Another Challange

May's challenge was a real challenge to me.
What does being an Israeli mean to you? Scrap a page...

At first I thought I'm not going to participate this month.
During the last week of May I found myself categorizing everything I saw as good or bad qualities of Israelies.

The night of submission I found myself sitting at the computer and searching for information, photos, trying to figure out how to scrap my thoughts, but my mind was racing with ideas, so the page turned out a mess.

So I started anew, with a different take.




The photos were taken from these sites, and credit is due:

The flower: http://totolotek.org/he/wiki/%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D_%D7%94%D7%96%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%9C%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%99_%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C.html

Flags flapping: http://www.jerusalemshots.com/Jerusalem_he103-1444.html

Hat: http://www.notes.co.il/eshed/32372.asp

Falafel: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-1939000,00.html

Candles: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/650/029.html

Prickly Cactus: http://www.tiuli.com/flower_info.asp?flower_id=169


The text reads:
"In one of my favorite episodes of "the west wing", the following question appears:
So What do you call a Society that has to just live every day with the idea that the pizza place you’re eating in can just blow up without any warning? ("Isaac and Ishmael", season 3).
And the answers was, of course, Israel.
During the last decade and a half that has been the essence of being an Israeli, in my mind. Living every day under a threat. Living home everyday with the promise of not giving in to that threat. That we'll keep on living our lives no matter what.
What else is an Israeli? Symbols. A lot of symbols."

The flower (French Lavender) is the one that appears on stickers I used to get every year in Memorial day as a child in school. I think they still give them out. Every memorial day, and only on memorial day.
The flags flapping on top of cars during Independence day and usually the week before and the week after.
The hat is the one everyone used to wear when I was a kid. It's the symbol of the pioneer Israeli, the one that came to this country to build it.
The candles were lit on the floor in a huge square in the middle of Tel-Aviv 13 years ago, right after PM Rabin was murdered. People kept coming to the square where it happened, lit candles, and cried together.
The Falafel - food that's considered to be very much Israeli, and stands for Israeli.
And last - The prickly cactus. It became known as a Nick-name for Israeli-born. They' like the cactus, are prickly on the outside, but sweet and soft on the inside.

Fun Stuff #2

Remember the workshop I did With Nili on April? (See here if you don't)

Well, I finally found the time to finish that plaster basket, and I love how it turned out.

It's so colorful, and looks great on my table!

Then, I found the time to start working on my new block. It's been sitting and waiting for me for over two weeks, and all I did in that time is choose the background papers...

So this morning, after realising I don't feel good enough to go to work, but don't feel bad enough to stay in bed all day, I decided to make good use of that time, and sat down to work. It took a long time - much longer then I had anticipated, but here it is:

These are the four sides:

And this is the top:

And here's the surprise:

Yes, it's a box! This is the inside of the lid:

And this is what it looked like before I started working on it - bare wood and nails.

Now I only need to find the time to create two more... for my sisters.

Memorial Day

One of the hardest days in Israel is today. Memorial Day. It's a day of sadness, of crying, of remembrance.
Today we cry over all the sons, daughters, fathers and mothers who fell and died in all Israeli wars.
Being that is hard enough. What makes it harder in my eyes, is the fact that tomorrow, right after Memorial Day ends, Independence Day starts.
It does have a sense, in a way, being that the wars have led to our Independence, but the sharp change from crying and sadness to laughing and happiness is too hard sometimes. Most times.

Being the empath that I am I promised myself that this year I wouldn't open the TV, wouldn't listen to stories, wouldn't listen to the songs that are so special for this day, that touch the very core of emotions in me.
And as always, I can't seem to pull away. It's like there's a little masochistic piece in me that has to listen, has to see, has to feel, has to be a part of it.
I'm not even thinking about tomorrow. I'm just breathing slowly right now, trying to get over tonight...

Another Month... Another Challenge

I think I mentioned before about the challenges we now have in the Israeli Forum for scrapbooking. Since April is the month of Passover, which is also known as "Festival of Freedom", Keren decided to challenge us with the subject of Freedom.

What is freedom to you?

After taking a long time to think about it, I came to realise that I have lots of freedom: to be who I am, to do what I want. But there were two things that kept coming to me, as items I would LOVE to be free of...

So that's my page. My wishful thinking. My dreams that will never happen in this lifetime, for these are curses I have no control over...

Credits:
Brushes by:
Hawksmont (http://hawksmont.com/)
The Krako (http://krakografik.canalblog.com/)
Obsidian Dawn (http://www.brushes.obsidiandawn.com/index.htm)

Alpha: LT_RD_Wallflower_DSF_Alpha

I always associate Black and Red with pain.

Prurigo is an annoying disease. It's a skin condition. It itches all the time. and it's very anesthetic... And the worst part is they STILL don't know what causes it!

Being an empath can be a blessing if you can cope with it, or control it. Being an empath means you feel what other people are feeling.
In my case - I feel people's pain. Lots and Lots of pain.
It's really overwhelming sometimes...

Spring Fling

Well, my nieces LOVED their gifts. The snail was ordered, as I told you before, but the owl was a total surprise.

Tamar wondered why her snail didn't have a mouth, and insisted on drawing one. Remembering that she in only turning 4 in July, she did an amazing job, even if it did come out a little off center... OK, a lot off center... I still love it! She drew a big laughing mouth. All it misses are the teeth...

I'm sorry I didn't take a picture of it. I'll try to do that in the next few days, when I'm there again.



I finally finished my new kit.
As always, for lack of free time, I design my kits for the DSO color challange, So thanks, Kim, for those challanges.
And again, I owe special thanks to Atomic Cupacke.


Here it is: Spring Fling.

You can download it HERE.

Have fun.

Fun Stuff

Last weekend was a magical weekend.
It started Friday, with a wonderful workshop on plaster basket. I can't show you mine, cause it's not finished yet, but here's an example made by Nili, who taught us about the basket, taken from her Flickr.

I can only hope mine will be as beautiful...

Here’s a link to Nili’s Flickr, where you can see all 95 plaster baskets she’s made:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nili_choman/sets/72157594321303280/

We started at 10 in the morning, and left somewhere around 3 in the afternoon, and out of all that time, we spent about 2 hours on making our baskets… So you can imagine how much fun we had. LOTS.

And the magic continued on Saturday. I met a bunch of friends at Limor’s magical and wonderful craft store in Yuvalim. “Kesem Shimushi” is the name of the store and it means – practical magic. Like the name, the store is magical. I had a wonderful time browsing through the different items, and to top it all off, Limor had a table all ready for us, to sit down and work.

Here we all are standing at the table that's ready for us (well, Keren is taking the picture, so she's not in it...).

We are (right to left): Hagit, Myself, Shron, Limor, Revital, Dvora and Mor.

The picture was copied from Keren's blog, and here's a link to that post (mind you, her blog is in Hebrew, but if you read Hebrew, it is much recommended):
http://www.tapuz.co.il/blog/ViewEntry.asp?EntryId=1229632

I got to tell you, a lot of work was NOT done at that table, but a lot of talking and laughing was.
I had such a good time, that we stayed on and on and on. We got there at 10:30 in the morning (after almost two hours driving) and left at 6 in the afternoon (for another 2 hour driving). A long day, but I can hardly remember when I had more fun!

And, to top it all, I got a very-very-belated Bday gift, 9 months after my birthday (that's how long it's been since I've since Limor and Sharon.
I got this beautiful pail:




And in it was this gorgeous bag:

And in it were these amazing ribbons (I LOVE ribbons):

Then, this week, since Passover is just around the corner (tonight, actually), I needed to finish up the gifts I wanted to give.
So first came the snails. The pattern is a Tilda pattern, and I learned to make my snails from Keren, who taught me in a workshop, which was another fun evening, filled with laughter.
(Do you get the common thread here? Working together with friends always leads to more laughing than working…)

Here's the snail I made in that workshop:



And here are the two I made for my nieces:

Then I figured I needed a pin cushion, and I saw one here a while ago:

http://www.bhg.com/crafts/sewing/accessories/patchwork-pincushion/

And I remembered it cause I liked that she looked like a gift. To be honest, I was too lazy to look for it again and follow instructions, so I just made one from memory. It could be better, but I like it:

Then I remembered seeing a really cute owl online, so I looked for it, and found this:

http://moonstitches.typepad.com%20m/photos/tutowlrial/030726.html

I printed the pattern at work, and that same night, made a small owl from memory. (It's small because the pattern seemed really big to me, so I down scaled it to 75% of the size).



Last night I decided to add to my nieces a couple of owls, and this time I made them the size of the original pattern. So here's my small owl family, which is going to part tomorrow:

And since I had so much fun sawing yesterday, I also made me this little bag:




No pattern was used here. I took measurements of what i wanted to use it for, and constructed it all on my own. Again, it could be a little better, but for the first time of making a bag I'm really proud of myself.

Scrpbook A Song

That's a challenge we had at one of the Israelis forums.

It took me just a few seconds to know which song I choose, but the harder part was to decide how to design the page itself.
The song speaks a lot about pain, and the images that came to my mind were jagged black and red. I didn't want to use that, so i kept thinking. The month was ending, and I still had no new ideas, until, suddenly, three days before the month ended, I had it.
I chose a sentence from the end of the song, and immediately knew what image is going to be at the center of my page. You probably know it, I got it in my mail several times, and now found it online, and I have no idea who created it, so I don't know who I'm supposed to give credit to...
But I love it. And it fit perfectly.

Here's my page:
The song is "Now You're Coming Back" sung by Miri Masika, written and composed by Erik Berman.


The line from the song, written on the page in Hebrew, reads: "Today I'm smiling even to the one in the mirror".

The rest of the elements on my page are my creation, with special thanks to Atomic Cupcake.

And then I remembered the two first pages I ever created.

Both were done on songs written by the late Ehud Manor, shortly after his death. Ehud Manor was one of the more important and noted song-writers in Israel, and he is very missed.

This page is done for the song: "Days of Binyamina".
Words by Ehud Manor, Music by Mati Caspi.

The lines from the song, written on the page are:
"Whatever happened to the child who spoke to the stars,
Who told secrets to yellow-weeds and seagulls,
Who counted every freckle quietly and fell asleep in the sand,
What happened to him one day that he got up and disappeared?"

The page was painted with acrilic paints, and the stars are glued on for extra sparkle.

This is a second page done on Ehud Manor's songs.
This song is called "My Second Childhood".
Words by Ehud Manor, Music by Mati Caspi.

The line from the song, written on the page, is:
"This is my second childhood... with you".


This page was painted with water-based colored pencils.