2011 Calendars: papercraft and yetis!

Get your paper and scissors out and add calendar every month from The Curiousity Group.

The Snowflake Cutter's Omnibus

Keely's rainbow avalanche, cut from magazine pagesI mentioned that I'd been cutting paper snowflakes on Twitter the other day, and it accidentally snowballed into something good.  

(I should have posted a pun warning before starting this post, right?)

Keeley started finding and sharing links to tutorials for all sorts of paper snowflakes, and then she went ahead and wrote up a blog post of her own.  She cut the beauties you see above from magazine pages, which takes frugal to free and throws in a golden ticket to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory just for the fun of it.

If you'd like to indulge in an afternoon of cutting your own avalanche, here are some great how-to's:

• how to cut a six-pointed snowflake
• ...and how to make it look 'lacy'
• how to cut the elusive five-pointed snowflake
• how to make a three-dimensional snowflake
• how to make a caribou or maple leaf snowflake (if you need more Canadiana in your Christmas)
• how to make Star Wars snowflakes, (if you need more Darth in your Christmas)

Of course, the great fun of making paper snowflakes is sometimes just the diving-in-and-seeing-what-happens, in which case no tutorials are necessary.  

Thank you, Keeley, for sharing and making and being such a good sport.  

Now: go get your scissors.  Don't run.

Out My Window 2: Paper Snowflakes

I have a black, hardcover journal from the days before my son got his autism diagnosis.  It's where I'd write what he'd eaten that day, how many tantrums, how much head-on-hardwood banging, how few hours of sleep.  Words that came and words that went away for good.  It is pocked with asterisks and exclamations and mostly question marks; a scabby scrawl bumping over rippled pages.

I can barely open the thing now for fear of the sorrow that will leak out.  

I know, though, that tucked inside is a folded paper snowflake.  It was the last one I cut that December, the one that made me draw an astonished breath at order and beauty perfectly manifest on a sheet of cheap computer paper.  It was effortless, and it was a promise.  Even I could see that.

I'm ashamed to admit that Christmas gets a little harder every year for me. I have a hard time shaking off the year's accumulation of injustice and disappointment, even though I believe those things are not the end of the story.  Advent requires some deliberate measures, and now I have a strategy:  I defiantly make paper snowflakes, as a reminder to myself that random cuts unfold into effortless beauty.

At least on paper.

*****

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 1867)

Card me for Kiva!

 Smoking Kangaroo letterpress card by Pistachio Press

Just say, "Card me!" and $1 will go to Kiva.

I love letterpress. And you'll be seeing more of it now that I have sent a few projects on their way and I'm able to focus on the Hedge's year-end calendar roundup. Hurray for small presses where people lovingly press their designs into beautiful tactile papers. I encourage Hedgies of all kinds to support letterpress makers and send beautiful papery things into the world.

If you remember, when this blog was first launched we held The Great Paper Exchange where perfect and imperfect strangers sent papery things to each other just for the great fun of it all. I'm thinking we need to do that again - maybe to combat the February blues.

Christmas is one of the opportunities to send letterpress but this year, I am not sending cards. Part of this has to do with choosing to celebrate a different kind of holiday - not one that needs to battle consumerism, or save money or hold up the banner of Buy Nothing Christmas although those are all interesting choices. It just feels different to me. Every once in a while, I need to rethink traditions and notions of celebration.

I find it a necessary corrective but also somehow soothing, to be able to change, to look at things differently every so often and offer myself another perspective. For now, this is something that is too hard to explain in bloggish format. It seems like anytime you choose something you are passing judgement on someone choosing something else and so I will leave my different choice to my own mind.

That being said, i would like to send something out into the world during this time of year. So here's the deal: let me know that you'd like a Christmas card and I'll send $1 to Kiva, the online microfinancing platform with the motto "loans that change lives".  For the last few years, I've loaned money through Kiva to women in South America, Africa, and Asia. It's good fun and as someone who often works independently, I'm happy to be a part of the small businesses that other women in  the world are operating.

Here's how it works:

Just say, "Card me!" and $1 will go to Kiva.

You can email (hedgesociety at gmail dot com), DM (@kr_wolfe), use facebook, leave a message in the comments, or use tin cans and string.  Just for the great fun of it all.

2011: Calendar 5: INK + WIT

Totem Animals at Play by Tara Hogan, INK+WIT:

Click to read more ...