It's no secret that dragons are amazing creatures. When I was young, I loved the idea that they roamed the earth at the same time that princesses were still living in castles made of stone (rather than pink plastic) and knights on shining armor were the heroes of the day. Of course now I have to explain to my two year old who looks slightly horrified when a dragon comes on TV that "there's no such thing" while telling my four year old that she has to be tough enough to look after herself rather than wait for some guy on a white horse to save her. Chinese New Year is celebrated next Tuesday, and it's going to be the Year of the Dragon. Starting on New Year's Eve, each day of the following fortnight has a special significance and traditions attached, with Day 1 being a day to worship ancestors and visit family, Day 5 is for cleaning the house, Day 15 is the Lantern Festival and so on.
According to Wikipedia, being a Dragon is pretty cool, and more babies are born under that sign than any others. Their positive characteristics include; being generous, intellectual, artistic and loyal leaders. The downside is that they can be domineering tyrants. Get ready for a baby boom of bossy crafters people!
Now - to craft. The other day I showed you how you could use coloring-pages to make a silhouette. Today I'm going to show you another use; turn them into a collage base plan. I printed out three copies of a dragon drawing one of my sisters did some time back, and then cut up lots of squares of decorative paper in lucky shades of red and gold. (Try joss paper from Asian Supermarkets, wrapping paper, and scrapbooking scraps.) The result was three collages; mine is top-right, 4 year old Mimi is bottom-left, and nearly-3 year old Lotti is bottom-right.
Interestingly - just before typing this post, I saw a craft programme on TV where they stuck clear book-covering contact over a coloring page, then glued torn tissue paper on top. When the glue had dried they were able to peel the collage off the contact and hang it in the window. I'm slightly dubious as the picture was literally tissue-thin, but I'm keen to have a go... one day!
PS: In case you're wondering, I'm a pig, my dad's a pig, and my eldest daughter is a pig too - and I say that in the nicest possible way... we're thoughtful, patient and hardworking, but can be naive and gullible... of course I only agree to the good stuff!
PPS - there's some pretty nifty maths that goes into having generational sameness; given that the signs come around every 12 years, and assuming that you're not 12 or 48 when your child arrives, then you can guess whether Dad and I were 24 or 36 when we were parents... I'm not sure which age I'd wish for Mimi to be were she to gift me a piglet for a grand-kid.. I might leave that discussion for another blog post...
