Urban Comfort

The One That Got Away: Snowflake Chandelier with BARC Wood Veneer Paper

                                                                                               Burcu Avsar

Yesterday, I mentioned BARC paper, a wood veneer paper that looks like traditional wood veneer but handles with the ease of paper. I found it because I had the idea of making a "snowflake" chandelier out of rosettes and I really wanted to do it with wood veneer.  Unfortunately, even the thinnest veneer tended to crack when I tried to loop it.  But thank God for the Internet.

BARC paper comes in a variety of wood finishes and three weights, each suitable for different projects. For the chandelier, I used the lightest weight and it looped and folded exactly the way paper might. The Birch paper I used comes with a white paper backing, so some of the snowflakes I left with a white interior and others I painted with diluted acrylic paint, creating more of a washed paint effect that was still saturated and colorful. You can also brush the watered down paint onto the wood veneer side, which allows the grain to show through. 

I can't say enough about this paper - it truly is one of my favorites this year. You can cut it with scissors and paper punches, as well as die-cutting machines. It can be painted, stamped, stained, and printed on (manual feed on an inkjet printer), which means you can experiment to your heart's content. Love. it.

And a little secret for you - If you've taken the time to visit Family Circle's website to get directions for the projects shown in the magazine, you'll find a reader's code to get a discount on BARC paper for a limited time. So get it while you can!

In the meantime, here are the directions for making the chandelier (I also think the rosettes make great ornaments or gift toppers):

 

 

Materials: 

12-x-12-inch birch BARC paper (lightest weight)
acrylic craft paint in desired colors
small dish
paintbrush
scrap paper
tape
paper trimmer or ruler and scissors
quick-setting gel glue (I prefer Beacon 3-in-1 Adhesive)
clothespins
circle punch for middle
12-inch and 9-inch wooden embroidery hoops
string for hanging

 

Directions: 

1. Put acrylic craft paint in a small dish and thin with a little water. Place the BARC paper on the scrap paper and tape the edges to the paper. Paint either the front or the back of the paper with the thinned down craft paint; let dry. Once paint is dry, remove the BARC paper and cut into ½-inch strips. For the largest snowflakes, leave the paper strips at 12 inches, for medium cut to 10 inches in length, and for smallest trim to 8 inches in length.

2. Fold each strip in half so ends meet; unfold and place a little glue on each side of the crease. Loop each piece inward so that they meet at the crease in the middle. Clip with a clothespin until glue sets. Once glue is dry, add a dab of glue to the bottom edge of each looped set and glue 6-8 of the sets together to form a rosette. Glue circle cutouts to the center of each.

To assemble chandelier, tie the hoops together as shown. Hang snowflakes at varying heights.

 

Resources:  BARC paper from ARC Crafts (www.arccrafts.com); all other supplies available at craft supply stores.

 

Merry and Bright - Scandinavian Inspired Christmas Crafts

                                                                            
One of the challenges of my job is creating completely different holiday stories from year to year. It's also one of the best aspects of my job because it forces me outside of my personal comfort zone. It's a bit like being an actor, wearing different hats for a time, completely inhabiting a persona, then moving on. But no matter the style or color palette I'm working with, I find I usually manage to integrate natural elements in some way.

Last year I was obsessed with the icy, silvery aspects of nature, imagining them in a winter landscape. This year I went to the other extreme, fascinated with clean, modern lines and shapes, warmed by a cheerful palette of red and tangerine and the natural coziness of felt accents. 

I had a great time working on this story for Family Circle (and I'll show you the parts that were cut, in another post or two this week). I felt completely happy and energized, surrounded by these colors for several weeks, and I continued to be inspired by my materials long after the assignment was over, a creative bonus. Personally, I'll probably take a sharp turn into a shimmery, sparkly Christmas, much needed visual relief after months of working on holiday stories back-to-back. But what a fun dip into color it was!

You can find the instructions for these crafts on the Family Circle website, along with downloadable templates. And come back tomorrow - I'll give you directions for one of the projects that got away. I made it with one of my favorite craft finds of the year - BARC wood veneer paper.  

 

 

 

All photographs by Burcu Avsar for Family Circle

A Week in Review

I've been in a bit of a funk all week, thinking about the East Coast. I'm tired and pushing against deadlines, so I don't have the emotional fortitude I might normally have, but it's been a weird week. On Wednesday, I was telling my 6 year-old that his grandparents were okay after the hurricane. I started to say that their power would be out for awhile when my son suddenly yelled from the backseat, "No fair! Their hurricane was way shorter than mine!" 

I was startled by his response, but he experienced his first hurricane, Isaac, over the summer. It was brutally hot, with temperatures in the 90s and unbearable humidity. There was nowhere to go, as all of our friends and family were without power as well. It took more than a week before it was restored and on the fifth day my son woke at 7 am, asked if we had power yet, then broke down in tears when I told him we didn't. It was a difficult experience for him, despite our efforts to keep it light and fun, and I realize that the memory will likely be with him forever.

On Thursday I had much the same experience, in a conversation with a man, one of the only people here who'd even mentioned the storm to me. With the direction that the conversation was going, I thought he was going to say that New Orleanians could really empathize with how the victims were feeling, could lend emotional support. But what he said was, "Now, they finally know how we feel." Present tense, not past. Some wounds are slow to heal.

The same day, my closest friend in New York sent me photos of the beach house that's been in her husband's family for over fifty years. She didn't say anything in her email, just the photos, and it was enough. I immediately had tears in my eyes the second I saw the house, appearing to have shifted off its foundation, the retaining wall gone, the sand piled up almost to the basement ceiling.

I'm not much of a beach person, my skin is too sensitive to enjoy it during the day. But it's the first place where my son experienced the ocean, the site of my best night's sleep ever, with the waves slapping against the shoreline and a balmy breeze breaking the sweltering heat of the day. 

It's where my friend spends her entire summer with her family. When we speak on the phone, I can see her in all of its rooms. I know what it smells and looks like, what it sounds like. It feels as familiar to me as her Manhattan apartment. It is a second home, but for the summer it is always her primary home, and I cannot imagine what the loss will feel like if there's nothing salvageable there. Not the loss of a structure, but the loss of a lifestyle, the memories of your children's experiences left there in the sand.

It's that overwhelming sense of loss, the fear of returning to that loss, I think, that has made many of my fellow New Orleanians mute. It's all too tangible still, lives that are forever divided into "before" and "after." The word "Katrina" still peppers everyday conversation in a way that would suggest it happened last year instead of more than seven years ago. That's how long it takes to recover from an experience like Katrina or Sandy. Some people never really recover at all, they just endure. And events like this week just remind us that it could easily happen again. 

At the same time, people are generally resilient and it is within individual communities that hurricane victims will find solace. Shoulder to shoulder, day by day. It's a long journey, one that millions of people will still be on long after it's been replaced in the news cycle. And while I will eventually move on as well, today my heart is more than a thousand miles away, in the city that's my second home.