The Butterfly Project!!!

Seeking 1,500,000 handmade butterflies in an effort toremember the innocent children who perished in the Holocaust.

Click here

The deadline is June 30, 2012.....so you still have a whole year....but it will be here before you know it!

Click to see my "main" entry.

I really hope you will send in a butterfly!

Just wanted to remind you that there's still time....in case you had forgotten about this work.  

Gone forever

I lost my mom
I lost my dad
And then my sisters, too
I lost my brother
Lost my friends
And then the world
lost me.

The art in me
The art in them
The art in all of us
It’s gone forever
Flown away
Like the butterflies…..

and me

Think about it. 1,500,000 children who perished in the Holocaust and their art is gone forever. What might have been will never be.

They cannot make a butterfly.

But you can! And there's still time!

Enter Amaco's Open Design Challenge here.

Because you can!

Email this blog to everyone you know. We need 1,500,000 handmade butterflies!!!

So, after my genealogy story yesterday, I wrote the poem. Then I printed it on canvas and fringed the edges.

Colleen had made this background strip in one of Jana Ewy's playshops last month.....and she didn't know what to do with it! So I used scraps, charms, and cookie cutters to make the 3 little butterflies and set them on the strip.

And it just looks wonderful!

They can't play. They can't make art. They lost that when their lives were taken in the Holocaust. Please take just a few minutes out of your day to make a handmade butterfly to add to the Houston Holocaust Museum's memorial.

Do it for them.

Because you can.

If you think it didn't happen

Some days, genealogy is simply mindless data entry. I sit and enter names, dates of birth, dates of death, and my software creates wonderful family trees.

So my current project is to do a family tree of the descendants and ancestors of the Cotopaxi Colony. This was a Jewish agricultural community that came to Cotopaxi, Colorado, and you can read the story on the link provided. But here's the thing. I was entering the names and dates from the family tree and suddenly, my mind came alive. Every single date of death was 1942.

The Holocaust.

So I started looking at what i was entering. I had to know who this was and how they were "related" to the Cotopaxi Colony.

A brother and his wife, their children and all of their grandchildren. Another brother, all 6 of his children, and their children....and the list just went on.

I went online and started researching the Holocaust archives and records and have found the names of each member of this family.....all lived in Brest Litovsk. All perished on the morning of October 15, 1942.

Their brother married a woman who was part of the Cotopaxi Colony and he came to America with her. His entire family remained in Russia.....and was wiped out.

Including each of the children in that family.

From the Holocaust records:

all the estimated 50,000 people shot and buried at Bronnaya Gora were Jewish, victims of the Holocaust. About 20,000 of them came from the town of Brest (formerly called "Brzesc nad Bugiem", in Poland between the wars; and "Brest Litovsk", in Russia before that), now in the independent country of Belarus, on the border with Poland. The victims from the Brest Ghetto were rounded up on October 15, 1942 and trained to the massacre site to be shot and buried in previously prepared pits. The monument above recalls the central role that trains and railroads played in the massacres at Bronnaya Gora and at many other massacre sites throughout the former Soviet Union.
At 6:00 am on the morning of October 15th 1942, one of the non-Jewish neighbors informed the Jews of Brest that the ghetto was completely surrounded by the Nazis. Some of the Jews tried to hide in predetermined hiding places, but they were found by the soldiers and taken to the Brest train station at gun point, loaded into cattle cars and transported to the village of Bereza Kartuzka (68 miles, 114 km northeast of Brest). Upon arrival, the Jews were unloaded and marched to an area where a large trench had already been excavated. The entire group was forced to remove their clothes. They were then pushed into the trench and machine gunned by the Nazi soldiers who surrounded the trench. The action continued all day and it is estimated that 50,000 Jews were killed that day, most of them from the city of Brest.
In 1944, when the Russians recaptured Brest, there were only nine Jews (two men and seven women) left alive.

Now, while this may be hard for you to read...and you may be one who has been led to believe that this didn't really happen....when you do genealogy and see that an entire family of 3 generations ALL died on the very same day.....

you know that it is real.

We're making butterflies this week to honor the 1.5M children who perished along with the children in this family.

Won't you join me in making one as well?

This is another one that I made using fantasy film for the inside of the wings.



What a joy, what a delight for me to be able to assemble a family tree for the Cotopaxi Colony. What an honor for me to make butterflies for this project.



If you think it didn't happen.....just know that it did. Genealogy is just another way of keeping history alive - of keeping history accurate.

1,500,000 children died

in the Holocaust. And The Holocaust Museum in Houston has a butterfly project.....collecting a handmade butterfly for each child who died.

And Amaco (bless their hearts!) is sponsoring a contest where you can win $100 and a whole lot more!

The deadline is now November 18.

And I've been having the best time ever helping all my friends make butterflies, teaching them what they can do with Friendly Plastic.....and just playing in general. So, my blog has been long forgotten!!!

This weekend, my sis, Colleen, used Fimo polymer clay to make this butterfly wing:




Then, after baking the wing, we used it to make a butterfly mold.



While she is making her own butterfly.....I decided to make one, too. And I think it turned out gorgeous!



Can't you just imagine having a tree covered with gorgeous butterflies like this? What a great idea for home decor!



So, 10 more days - plenty of time for you to make a butterfly.

One child gone. One butterfly in remembrance. It takes so little time. It means so much!

Naming your butterflies

We have had the most fun naming our butterflies this week. While I can't share photos yet of those that are being submitted, I can share mine.

Now this one was made with 100% scraps. Look at it closely! Nothing but scraps and loads of fun. Do you see over on the top left....the openings with the mesh? So we named her: "That one wing made it impossible to fly"

I think names should tell a story. So why not have fun with your project? Who says it has to be just one or 2 words - give it any name you want!

This next one is named: "Too puffed up to fly". Can you tell we were going with a whole theme here especially if you look at the last blog? None of my butterflies can fly. Hidden meaning - none are being entered since I was one of the winners last year. So see, put a play on the words! Have fun with it! We were just giggling up a storm around here!

And Rose, we named yours for you as well!!!

"Too Puffed" was made with ooze in cookie cutters.....but we also made up our own technique by oozing around a tool handle to create the center part. How fun is that? When you lay her flat, she looks flat....but she's really quite puffed up!


The rhinestones were in the net. The bottom layer was oozed through fantasy fibers. The centers were connected by using the hot water method and then shaped backwards.

I think I need to go shopping and find more things to oooze through. That or make some more butterfly girls! So much to do I don't know where to start!

Deadlines!

Are you like me? You know you want to do something....enter a contest, submit to a magazine.....and you just wait and wait and then you think, "No way can I get that done in 2 days!!!"

????

Gotcha, didn't I? I swear, I always thought I was so guilty of this. I've worked in an office for 33 years and I would wait til Friday morning to create a report that was due at 8 am that morning! OK - I often made the report at 8:15 am.....always a bit late! My excuse....they got the latest information that way! LOLOL!!!!

Well guess what? Amaco has extended their deadline for their CHA challenge to November 18!!! Now, absolutely NO excuses! I have Friendly Plastic here in my little store and you can have it on Thursday if you ship it priority mail. And even if you want first class - you'd have it on Monday!

And I still have 3 of Liz's books and 1 of Sarah's DVDs , so if you need instruction, we can even help you with that.

I'm going to host TWO more play days if you live in Colorado! There's going to be another Friendly Plastic party this Saturday, November 7, in Eagle CO. And then I'll do one on Thursday, November 12, here in Lafayette in my studio. Everything is provided - you just come make a butterfly or piece of jewelry that we can submit to the Children's Memorial in Houston!

Email if you want to attend either of these events.....or if you want to place an order for Friendly Plastic!

I have to wonder how far they might extend the definition of a butterfly for the project! Meet "Miss" These Wings Weren't Meant for Flying!"

Now yes, that's a butterfly cookie cutter I used for her wings with Liz's ooooooooze technique. I just think she is absolutely adorable! I'd like to see a whole series of butterfly girls.....anyone want to join me? And remember, I can't compete - so I'm just giving away all my ideas for you to copy! OK - the doll is Liz's, the oooze is Liz's - my idea was to assemble them to create a butterfly girl and I think she is beyond adorable!

Stay tuned as I've got a few more ideas to share!

A huge thank you....

to Amaco for sponsoring the Butterfly contest at CHA 2009!!! My "Penance Art" piece won "Most Inspriational" and I couldn't be happier!!! How fun to create something so wonderful, and have it recognized.

I thought I'd share a couple more views of it here as well as what I wrote on the back of it.

The piece is done on an 8x10" piece of artist's canvas and then encased in a clear acrylic enclosure so that nothing get's dusty, knocked off, etc:

In my 8 nights of lights, I did a video showing how to get your Friendly Plastic thin enough to diecut using a Sizzix Originals die.  So lots of swirls were dicut and then fused to the canvas background.  While they are still warm, you can simply stick charms down into the plastic and they will adhere.

If you search my blog for copper watercolor painting, you can see how to paint the copper.  Yep, that top butterfly is copper!

I really like how Friendly Plastic will melt together when you layer one piece on top of another.  You can also move it around with a toothpick covered in vasoline (so the plastic doesn't stick to the toothpick!)

Here's a closeup of another diecut Butterfly using a Spellbinders die.  

The poem is just printed on glossy cardstock and then framed with strips of Friendly plastic melted together.

And here's what I wrote on the back of the piece:

When I visited the Children’s Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem in 2005, I had no more entered into the museum, realized the magnitude of the children lost in the holocaust as represented by the 1.5 Million flickering lights suspended 360 degrees around me, and I fell to my knees, crippled with grief over this hideous crime. I have prayed daily since that moment for Israel and for Jewish children around the world . I am inspired to create pieces like this because they cannot. Even though I am not Jewish, I write poetry that moves me to remember that moment when I fully realized what a generation before me had done. I hunt butterflies in their honor, I sing and dance because they can’t. But most of all, I pray my work will cause you to pause and remember…..

never forget, never again.

Thanks Amaco!!!

Penance Art

On the 8th night of lights, I mentioned penance. Being sorry for what you have done. There are many things that cannot be undone, but I do think we can create art in memory of, or to honor the event. I know that the Holocaust happened before I was born. But the one single fact that still bothers me is this. America could have dropped a single bomb on the train tracks to each of the camps.....and put an end to the deaths. Why didn't we do that? One bomb per track. That's all it would have taken.

While I will never know the answer to that question....I know that I can create art in honor of the memory of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust.....especially the children.

Below is a photo of my piece titled "Dance". This is my entry for Amaco's call for art for the Butterfly Project - and it will eventually be part of the Holocaust Museum in Houston where 1,500,000 butterflies will honor the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust. The butterflies will comprise a breath-taking exhibition, currently scheduled for Spring 2012, for all to remember. I used the Friendly Plastic technique from night 6 of my Eight Nights for the whole project - it is 8" x 10".



and I wrote the poem in the center of the project:

The Children's Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem today
Is more powerful and moving than any words can say....
A million shining stars in the firmament around me,
A million flickering lights dancing everywhere I see.
Infinitely dark and somber, a shofar blows a tune -
A child's name rings out,,, my tears come too soon.
A generation before me took a million lives and more
But I still have to question, "What was it all for?"
All the Jewish children who died for no just reason,
I bow my head in shame for it cannot be undone.
They never saw the butterflies, they didn't have a chance.
"Never forget...never again" - my constant song and dance.

Penance Art. I think it's good for the soul!

I never saw another butterfly.....

UPDATED! Click HERE to see my entry

Click HERE to view a video tutorial for this Friendly Plastic technique.

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Join me in submitting a piece of your art to the Butterfly Project. This project is an effort to remember the 1,500,000 innoncent children who perished in the Holocaust.

Any handmade butterfly will do. 8" x 10" maximum size. Any medium. Should be 2D, not 3D. Flat. No glitter or food products.

You know I have written about my life-altering experience at the Children's Holocaust museum in Israel.

I will be submitting my poem to them with a piece of art. I love that you can use any medium. I'm going to be using Friendly Plastic. And if you email me photos of your butterfly, I'll be happy to post them on my blog.

I hope that you will take the time to create a beautiful butterfly to submit to this project - in memory of a child....who never saw another butterfly.