We are so excited to be getting ready for the Moon Festival on September 22! This month the Super Bloomers worked with teens to make lanterns for our installation. Yesterday Anya Chase and her helper elves came out and taught us how to make 3D house lanterns.
This is the template we cut out of bristle board and decorated with tissue paper.
Everyone customized their house with their own window and door designs.
These will look great with little solar or battery- powered LED's inside!
I worked with the teens earlier in the month on creating seed jar pendants that can be worn in the procession on Sept 22, or anytime you feel like doing a bit of guerilla gardening for pollinators!
We also made some basic insect-themed glass jar lanterns, and I told the teens about the tradition of "telling the bees". (More on that on another blog post!.)
And finally, we made cyanotype prints with Superbloomer artist Brenna Maag. She has a long history of working with the medium, and it was fun to make use of her knowledge and experience!
Brenna showed us this beautiful quilt she made with cyanotype prints.
The art dawgs were in attendance, guarding the ink pads!
You place the materials on the surface of the cloth and cover it with a sheet of glass to hold it in place.
We left them for 18 minutes because it was a smokey cloudy day. When you remove the plant material, the cloth has darkened and looks like this.
Here's some of the plant material we used. Some of it was from the edge of the Renfrew Ravine.
And here you go! After washing the material to stop the developing process, this is what the cloth looks like. (See below.) It will get a little bit darker as it dries.
