Canvas to the Imagination

A few weeks ago I helped make paper flowers as decorations for a friend’s wedding. It was something I’d wanted to try after flipping through a copy of Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts at a bookstore. The initial flower making session with friends led me to working on an installation of paper flowers in my apartment to share during the Eastside Culture Crawl.

The flowers are made from colourful tissue paper and masking tape, with cloth covered wire as the stems. They’re a mix of torture and enjoyment to make because it’s not easy wrapping thin paper around a tiny wire and ending up with it in the resemblance of a flower.

At the moment I have less than thirty flowers completed, and hope to make twice that many. I’m really hoping this installation idea is going to look as magical in person as it does in my head. It’ll definitely give visitors a pleasant blast of colour when they stop by during the Culture Crawl.

And if you’re wondering, all the flowers will be available for purchase – in case you want to take the magic home with you.

I completed the yarn tree at the Foodtree office early last week with the addition of fabric leaves tucked into its branches. It is so very lovely with the red leaves, and it brightens up the office.

I am very pleased with my work on this because I had no idea how it would go when I first started putting pins into the wall, and I was winging it all the while. I love it when an experiment in a new process/medium comes together.

My plan is to create one of these on a wall of our apartment and have it as a permanent installation. I’m aiming to have it completed in time for the Eastside Culture Crawl so it can be yet another thing for people to see when they come by.

Materials used: 1.75 balls of sock yarn, 407 pushpins, and artificial leaves (I didn’t count them).

Along with the two different series of altered books I’m working on for the Eastside Culture Crawl, last week I began working on an installation in the Foodtree offices. I work there part time and as we’ve just moved into our own office space in Chinatown I’ve been planning ways to make it a visually interesting environment in which to work.

The Foodtree office is nicknamed “the treehouse” so of course I wanted to make a tree. I’d been thinking about making more trees from cardboard, but then came across this tutorial about how to make a tree wall mural from yarn and pushpins.

I bought my supplies of sock yarn from Dressew and pushpins from Yoko Yaya and dove right into making the tree. I’m doing it without having first drawing an outline. It feels like I’m drawing it with the yarn as I go along. It’s been amazing and fascinating to see the tree slowly take shape in the corner of the room.

Once the tree is completed I’m hoping to attach red leaves to the string branches, and then voilà(!) the Treehouse will have a tree.

I’ll share more photos once the tree is complete. I’m considering making one of these at home in our livingroom…