Skip to main content

Christmas Hanji .....

Wow!  Where has the time gone!!  Since retiring from teaching ESL here in the UAE I thought I'd have so much more time for writing on my blog and researching for my book  but although these things are important to me it seems that my time has been spent in more creative, hands on pursuits, and it's been great. 

I've been working steadily at setting up and running my Hanji classes, designing worksheets for more complex Hanji projects as well as creating ideas for and making new items of my own design.


These last few weeks I've been putting together some items for a  'Christmas' Craft stall.  I say that tongue in cheek because for anyone living in the Middle East we all know that Christmas isn't celebrated over here but because the UAE population is made up of 80%  expats from all over the world  it's  an important time for us to think of family and friends back home. It's a time for sending off our Christmas cards and presents at least a month earlier than we had to when we lived at home. A Christmas gift received after the day is never quite the same is it.

For the stall I made these cute coasters and added a Christmas touch to some of them. They're always handy to have during the festive season or to give as a set of 4 as a gift. I've also used them as small dishes for sweets and treats so they're quite versatile.
I also had pots, boxes of different shapes and sizes, lamps, trays, a set of drawers, handmade Christmas cards, pictures with Hanji cutouts and  some of my large framed photographs.

 It was a lovely evening  in a wonderful  outdoor  setting down by the Marina. There was a cool breeze blowing off the water and the atmosphere was expectant as people started trickling in from the surrounding residences. Over a period of 4 to 5 hours I met with  many people from different walks of life, I sold some things and more importantly  many were interested in coming to classes and learning how to do Hanji in the future so it looks like I'm going to be even busier come next year !!

This is the first time I've sold my Hanji pieces at a stall so it was a huge learning experience for me to see what reactions I'd get from people who'd never seen this craft before. Many people couldn't believe the items had been hand made and others were just out for an evening stroll in the fresh air whilst someone  asked if they'd been mass produced in China !!

Only a few of them realised the amount of work that goes into making things by hand. This led me to remember this saying. I don't know who wrote it  but I think this says it all. 





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lotus symbol in Korean culture .....

In traditional Korean Hanji art you can see many different designs of plants, animals, letters and insects. I'm sure you've wondered what they all symbolise as they are repeated so often and in many different ways.  In this post I just want to take a brief look at the lotus plant and what it symbolises for the Korean people. I've used this design on a few articles but I never really knew the full meaning of what it represented until I started doing some research for my book.  Even though many of us aren't Korean we can still use these designs and in so doing, translate a deeper meaning to our articles. Here are a just a few of my favourites from the easiest to the more difficult to cut out.                         The lotus flower symbolises creation, birth, liveability and reproduction and therefore it's one of the most  important symbols in both Korean culture and its traditional religions. In both Confucianism and Buddhism
3 comments
Read more

The Buddhist symbol, Hanji & Korean culture ....

When selecting designs for my Hanji pieces I tend to make stylistic choices as to what will look best on each piece but the Korean designs all have very deep symbolic meanings.  None more than the Buddhist swastika (manja) design. ‘Manja’ (만, Man is “卍” and 만자, Manja literally means “letter Man”) is also called Srivatsalksana in Sanskrit.  It is one of the thirty-two (32) marks of excellence of the Buddha and is said to exist on his hands, feet, hair and waist.                         For those of us in the West this is often confused with the German Nazi swastika symbol but in fact it's been  around for about three thousand years.  The swastika is an equilateral cross with arms bent at right angles and all in the same direction, usually to the right, or clockwise. It's a symbol of prosperity and good fortune and it originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit swastika which means, "conducive to well
Post a Comment
Read more

Online Hanji paper store, in English .....

I'm really pleased to be able to share with you this website where you can order a variety of Hanji papers from Korea and it's all in English !!!  The store is based in Daejon, Korea.   HAMINBRIDGE ( Thehanji ) was established by Moonyang Park in 1983. It's a family owned 2nd generation  business and they have a factory in Junju.  They also have a factory in China where some of the paper is made. The website is at www. thehanji.com and it provides a selection of specialty Hanji paper (Korean paper) and products.   I ordered some papers from them recently  to see what it was like and they were extremely efficient in dealing with  the order and it was here in the UAE within 5 days so I was really impressed. The prices were good and they even have some on special, the paper is beautiful and the ease of ordering was amazing.   They do sell rolls of paper, traditional papers and lanterns but overall I did think the range was a bit limited for what I wa
6 comments
Read more