Making Holiday Gift Wrapping - Part One - A Party

I got my hands on Gwen's holiday stencils and the ideas immediately started going round in my head. I mean, look at them! And yes, those are fairy lights shining down on them. I do so love to have fairy lights shining down on my desk. 

First I stenciled on white paper. Then on a brown tag. Finally on tissue paper. The possibilities for making materials for gift wrapping were amazing. 

I couldn't keep all this goodness to myself, now could I? So we decided to have a gift-wrap making party and enjoy making our wrapping with our friends. Now I must admit that some of my friends are not all that comfortable with being asked to make things. They say things like "I'm not artistic." or "I don't make things." Usually, I nod my head and tell them that there will be refreshments and they can hang out with the other people who don't think they can do it making hot chocolate. Frankly, some of their work ends up being amazing.  

When having a party that involves paint, covering the tables with craft paper and securing with duct tape relieves those what-if-I-spill-on-the-table jitters. Frankly, I encourage people to draw on the paper. It's so much more interesting that way. 

Here's the tag I made using markers. 

One participant mimicked the poinsettia stencil using one of the makeup sponges. 

Another made stripes of color and stenciled the poinsettia over them. 

In this picture, you can see many different approaches. 

This was a careful stenciler who made beautifully crisp images. 

This friend believed she could not do this stenciling thing. Imagine a package wrapped in this! I love the colors she used. 

This friend has a mathematical and geometric sense of balance. 

Here the stencil was stamped onto paper, cut out and pasted to a large piece of paper. Paint was added on top and other elements added around it. 

More color was added ontop. 

Here it emerges. 

Brownish red paint in a spray bottle was used to spritz the stencil. Then the stencil was used with red paint to create more poinsettias. 

They were then layered and glued to the paper to create a full and dimensional work. 

The party was fun. It was especially enjoyable to see the different things my friends did with the stencils. It was a good way to gain a new perspective.

Stay tuned - That was Holiday Gift Wrapping Part One. Later this week I will reveal what I did with these stencils to make some unique gift wrapping. Hope you will come back and visit me then. 

Until then, I would love to know:
Do you make your own wrapping material?
Have you ever done it? How did it go? 
What are your favorite gift wrap go-tos? 

The Artist's Way

I've been hearing about The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron for a long time now. Several years ago my friend Cindi Huss told me about the book and about morning pages. I didn't read the book, but I got the gist and started doing them off and on. About a year ago, the book found me at a Barnes and Noble and jumped off the shelf. Literally. I took it home and it stayed on the very shelf I photographed since then. About six weeks ago I started doing morning pages every day and decided to read the book.

Thus started this journey. 

For the Artist Date portion of my assignments I have decided to set down some time each week with one of the books from the overcrowded shelf, find a skill and try it. So far this is leading to some fun creativity. I'm moving into different territory.

 

I started with the Gelli Plate Printing: Mixed-Media Monoprinting Without a Press by Joan Bess. Quite a lot of paint has been seen flinging about here. Intrigued by the Paper Cloth on page 90, I mixed up some glue, unearthed some muslin and got down to business. What a fun process! Several other techniques await the right tools to make them happen (where is that carpet tape when you need it?)

Blogging for Connection

From time to time most bloggers ask themselves the question. 

"What question?" you ask.

That question. 

Why do we blog? 

If you are asking this question, pull up a seat and have a cold glass of peach infused ice tea. 

"Why this tea in particular?"you may well ask. "Why not plain? Why not coffee? "

Because this tea is the answer to your question. I hear your confusion. 
"Get to the point already, will you?" you say with a slight irritation in your voice. 

I will oblige you. 

I have never in the whole of my life had peach infused ice tea. Never given it a backwards glance. When the recipe was shared by Ricki Jill of Art@Home on her post for this year's Mad Tea Party I was intrigued. I had to try it. If you ask around, and I beg you don't, you may even learn that I became a bit obsessed with giving it a try. 

The ingredients I bought at a local farm. South Carolinan peaches were chosen over the white ones. Locally grown mint was procured. 


As we sat and sipped and proclaimed over the tea I mused upon the ties that bind us as bloggers. The richness of experience we are granted for the inspiration and kindness from each other, persons unknown to each other in our local, everyday lives. The tea was, and remains, delicious. Ricki was astute in mentioning that the recipe can last a while, but won't because it will be finished long before it's expiration date. For the record, I drank more than one glass. 















Blogging, instagram, and a variety of other ways of connecting are a blessing to those of those who stick with it, who engage and who share. It requires a certain level of engagement, however, and that connection does not come without effort. We blog to see and be seen, to inspire and be inspired, to express and find expressions that help us understand our own experience. We blog to send beauty into the world and to fill our lives with that beauty. 

These are all things I am thinking as I muse over the beauty of the connection we gain from blogging. There is so much more. I need not be complete in this post. 

Dear reader, thank you for being part of this blogging experience. Ricki Jill, thank you so much for this recipe. So delicious! 

Why do you blog? Why do you read blogs? What do you get out of the experience?

The Mad to Glad Tea Party

Welcome to the 

Mad to Glad Tea Party 2016

These days there is so much to be mad about, sad about, absolutely devastated about.

Wherever I look I see people questioning why...

wondering how we got to this place....

wondering if the things they do matter...

if they matter....

and they do.

They do matter. 

You matter. 

So as I pondered these things, along came the time for

Vanessa of A Fanciful Twist to post the invitation 

to her annual

Mad Tea Party. 

Each year I look forward to this wonderful party. The loveliness, the creativity, the joy of it all. 

As I pondered these things I decided to hold a 

Mad to Glad Tea Party this year. 

First we must entice a rabbit with a bouquet of basil and fresh dill. 

Everyone knows that rabbits are great for inspiration. 

Sir Fernly Fern and I thought a long time. I stroked his silky fur. He nuzzled me and nipped me when I stopped petting him. Sir Fernly Fern doesn't shy away from comfort as we humans sometimes do. 

The idea to turn Mad to Glad came to me as we snuggled. Tea, friendship and art journaling - the focus for this year. 

I used craft paper instead of a pretty cloth so we could spill as much as we wanted, or write, or paint. 

Guest tags were replaced by black sharpie free flowing names on the table. Naturally we set a place for the Unexpected Guest. 

Three kinds of tea. Why not? A taste testing adventure.

Silly labels made us laugh. 

And we can't forget to stop and smell the roses.

While I know that a cuppa tea can often change my mad to glad, I had more planned for my party friends.

I gave each friend a piece of cold pressed watercolor paper and told them to write what was making them mad or sad or anxious or worried. Like 18th century letter writers would conserved paper, we turned the paper and wrote crosswise. In days gone by the paper was expensive. We used it as a design element. 

After choosing some colors to paint over the words we picked up our cards and spread paint.

My spot at the table after painting a few layers. 

Collage ensued. Scrap paper. Paper bags. Paper from presents last Christmas. Magazine pages. If it could be pasted down it was fair game. 

More color. More layers. We stopped only when it became apparent that our pages needed to dry before adding any more. We hope to continue these now glad pieces. Pieces that inspire us to move forward when it seemed hard to move a muscle.

Here's hoping that you have some inspiration to turn something mad into something glad. Thanks for joining us.  

Please be sure to visit A Fanciful Twist for links to see all the Mad Tea Parties that are happening today. Just click on the invitation to zip over there.