The Zen of Creating

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At the last two craft classes I conducted at Dorchester Senior Citizens Center,my crafty ladies really enjoyed themselves. We made a decorated matchbox in one class that they really liked, so much so that they requested to repeat the class and were giving me suggestions for alternative colors and designs they would like to see for the next time. (Note to self: definitely do this class again.) There's a photo of me with some of my "girls" holding their finished boxes. They were all smiles.

This week I decided to up the ante a bit. Usually I design a project, create a kit and lead the group in assembling it. This time, using stencils donated by The Crafter's Workshop, as well as blank paper fans and markers obtained at Materials For The Arts, I told them that there was no kit. They were going to design their own project. Good thing I brought plenty of supplies for the class. It was a FULL house.

I gave the ladies a rudimentary lesson in the art of zentangling.  I described it as conscious doodling where the aim is to concentrate solely on what you're doing and pay no attention to what is going on around you. I told them there was no right or wrong in whatever they chose to do. THEY were the artists and they decided what they wanted to do. Then I said, "Go!".

Boy, did they take that direction to heart! These ladies dove into their fans and stenciled away. It was so quiet at the table, you could hear a pin drop. When they were done, there were more smiles going around that table as they showed off their finished creations. Just take a look at those fans and those smiles.

When I asked them how they felt during the exercise, the consensus was that they were all very relaxed and focused. One participant said her friend sitting next to her was talking to her and she didn't hear a word, so focused was she on her doodling.

So it's official. The Friday afternoon crafting class is becoming a go-to at the senior center. Autumn, one of my favorite times for seasonal crafting, will be here very soon and I can't wait to see what projects I'll be dreaming up for this wonderful group of women. I'll do anything to keep them smiling.

Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva

Creativity can be messy

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There's an old saying: "In order to make an omelette, you have to break some eggs." It essentially means that to reach your goal, things may get messy along the way. The important thing is to keep your eyes on the prize. These photos illustrate that premise rather well. I recently made some floral wreaths to decorate the offices of the director and staff of the  #DorchesterSeniorCitizensCenter. Frankly, it was a mess. Flowers, ribbon, hot glue, straight pins, yada yada yada...all over the place. Finally, from the chaos came the beauty of the finished wreaths. These were so much fun to make. All materials received from #MaterialsForTheArts.


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva




#DSCC, #MFTA, #ArtIsLife, #GitanaTheCreativeDiva, #BrooklynNY #SummerDecor, #Flowers, #Wreaths

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

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

Summer Decorating Begins

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I had promised the director at the Dorchester Senior Citizen Center that I would come back every few months to do the seasonal decorating. I was past due on decorating for summer because the month of June was incredibly busy for me but I finally went to the center to start livening up the space for the hot summer months.

Fortunately I had done a pretty good job of decorating for spring because summer's decorations were added to the already festive look of the room. The walls were already decked out with dozens of butterflies and flowers. To that, I added some kites, colorful flip-flop sandals and two large and very colorful pennants (first photo) that the center director had purchased, all familiar symbols of summer. Coincidentally I had created my own Summertime pennant (second photo) to replace the Spring sign that I had created and hung in the center several months ago. Even though I had no prior knowledge of the pennants the center director had bought, the colors and the motif of my pennant were a perfect match for it and the rest of the room. I couldn't have planned it better. The kites were pinned to several large decorative fabric panels that I had scored for the center last year through a Freecycle donation. You can see some of these panels in the last two photos. In the last photo you can also see those colorful flip-flops strung from a heating pipe, looking for all the world like those sneakers you see hanging from utility lines all over the city. The sandals hang about 8 feet above the floor, low enough for everyone to easily see them but high enough to prevent any of the light-fingered members from making off with them. (Oh yes, those seniors will steal anything that isn't nailed down.) What you don't see in these photos is the Summer Goddess that I showcased in my last post. She was safely on view in a locked glass display case.

I'll go back to the center to finish the summer decorating and then I'll disappear again until September when it will be time to take down all the spring/summer decorations and switch over to fall. On the heels of fall decorating comes winter holiday decorating and that is a huge job. Until then I'll be in my garden, watering and weeding, planting and picking.


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

An Unconventional Valentine's Day Card

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2012 - a dramatically different color scheme

When you think of Valentine's Day, you think of pink and red hearts, right? Yeah, me too, but this year I wanted to do something a little different for my seniors. Our Valentine's Day projects for the past two years, as seen below, have included the mandatory red and pink hearts. This time I wanted to give an unexpected twist to our craft project. While this year's card sports the obligatory hearts and flowers my ladies know and love, the color scheme is anything but conventional. Inspired by a beautiful piece of specialty paper in shades of turquoise and purple , I designed a card that really played up those colors. I will admit that, at first, I wasn't too thrilled with the way this card was turning out but the more I worked on it, the more it grew on me and now I'm very pleased with the final outcome.

Our very first project from 2010

2011's hanging ornament

The colors are not the only things different about this card. You can't really tell from the photo but this is not a foldover card, it's an insertion card. What I mean is that there is only a front and a back to this card, like a postcard. It doesn't open up. You have to turn it around to see what is written on the other side. This will be a bit of a departure for these ladies accustomed to the more conventional type of card.

For this project I had my DrawPlus graphic software and my eCraft electronic cutter working overtime. The heart is crafted of four different layers stacked upon one another. Each of these layers had to be designed and cut separately. It took quite a few attempts to get the lighter blue trellis-like layer to cut correctly, after which I had to manually poke out all the little holes in between the mesh. Once the heart was completed, cutting the rest of the card elements was a piece of cake. The tiny tag was just the perfect size for a kiss print rubber stamp that I've had for the longest time. I deliberately left off any overt references to Valentine's Day because I wanted this project to convey the universal aspect of love over the celebration of one calendar day. This card could just as easily be used to congratulate a newly engaged couple or be sent as a quick hello to a cherished grandchild. Although I admit that the swirls and flowers lend a very feminine air, the color scheme would suit a young man. I'm sure the ladies will love it.

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

An eCraft Project

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Craftwell recently released its updated software designed to correct many of the problems inherent in the original version. I'm happy to report that many of the problems I had with my machine have been addressed and corrected with version 2. It's still not not my dream machine but it is far from the nightmare it was when I first received it. As a result, I've been playing around with it quite a bit, putting it through its paces and seeing what it can do. My big interest in this machine is the ability to import and cut images that I design on my computer. Now that it is behaving in a more consistent manner I can begin to dream up projects for the senior citizens center that I can cut solely on the eCraft. Here is my first paper project cut solely on the eCraft. It is a layered flower mounted on a pin back badge.

The flower on the right was cut from standard cardstock using the eCraft Fundamentals 1 set of SD images that were included in the initial shipment of the machine. The poinsettia flower on the left was cut from discontinued fabric paper the center had on hand with .svg files that I adapted from royalty free clipart. The layers are stacked with a washer between the leaves and petals to create height. The individual leaves and petals are curled and manipulated to give them more dimension and depth. Each layer, including the base badge, has a small hole punched in the middle through which passes a small office variety paper fastener. The legs of the fastener are opened and pressed tightly to the pin-back, effectively holding the whole thing together. I'm particularly pleased that I was able to salvage and repurpose the badges from being tossed into the trash by the senior center director. I believe wholeheartedly in recycling.These versatile flowers can also be made without the pin back for use as decor or dressing up a gift package. Ooh, I see a flowery spring bulletin board in my future.


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

Valentine Volunteerism

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Last week in my personal blog, I mentioned that I would be volunteering to teach crafts at a senior citizens center. (Click here to read that post.) This is the card I've created as my first project with the seniors. Because I will be dealing with people who have dexterity and visual limitations, I have to limit the amount of detail work they have to do to complete my projects. For this card I have cut out and prepared all the pieces into a kit so all they will have to do is assemble the finished card. This should go pretty quickly. Here are the instructions if you would like to try your hand at creating this card. Good luck.

Valentine Love Card
This bold black card creates a striking and unconventional backdrop for the traditional reds and pinks of Valentine’s Day. This project uses a 6.5” X 5” card and matching envelope but any similarly sized card can be used. The proportions of the decorative elements can be varied to fit the size of the base card. Heart shaped paper doily is purchased. Large heart is cut by hand to fit inside the edges of the doily. Plain oval, scalloped oval and tiny hearts are cut with a die punch. White paper pieces are cut by hand.

Materials List:
1. One black base card and envelope
2. One heart shaped paper doily – 3 ¾ ” x 4”
3. One large red patterned heart in a size to fit the doily – 3 ¼” x 3 ½”
4. One white oval with stamped sentiment – 3” x 2 ¼”
5. One red patterned scalloped oval sized to fit white oval – 3 ¼” x 2 ½”
6. 4” x 5” piece of paper for inside of card.
7. Nine tiny die punched hearts in assorted red and pink patterns
8. White paper strip – 5” x ¼”
9. Glue stick
10. Coloring Pencils or other coloring medium (markers, crayons, etc.)
11. Black marker
12. Tweezers
13. Foam Tape (also called dimensional tape)

Construction: Card
1. Using black marker, carefully edge the large heart and the white oval.
2. Using glue stick, glue red patterned heart in the center of the paper doily. Glue the completed heart on the left side of the card front.
3. Color the sentiment in the white oval then glue it in the center of the scalloped oval.
4. Take two pieces of foam tape and tape them to the back of the ovals. Remove the protective paper from the tape and adhere the ovals in the lower right corner of the card front slightly overlapping the bottom edge of the heart. Because the tape is thick, it raises the ovals off the surface of the card creating dimension.
5. Place the 4 x 5 piece of white paper inside the card to determine placement. Once determined, run glue stick around the edges and glue into place.

Construction: Envelope
1. On the front of the envelope, glue white paper strip about one inch from the left edge.
2. On either side of the strip, alternate seven of the tiny hearts, spacing them evenly and angling them slightly away from the strip. A tweezer can be very helpful in handling these small items.
3. (Not visible in photo) Turn the envelope around. On the center of the lower edge of the envelope flap, place the remaining two hearts, slightly overlapping and angling them for interest.

Ta-daaah! Your card is done!


Ballo ergo sum
- Gitana, the Creative Diva