ULOG #2 Gailbelga on Art: Potpourri for Lovely Moms this Mother's Day

So our church's Mother's Day Celebration is fast approaching and just like what I mentioned on my previous blog entry , we needed to come up with tokens for all the mothers in our family church. And although we are just a small church, we really wanted to find small ways to thank our dear mothers.

It was really my brother's idea to have a personalized or customized tokens for the mothers so we roamed around the mall and ended up at Daiso which is found inside the Centrio Ayala Mall. At first, we have thought of having the usual items but the moment we passed over a lane with potpourri, we decided that it should be a crucial element for our tokens.

Beside the potpourri were more than a dozen of frames, and air plant holders. Jose have thought of just putting the potpourri inside a pouch, but I told him it might be more aesthetic if we put it inside the air plant holders. He then agreed with the idea of mine.

Here are the materials we came up with :

A box of potpourri only costs 88Php at Daiso so Jose and I decided to buy two of it just in case a box would not fit for the nine (9) air plant holders.

And then nine (9) pieces of air plant holders which the others are not shown on the photos. Each air plant holder only cost 88Php. It is such a good bargain though.

I also used water color paper and brown cartolina for the design which will be shown later how it was done. Water color cake has also been used because it enables to give a cakey texture for our work.

Process:

I filled the air plant holders with potpourri. I just made sure that those who would be on the corners are the big petals and leaves so that the small ones would not fall in case it is moved by a kid.

After filling all the holders, I started painting different colors of leaves and stems for the design or decoration.

You can paint leaves of your chosen size but make sure it would be proportionate with the leaves. Or you can paint the cartolina and water color paper with random bright or attrative colors for the leaves and then cut it into shapes of leaves. The latter is actually more energy and time saving.

Using glue, I attached the stems followed by the leaves of different colors. It does not necessarily need to look perfect or you do not need to be particular with the colors used as long as they colors compliment well with each other.

Because I wanted to save art materials, I decided to reuse the tag instead of throwing it. I instructed Jose to cover both sides with a special type of paper which is good for hand painting using the water color cake.

I then started writing Happy Mother's Day on one corner of the covered tag, and then We Love You, Mommy on the other side.

And here are some of my products.

The potpourri can be transferred by our lovely mom on a different container and then use the air plant holder as something else. The potpourri itself is charming so you can use it as your decoration at home

With just less than Php1000.00 or US$20, we were able to come up with 9 unique token for the Mother's Day Celebration!

Want to make your own potpourri?
If you want to come up with your own potpourri, you can check out ways on how to make one here.

I hope you enjoyed today's simple art tutorial. And by the way, if you are planning to make one or have one already, share your work here either the image or the link. Thank you!

^{@gailbelga or Johanna Gail is a free-spirited freelance artist. She took up Bachelor of Arts in International Studies in one of the Ateneo universities in the Philippines. She is currently a candidate for Masters in Public Administrations. She volunteers in various non-profit/nongovernmental organization which aims for human rights through political education. She draws and writes about the country to provide awareness and promote the Philippines to foreign tourists.}