Boat Floating kiddies party

A friend's son was turning 4 and she asked if I would make some Origami Boats that the kids could float down a little stream where the party picnic was going to take place.

What a fun party idea! And a fun project for me.

It turned out to be a lovely, sunny winter's day. The setting (in Tokai forest) was beautiful.
I set up a small table where I could help parents and their children to make and decorate their own boats. I made a poster with all the folding instructions for parents to follow.
The boats were made from sheets of coated paper that had a plastic feel, which was perfect because the paper didn't absorb water. I used toothpicks and electrical tape in different colours to make the flags, and the boats were named and decorated using permanent waterproof markers.

 

 

 

 

 

Making the boats was a lot of fun,

but the MOST fun was had during the much anticipated BOAT RACE!

 

The kids (and adults) had an absolute ball running backwards and forwards watching their boats floating down the stream. Again, and again, and again....

 

The boats, I'm pleased to say, were a great success. Even the ones that had capsized or been sunk by a mini waterfall (and rescued by a kind dad with a long stick) had survived and were still in one piece by the end of the party.

Our 3 kids were excited to be taking their boats home and were looking forward to playing with them in the bath... which they ended up not having... because they all fell asleep in the car on the way home, and went straight to bed after a quick wash of their muddy feet :)

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Max!

Thanks for a really great party. xx

 

Photographs: courtesy Sally Petersen and a few of my own

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Here are some examples of other Origami Boats that I make to sell:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like to see some other examples of the Origami goodies that I make and sell, please go to my Facebook page by clicking HERE. :)

Full Moon Love Mandala

  

 

Back in April this year I was driving to art class in the direction of a giant, rising, full moon. The traffic was slow and every traffic light that I came to was red, so I had plenty of time to gaze in awe at how beautiful it was.

 

Coincidence and synchronicity have become very much part of my experience at my weekly process art classes. I have almost come to expect there to be some sort of coincidence. So when I arrived at class and found a large circular (full moon shaped) piece of paper on my desk, I simply gave a quiet little "huh".

 

We were going to do mandalas. (Mandala comes from Sanskrit meaning "circle.")

We started off, after a guided meditation, paging through magazines and tearing out pages that resonated with us. A smaller circle had been drawn in pencil in the middle of our paper. We collaged some of our magazine pictures into this smaller circle.

 

But THEN, the class took a whole new direction! We were instructed to pass our work to the person next to us, and in so doing we received someone else's work. We were then given a few minutes to add something to the work in front of us, using magazine pictures or ink. We passed each work around the class, stopping to add something to each person's work.

By the time your original work came back to you, it had taken on a new life and may have gone in a totally different direction to what you had "planned". (shock horror!) Which was precisely the reason for the exercise. You are not supposed to plan your work in these classes. It was a good way to force you to LET GO and to not be too precious about the outcome of your work.

 

The "gifts" I'd received on my mandala by the time it reached my desk again where lovely.

Someone had divided my page up with some ink lines which made me think of a clock. Time.

Someone else had painted an ink heart. Others had added magazine eyes, a picture of a fig, a stick like figure and star shape.

Funnily enough, the magazine pictures that I'd torn out at the beginning of the session, and later added to my mandala, worked very well with what had been added to my page by others.

My end result included many hearts, Cupid's arrows, men making eyes at and flirting with voluptuous women, rock paintings, two stags with locked horns and two Greek stamps with a picture of a centaur, the symbol for the zodiac sign of Sagittarius.

 

 

I made this mandala a few days after spending a lovely "date day" with my Sagittarius husband.

(I posted some pictures from that day here.)  I called it "Full Moon Love Mandala".

We have 3 young children who keep us very busy and we hadn't spent quality time together, just the two of us, in a really long time. Our "date day" felt a bit like starting from the beginning again. Courting. Flirting. Falling in love.