Bruno and Elsa’s house is connected to the garage in the back with another 440-square-foot room. It is paved with garden tiles, is heated, and can be used as a studio year-round. Dirty, messy work, such as carving wood or soapstone, modelling with clay, or painting pictures, is done here. It is full of detritus from past hobbies. Bruno is a hoarder-tinkerer. It sounds too harsh, but perhaps a better description is a tinkerer who hoards leftover materials that might become handy for his next artistic endeavour.
To rein in the chaos, Bruno has organized everything in marked boxes on shelves along two back walls of the garage. Some of the labels are mysterious, while others offer a hint of what is stored in them:
• Batik dyes and twines, beeswax, fabrics, wires and strings,
• Chisels, Trewax, steel wool and sandpaper for working with soapstone,
• Soldering iron, copper wires and tubing,
• Pencils, pens, brushes, acrylic and oil paints, sketches, templates and cut-outs,
• Heavy red toolbox,
• Saws, Dremel drills and other small power tools.
A big box filled with basswood, other carving wood pieces and dowel pins stands in the corner of the workshop. Sundries that may someday be useful, such as unfinished marionette heads that were either too expressive or too bland, and various body parts of marionettes yet to be assembled hang from the line above the workbench like clothes hanging out to dry. It is a delicious mélange of odds and ends, always ready to use. They allow Bruno to delve into projects yet to be dreamt up on an impulse.
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Bruno recently met a family where children’s screen time is limited. Although such activities, like playing video games, require special skills and improve computer literacy, they do not induce creativity or nurture imagination. Creativity is so delicate! It must be carefully watered to grow, make roots and be taken care of just like flowers. They want the children to use their imagination and learn simple manual skills through play. Only a few decades ago, children learned to make whistles from willow boughs, weave wreaths from dandelions, whittle walking sticks, or craft bows and arrows to reenact Wild West stories. Children learned to sew, knit, and crochet clothes for their dolls.
Bruno grew up without modern electronic distractions, which he sees as a benefit. He remembers that as children, they were encouraged to collect minerals or plants, which could be pressed to make herbaria, arrangements, and even attractive bookmarks with ease at little expense.
Rummaging through his drawers, Bruno found a fistful of bookmarks he had made with pressed flowers and gave them to friends as gifts. He took a few to the Unison Kerby Centre and showed them to the editor, Mel. She liked them and suggested that spring and early summer are the perfect times to try something new for young and old, and asked for instructions.
Very well. Here it is:
1. Pick flowers with stems about 6” long, small and slender, so that after pressing, they will not be wider than an inch. Lilies of the valley, or little primulas, coral plants’ flowers, hyacinths, are all suitable for pressing. Bleeding hearts are more difficult to arrange, but they are most beautiful. Blooming later in the season, the white blooms of edelweiss are most elegant when mounted on a black background.
2. Place each flower between two pieces of blotting paper, like a sandwich, but even absorbent sheets of kitchen towels will do a great job. For pressing, put the “sandwich” between pages of a book and pile more books on top to apply the pressure.
3. Four to five days later, take the dry flowers out from between the absorbent sheets. They are very delicate and will easily break, so be gentle. Lay them down on prepared strips of 80 lbs. drawing paper, cut to 7.5” x 2“ strips. Wider flowers, like the Bleeding Hearts, will require a wider base to fit. The paper can be bought in art stores; a 12” x 12“ sheet costs under $2.00. Bruno likes colour sheets for contrast, usually just black (for white of yellow flowers) or white for any other colours (usually blue or red). Use a bead of white glue to attach the dry flower to the paper at two places and let it dry. White glue becomes transparent when dry. To keep the flower in place, only a dab of glue is needed.
4. The bookmark is now ready to be laminated.
Bruno takes his bookmarks to Staples. A trained technician at the copy counter will do the laminating in minutes, including trimming the bookmarks with a professional cutting tool to assure they are square. It is fun to add meaning to even a simple walk, making something useful for oneself or giving it to friends as a keepsake. One does not even need a workshop like Bruno has!