from last year's box of Valentine's chocolates and the velveteen stripes were created with redline tape and Fun Flock over striped wallpaper.

Are you a crafter? Do you have a stash of RTU's waiting to be "discovered", or perhaps you have already created works of beauty using little bits of this and that? If you have a photo gallery with pictures of your work, please share them with me through your commnents. I'd love to see them. Thanks.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva