Bunting Funting

My daughter Imogen and I are supported through Legacy. A COVID 19 iso activity they sent us was blank colourful pendants for decorating. Legacy would collect all of the decorated pendants to make bunting chains, mixing up everyone's pendants on the different chains and sending them back amongst all the kids who participated. It would represent lovely, crafty solidarity for all the Legacy kids around Melbourne isolated in their homes during the pandemic.

I had bought a garland chain of beautiful paper flowers from Kami in Fitzroy the other day. I thought I may use them for the collagraph project (I am low on patience for stencil cutting!!). Imogen had found some cool neon fabric spray paint an art shop. With these things we decided to stencil flowers directly onto the pendants, inspired by the bright bouquet of flowers one of my lovely friends had sent me.

The spray bottles were too tough for Imogen to use with her little fingers. Probably safer that I did the paint spraying anyway! Imogen enjoyed laying out the design with the stencils and then selecting the colours for me to use. One of the things I love about doing art projects with Imogen is that she has a child's beginners mind when it comes to creating. She always seems to make the most complex colour palettes for me when we paint together because she is carefree in the way she mixes her paints. Similarly, she puts cool compositions and colour combos together which I simply would not think of!

I could tell through some testing that the dark green pendant would not show the paint. Sure enough, as the wetness paint dried, nothing was to be seen. That's when I got the idea of gluing the stencils onto the bunting for another layer of flowers. The beautiful gold highlights on the paper were visible under the pretty layers of neon spray. Again, Imogen lay out the design and I did the glueing with fabric glue. I was pleased that I could incorporate both stencils and collage for art school into this lovely bonding project on a rainy Saturday afternoon. The results were more complex than a simple stencil or collage piece, and I felt it made the use of all the pretty stencil 'waste' after all the painting was done.

I pressed the bunting overnight under a weight before packaging them up and mailing them to the Legacy coordinator this week.

I hope they make four kids' rooms all the brighter during this strange time! They certainly made our afternoon a lot of fun!