So Much to Tell...

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Where do I start? There is so much to say.

First let me say that I completed the six large paper flower arrangements for my daughter's high school graduation and they looked magnificent. Here's a picture of how they looked across the front of the auditorium stage. They are approximately three feet from top to bottom and two and a half feet across.

While I was in the midst of paper flower frenzy, I received a call to create another project of a totally different sort, one that requires my skills as a seamstress. I'll be recreating a monitoring vest used in the medical field for an Alzheimer's research project. I haven't even begun that project yet and I'm being contracted by yet another client who needs invitations designed for her annual client appreciation event. I had hoped to dedicate my summer to doing business research and creating a business plan but it appears I'll be too busy being in business to do any research about being in business. Not a bad problem to have.

In addition, I have been asked to become a design team member for About Art Accents, the rubber stamp company that sponsors Oriental Stamp Art, the Yahoo group I belong to. I accepted and have received my first set of rubber stamps with which to create cards and other works of art.

As if all this isn't enough, there is more. I have just received notification from my favorite crafts supply store, A. C. Moore, that I have won their sweepstakes for a trip for two to the biggest crafts show in the country, the Craft and Hobby Association Supershow in Rosemont, Illinois taking place during the last weekend in July. I am waiting to hear from a sweepstakes official so I can satisfy myself that this is not a hoax. Then I'm going to start packing my bags.

In the middle of all of this activity on my part, I've had to deal with:
- my youngest daughter's graduation and all the attendant social engagements that go along with it,
- hosting my oldest daughter and family who came up from North Carolina for the graduation
- Father's Day
- my husband's birthday
- doctor and dentist appointments
- preparing my new graduate to move to North Carolina with her sister to attend college.

Brother, I think I need a rest.


Ballo ergo sum,
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Paper Flowers for a Green School Graduation

This June marks a couple of milestones. First, my youngest daughter is graduating from high school and going off to college. Second, she is a member of the very first graduating class for The Green School, An Academy for Environmental Careers, a new high school here in Brooklyn that first opened its doors to students in September 2007. As its name implies, The Green School's focus is environmental responsibility and sustainability so, of course, its graduation exercises has to promote that mission. Also of concern is the budget so the event must be organized on a shoestring. To that end, I volunteered to create large floral arrangements with which to decorate the auditorium during the ceremony. The paper for these flowers was salvaged surplus that was previously printed with school notices, flyers, etc. and was designated for the recycling bin. Never mind that I have no floral experience and have never done anything like this before. I just jumped in, learned what I could as I went long and whatever I didn't learn, I made up on the fly.

The photos here were taken at the school one day when one of the art teachers volunteered all his art classes one day solely for the purpose of helping me cut the massive amounts of paper petals and leaves required for this project. In addition, the students also pre-assembled many of the flowers and the paper bows. Here is also a photo of three completed arrangements. All told, there will be a total of six arrangements that will be placed side by side across the front of the auditorium stage. I have already completed four of them. Two more and I am done. Phew! I had no idea how large a project this would be but I'm so glad I took the chance and did it. It has been a great learning experience and has yielded a very satisfying result.

Next time perhaps I'll actually get some floral training so I'll know what I'm doing.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Full Circle: Lovely as a Tree

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The card featured here was the prototype for a birthday card for my daughter's friend, someone whom she describes as a "tree lover" so she wanted the focal image of the card to be that of a tree. She had seen and liked several tree sketches I had done with oil pastels on the paper I use to protect my worktable. I had been testing several different packs of pastels to determine their viability so I just used the paper that was in front of me. They were only "throw-away" sketches to me (see below) but she liked them enough to "commission" me to draw a tree for her friend's card.

I created the tree on white vellum using Prismacolor fine line markers for the trunk and branches and Sakura Cray-Pas for the leaves, blending the leaf colors with a small wad of paper toweling barely dampened with mineral spirits. I was going to leave it at that but the tree seemed to beg for more surroundings. I started by simply filling in the foreground with regular Prismacolor markers to create the grass, adding details with the fine point markers. Before I knew it, I had created this entire country scene complete with barbed wire fencing and tiny little wildflowers. I added background details with colored pencils and used oil pastels on the back side of the vellum to create a soft sky and clouds. Drawing on the back side softens the effect of the color and also prevents smearing of or blending with the leaves of the tree. (Click on the pictures to see a larger image.)

When I was done I realized that I had combined many of the traditional materials and techniques I had been taught as an art student years ago with the materials and techniques I have recently learned as a papercrafter. It was a very gratifying experience and I was quite pleased with the outcome. Not so, apparently, for my daughter. She loved the scene but said it was not what she wanted for her friend. She wanted the rough draft tree she had seen on my workshop table. So be it. I recreated the rough tree on another card. She put the finishing touches on it and gave it to her friend at school. She reported that he loved his tree card. Although I was initially disappointed that my scene was not to my daughter's liking, it actually turned out to be to my advantage. Now I get to keep the card that was so gratifying to make and draw further inspiration from it.

My present avocation is bringing me right back around to my past training. This grounds me, makes me feel more secure. Life, when it works, truly is a circle.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Mother's Day

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No matter how much in advance I attempt to make my cards, I always seem to find myself rushing at the last minute. Lack of time management skills, I'd like to say, but the truth is that I get carried away doing things for fun and not paying attention to that which needs attending. Such was the case with my Mother's Day cards. I found myself in a mad rush to complete my cards and get them into the mail before the post office closed so that they would be delivered the day before Mother's Day and not the day after. When I work in that manner, I really don't have too much time to think about clever compositions or unique layouts. I tend to concentrate on the person for whom the card is intended and attempt to create something that is meaningful for them. Sometimes I have something to work with, such as a favorite color, favorite flower or motif. Sometimes, however, I either have no information to work with or I have too much which, although it may seem like a good problem to have, sometimes is worse than having nothing. The three cards featured here are each an example of these various scenarios.

For my mother-in-law, I asked my husband to tell me what his mother's favorite color(s) and/or flower was. He gave me that blank stare that men produce when they haven't got a clue but don't want to admit it. After browbeating him into extracting said information from his sister I was told that his mother liked white roses and the color burgundy. With these parameters I went to work and the first card above is the finished product. Because my mother-in-law is Spanish-speaking I made the greeting on the face of the card in her native language.

For my sister in-law's card I had no information whatsoever but I knew better than to call and ask my brother for any. No doubt I would have gotten the telephonic version of the blank stare followed by an eloquent line of BS. I decided to forego that route and create a card featuring an intricate butterfly painted in interference watercolors that glimmer and change colors as you tilt it to the light.

The last of these cards was the most difficult for me to create. It was for my daughter. One would think that I would know enough about my daughter to make this an easy task but the opposite was true. Of course I know my daughter but I wanted to say something special and personal to her for Mother's Day, something that was just between us. This dilemma bedeviled me for days until it came to me in the wee hours of the morning when I was bleary-eyed and drained from creating my sister-in-law's card. My daughter's name, Ava, means bird-like , something that is not common knowledge even among my family members, so I resolved to create a card with a variety of bird and bird-related images. You can see the results above. Although the layout is what I would consider a bit on the blah side given some of my other work, I was more concerned with the message I wished to convey.

It wasn't until I had completed these cards (as well as cards for my mother and sister) that I realized there was a common thread running through most of them...the aspect of flight. My daughter's card features birds while the cards for my mother, mother-in-law and sister-in-law all feature butterflies (also known as a symbol of transformation). I suppose this similarity of motifs is indicative of my inner desire to transform and take flight. Whatever the reason, my Mother's Day card madness is over for this year. Now to survive the Mother's Day weekend.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva