Making Crosses- 32 Days and Counting

I continue to enjoy this project. Here are my thoughts so far. I am posting each day's photo of the cross on Facebook. This has been very helpful because people seem to enjoy seeing them and many people say kind and encouraging things. This is very helpful with the perseverance and accountability needed to do something every day even if you do not have time or don't feel like it that day. I do need to make sure that my focus stays on Christ.

It is challenging to make a cross every day that is interesting with the things available. I can see where I might later want to do a project where you make something once a week. Then you could use a day to plan and get ideas. Another day you could go out and search for materials or buy supplies that would leave 5 days to paint on a layer, let it dry, mold something, bake it, paper mache one day- paint the next, etc. Some of the things I wanted to do involved supplies I do not have on hand.  I want to buy a white paint pen and a white marker to use on black. I also want to buy a small box of crayons to do one of those pictures where you color very hard with the crayon in color, then you color over it with black - then you scratch away the black to reveal the colors below. When I was in elementary school we colored orange onto paper in this way, covered it in black crayon and then scratched on a jack-o-lantern. Is it strange that I remember that?

The two crosses above were made using Prismacolor markers. I love Prismacolor markers! Many years ago I noticed and liked the artwork of Mary Englebreit. One of her famous greeting cards pictures a little girl in a chair, I think she is surrounded by toys with a crown on her head and a royal cloak about her shoulders. The caption says "It's good to be Queen!". I read an article about Mary Englebreit and her work, she often uses Prismacolor markers. So I bought some. I love them! They make me happy. I have used them over the years to make three little pig birthday invitations, Christmas cards, newsletters, illustrations for an enrichment program and many other alien, cowboy, construction, pirate, dinosaur, Medieval,  Egypt, China--themed kid projects and decorations.

Below are the other crosses created this week. The "remember" cross is made from a post card mailed to me by my  friend Nanette from her Spring Break trip to Paris! Parker said it looked like something from a scrapbook and that's because I used scrapbook paper, scrapbook embellishments and scrapbook techniques to make it. There are two Zentangle crosses, an origami heart cross  (Instructions here) and a cross made by using the technique of quilling. The origami cross was very time consuming because I wanted to make an origami dove. I tried for at least half an hour to fold several sheets of origami paper into a dove. I could not figure it out. I was using instructions from an origami book, I then went back to the easy origami site and checked to see if Nancy Jenks had dove making instructions, alas she did not, but she did have heart instructions, so there it is. I am often constrained by my artistic limitations, the key is: Do not give up and make substitutions with skills you already have when necessary!


Bailey will be here this week. I plan to have her collaborate with me on some ideas and cross making projects. There will be another post today. It's a long story but it has to do with not being able to get Blogger to do what I want it to. In this case I would like to add text and some more pictures below the pictures at the bottom of this post...it won't let me. Bailey will be here soon to solve all my Blogger problems. continued!