Butterfly project

Several weeks ago I read an article in our local newspaper, by William Denton, about a synagogue here in Connecticut that was collecting handmade paper butterflies to send to the Holocaust Museum Houston. The museum “is preparing an exhibit of 1.5 million butterflies to represent the number of children who perished in the Holocaust.” The exhibit is currently scheduled for spring of 2013 and according to the article the museum currently has 400,000 butterflies. The article went on to quote a poem “The Butterfly” by Pavel Friedman, who was born in Prague in 1921, deported to Terezin ghetto and concentration camp in 1942 and later to Auschwitz, where he died in 1944. In the poem he describes seeing a single butterfly.

The last, the very last.
So richly, brightly, dazzling yellow . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly way up high . . .
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto . . .
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don’t live here, in the ghetto.

I love butterflies, I always have. I think they show us just how beautiful and fragile life can be. So I am sending some quilled butterflies to the museum. The butterflies I made are from 2-4” across and I used ¼” and 3/8” strips. I did spray them with Stiffen Stuff to make them a little sturdier (is that a word?) since I don’t know how they will be displayed. I put a note in my calendar book to start checking back with the museum’s web site in spring 2013. I can’t even imagine how great this exhibit will be with 1.5 million paper butterflies, but more importantly those butterflies will help us remember the children they represent. Perhaps some of you will also be inspired to send some along as well, please let me know if you do. The web site for the museum is www.hmh.org , here is a link for the Butterfly Project . The address for the museum is Holocaust Museum Houston, Butterfly Project, Education Department , 5401 Caroline St., Houston, TX 77004 If you live in Connecticut, you may send your butterflies (by June 30) to Temple B’nai Israel, P O Box 61, Willimantic, CT 06226 where they will be displayed at the temple and then sent on to the Holocaust Museum.

Quilling in Magazines

Just imagine strolling down the aisle of your local supermarket or drugstore and then looking over at the magazines next to the checkout counter . . . there staring back at you on the cover of a women’s magazine (not a craft magazine) is a beautiful quilled design. How exciting that would be! Beautiful quilling, right out there for everyone to see and “ooh and aah” over. There is such a magazine, but unfortunately it is not here in the United States.

My quilling friend, Malinda Johnston, (yes that Malinda Johnston, the one who authored so many quilling books and founded Lake City Crafts) gave me a call after she came back from her trip to Paris. While in France she took a side trip to the Netherlands to visit her friend Trees Tra, who is also a quiller. (Some of you may have some of Trees Tra’s quilling books.) At any rate, she gave Malinda a copy of a Dutch women’s magazine called Libelle. The cover of the magazine shown here was covered with a delightful quilled design. Malinda was kind enough to send me the magazine; not only was there quilling on the cover but many of the article titles were done in quilling. If the whole title wasn’t quilled the capital letters were. While I am sure copy write laws would prohibit showing you all of these pages, I can tell you they were awesome. An article about Club Tropicana had the letters CLUB quilled with tropical palm trees coming out of the letters. What a boost for the art of quilling! The style looked kind of familiar to me; I went through the magazine to see if the artist was listed. When I couldn’t find any reference to her, I emailed the magazine to inquire who the artist was. (I used the Google translator since my knowledge of the Dutch language is non-existent. I can read some German and was able to get the general idea of some of the articles, but certainly couldn’t make an inquiry in anything other than English. Isn’t the internet awesome?) I did get a reply, and as I expected the artist was Yulia Brodskaya. I am sure many of you have heard of her, her work has been the subject of many quilling blogs. Her web site says “Yulia Brodskaya was born in Russia (Moscow); prior to moving to the UK in 2004 she was interested in diverse creative practices ranging from Textile Painting, Origami and Collage to more traditional Fine Art practices. Following an MA in Graphic Communication (2006, University of Hertfordshire) she has continued to experiment and explore ways of bringing together all the things she likes most: typography, paper, and highly detailed hand-made craft objects.” Here is a link to her web site http://www.artyulia.com/ When you get there click on Illustration and then PAPERgraphic to see some of her awesome work.

Happy Thanksgiving & Christmas Quilling

Happy Thanksgiving & Christmas Quilling

Well, here it is the week of Thanksgiving and I think this is supposed to mark the beginning of the Christmas season (although I’ve been noticing Christmas stuff in the stores since before Halloween). Oh well, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, none of the “hoopla” or “commercialization” (is that really a word?) that seems to come with Christmas. It’s a time for friends, family, fellowship and food . . . just a nice easy relaxing day. We each bring a different part of the dinner so it doesn’t end up being a monster job for any one person and we spend the whole day visiting.

However, when it comes to quilling . . . Christmas is queen! There is no end to the Christmas quilling ideas and they just keep coming. Over the years, especially when I sold my work at craft fairs, I made all kinds of Christmas ornaments. I think my first quilling was a snowflake; I still enjoy making them and hang them in the little windows on my front door. Now I make them with the gilded paper (silver on white or blue edge on white), but when I first started there was just plain old white strips and they were still beautiful. I also did free hanging ornaments like stockings, candy canes, poinsettias, and wreaths, then I started putting them on 3” circles of mat board so they wouldn’t get “lost” in the tree branches.

Somewhere along the way, I saw some of the Quill Art little dimensional figures, I thought they were adorable. (They were nowhere near as elaborate as the Jinisans I’ve talked about previously.) So I made tiny toy soldiers, Santas, angels, and Christmas mice. I put them inside of empty egg shells which I coated with diamond dust. Some I hung and others I put on little filigree stands. Everyone in my family knew that if you used an egg, you were to open it carefully, wash it out, and leave it to drain until I cut out the oval for one of my figures. Some years, I used the eggs as place cards, each egg would have the appropriate character inside and there was a little tag with a printed name. They were fun and some of my family members still have them from years ago.

Malinda Johnston used to write a newsletter called the Lake City Gazette which she sent out to her customers. One year, it had directions for a wreath made from quilled poinsettias, I loved it. It was probably about 8’ in diameter. I used it for years.

One year I got really ambitious and made dimensional Christmas trees (my original tree is pictured here on the blog and on the web site). I had no idea how I was going to make it, I just did. I will post the general instructions I wrote up for it. The fun part was decorating that little tree (it’s about 7” tall), I made little bells, ornaments, candles, stars, and roses. The one I made for my Mom (which she keeps out all year long) was decorated with Victorian fans, bows, candles, roses, and of course a tiny angel at the top.

Another year, I made a gingerbread house. I used the same pattern I used for my real gingerbread houses. (It was a family tradition while my kids were growing up, we would bake gingerbread houses and then all of my kids and their friends would decorate them . . . we would give them as gifts) I made the house out of card stock and then covered it with quilling. I don’t have a picture of it here on the blog but it is in the picture gallery of the web site and in Malinda Johnston’s Book of paper quilling. http://www.whimsiquills.com/servlet/the-template/photogallery/Page (If I were doing one today, I would use mat board as a base; it is much sturdier than card stock, but my first one was prior to our getting involved with framing and matting). Well I guess I’ve rattled on long enough about Christmas quilling. I will have to see if I have any pictures I can post (of course these were all done long before digital cameras). I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgivng and take the time to enjoy the holiday season.