Day 11: Reflection!

Day 11: Reflection & Happy Holidays!

First and foremost, we want to thank everyone for being an inspiration to us. You encourage us to keep crafting, designing, and aspiring. We decided to end on Day 11 as we didn’t realize what an insane holiday schedule we would have. We apologize, but for the days we were able to make it work, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Our Hmong-Inspired Christmas project may be completed, but we hope it will be shared and recreated in the coming years. We have been blessed with a wonderful family and are very excited to share with them our cross-cultural creations on this holiday. It is a small and simple expression of our love and appreciation of our culture.

We couldn’t be more excited to end the year with this project. Thank you for tuning in and see you all next year!

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays! 

Day 10: CHAT!

Day 10: CHAT – A true inspiration!

Taking a break from crafting, we want to take the time to recognize an organization that has contributed to supporting and promoting a variety of Hmong arts within the community. The Center for Hmong Arts & Talents (CHAT) is an incredible and inspiring non-profit organization located in St. Paul, MN. CHAT is one of the main reasons why we began this project.

CHAT’s mission: to nurture, explore and illuminate the Hmong American experience through artistic expressions. They are able to achieve this mission through their core values of creativity, community, integrity, and progress.

CHAT gave us the opportunity to step into the fashion industry with their annual fashion show: Fresh Traditions. Fresh Tradition is a fashion show that showcases the talents of emerging Hmong-American fashion designers. We were honor to be a part of the fourth annual Fresh Traditions Fashion Show as it was a wonderful learning process and a launching pad for Inspire.

One of CHAT's main goals is to build audiences for the arts by creating and producing art that significantly enhances understanding both within the Hmong community as well cross-culturally. Complimentary to this goal, and our experiences with CHAT, we were able to produce our Hmong-Inspired Christmas. We wanted to infuse our Hmong culture with the American holiday and be able to share this with the community.

CHAT offers a variety of programs and events that help foster Hmong artists of all mediums. To learn more about CHAT, please visit www.aboutchat.org.

To Inspire and to be Inspired. 

Day 9: Picture Perfect!

Day 9: Gifts – Picture Perfect

Using all that we have learned and making the most use of the materials we have purchased for our Hmong-Inspired Christmas, we present to you our gifts!

Frame Tutorial:

Materials:

-Frames (your choice of size, material, etc)

-Paper, fabric, embellishments…

-Scissors, x-acto knife, and glue

You can do just about any design to put into your frame(s). All you need is your imagination!

For ours:

Step 1: Trace dimensions of photo frame onto cardstock and cut it out. Use this to apply design onto.

Step 2: Cut 1 strip (1” width *by the height of photo frame dimension) of blue and pink cardstock. Cut black cardstock according to the dimensions remaining of cardstock. -Our frame is a 4*6 therefore we have 2 strips of 1*6 and 1 strip of 2*6

Step 3: Measure ribbon and glue down on right side of the black cardstock.

Step 4: Glue all 3 strips in whichever order you choose. Once dry, trim off any extended edges to help fit design into frame.

Step 5: Place into frame and you now have yourself a Hmong-Inspired print!

Creating multiple designs can create a unique, visually appealing design on your wall. If you’re giving this as a gift, having a set of 3 to give makes it all the merrier!

Photo Album

Materials:

-Basic photo album – we got ours at Wal-Mart for $6

-Felt

-Glue, paint brush, scissors

Using our Hmong symbol cut outs (Day 2), we created a traditional design with 4 of them together.

Just apply glue to the back of the symbols and adhere to the photo album. It’s as simple as that!

Check in to Day 10, as we move closer to Christmas!