Elsa Mora

Bird Mask Papercut :)

I am sooo excited to share my last papercut with you!

I put a lot of love into the making of this piece and now I would like to explain you a little bit the meaning of it. This piece is about the three most important elements that we need in order to find some balance in life.

WE NEED:

1. Ourselves, the essence of who we are (represented by the girl)
2. Our imagination (represented by the bird mask)
3. Our hands.

First we need to be close to ourselves in every possible way. We need to connect with who we are. We need to know what we like, what we dislike, what we are afraid of...basically we need to learn as much as possible about how we are.

Then we need our imagination which is what shows us the way. Before we make something happen we need to imagine it, to dream of it.

And very important: we need our hands and our capacity to build things weather these things are material or not. We shouldn't spend too much time in our imagination or in our inner world because otherwise we could get lost. In my opinion it is important to come out to the real world and make things happen...and THEN we can go back to our inner world again :) it is all a cycle, we should always keep moving.

YAY!!!! LET'S DO IT! LET'S MAKE THINGS HAPPEN!!!

And now I have to leave but first I want to wish you a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!
Have fun and I will see you on Monday!
Elsita :)

(The print of this papercut is already listed on my ETSY STORE)

Little Red Riding Hood Papercut :)

And today I am back with this tiny papercut that I made the other day :)

In this little scene Red Riding Hood is having a conversation with the Wolf's Mother. They are wondering why young Wolf is so aggressive sometimes.

Red Riding Hood is recommending some natural tea made with the leaves of a special plant that her Grandma gave her. This plant will make the Wolf calm down and hopefully he will stop trying to attack people.

Let's hope that this tea works! I deeply believe in herbal remedies!

Have a nice Wednesday!
Elsita :)

Everything Will be OK :)

These little scenes were inspired by a dream that I had a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes I dream about something and then I Immediately forget about it as soon as I wake up. But sometimes I have dreams that are so real, I keep reproducing them in my mind with lots of details, days and even weeks later after they happened. This is one of those cases.

In this dream I was with my Dad trying to get into our house but there were no doors so we had to wait outside.

Then some friendly animals came close to us and they started having a conversation with my Dad about how they didn't have a house like we did.

I was very impressed about how nice the animals were.

Then my Dad said: Don't worry Elsita, we can live outdoors just like our animal friends, we will be OK. In the end I was very happy!

Why did I dream something like this?
Possible answers:
*When I was little I used to live in a fragile little house with my family and I was afraid that our house was going to collapse one day. That's why one of my greatest dreams was to live in a "real" house. I dreamed about houses all the time and I also dreamed about living in a prison cell because I thought that a little room like that was a safe and nice place to live. I told my Mom about this idea once but for some reason she didn't agree with me :o

*I always wanted to see my Dad more often. But he had to work at night (as a truck driver) and during the day he had to sleep (just like an owl:). Then when he divorced my Mom I saw him even less.

*I have always loved animals since I was a child and I always thought that if they could talk to us they would teach us amazing things (like how to survive in the wild and things like that).

*In the last months Bill and I have been extremely busy as parents, regarding Diego's future. Tomorrow we will be having a VERY IMPORTANT MEETING related to that and getting ready for it has been so stressful for both of us.

So I think that the four elements that I just mentioned got together in my brain, they had some chemical reaction and a dream was born! I am always fascinated with how the mind works.

I think that our dreams are a way for our brain to communicate with us. I would say that my brain is trying to tell me that no matter what everything will be OK!

Now I have to go.
But I will be back tomorrow!

Elsita :)

Giveaway Winner, New Papercuts! :) (And I will be back on June 16th)

And the winner of the Flower Girl drawing is: BEETLEGIRL!!!!!! Yaaaay!!! Dear Beetlegirl, if you read this you can write me an e-mail (left sidebar) with your address so I can ship the drawing to you as soon as possible! Thank you all for participating in this giveaway!

And now my Friday post:

Dear friend,
Here is a group of my last papercuts for you. For these ones I drew part of the designs with pencil to get exactly the shapes that I wanted and I also experimented with different kinds of papers. Most of the papers have a lovely antique yellow color. I had the best time ever creating them but also they were my get-emotionally-ready-for-the-next-two-weeks (because they will be hard). In the next two weeks I wil be more busy than ever because there is so much going on over here, but everything is positive. My Mother-in-law is arriving soon, we will be organizing a birthday party for Diego and Natalie and also for her, Bill and I will have a series of important meetings about Diego's transition to the school system...and more... That's why if you don't mind I will be back with you in two weeks, to be more specific I will be back on June 16th. I am already missing you so much!!! This blog is an important part of my life and so are you. I know that those two weeks will go away so fast! So before I leave I want to send you lots of love and a big hug!
I wish the next two weeks of your life to be great, wish me good luck and see you on June 16th!

Your friend Elsita :)

Winner of Last Giveaway (And Some Story for You :0 :o ;) :D :/ :>)

I am so happy to announce that the little Gemini Pin goes to GEO!!! Geo is a wonderful Gemini girl, one of those people that you immediately have to love because of her intelligence and sense of humor. Yay Geo!!!! And I must say CONGRATULATIONS to all the Gemini girls and boys out there who are celebrating their birthdays around this time, I send you all lots of love!

And now let's get ready for a little story that starts with the pictures below:

In a faraway planet called Tierra there was a little creature named Mister Criatura that was born with no face as well as all the other creatures born in planet Tierra. One day he flew directly to Rodolfonso's studio (located in planet Earth) with a request: Would you design a face for me Rodolfonso? A week later Rodolfonso was ready to show Mister Criatura nine designs. When Mister Criatura looked at the designs he said: Wait a minute! I can't see anything! And Rodolfonso said: of course, because you have no eyes. And Mister Criatura said: Would you describe them to me? Rodolfonso described the nine faces but then he said: Wait a minute, you are not supposed to talk because you don't have a mouth! And Criature said (showing Rodolfonso a tiny little man straight from his pocket) but I have a mind reader, he literally reads my mind. Rodolfonso felt bad for the tiny little man because he couldn't say his own words, he just had to read Criatura's mind all the time.
Finally, after hours of deep face analysis Criatura picked one face and put it on. He looked really handsome. Criatura then paid Rodolfonso the amount of twenty-five dollars with seventeen cents and then he flew back to planet Tierra. But before that he let tiny little man land on the floor. After Criature left, Rodolfonso asked tiny little man if he wanted to work with him as an Assistant and he said yes. He could just read Rodolfonso's mind and see that he had the best intentions. From that they on Rodolfonso and tiny little man became great partners. They never saw Criature in person again but Criatura never failed to send them a card saying hello from all the exotic places that he visited every year.

The End!

This silly story has been delivered to you straight from the imagination of Natalie Horberg and Elsita Mora Horberg :) We hope that you liked it!
Happy Holiday!
And see you tomorrow!
ELsita :)

The Art of Papercut :)

I really love papercuts and I have been sooo curious about this art form for so long. I got three books about the subject and I was happy to learn that this tradition is still very alive in China. Here you can see an Etsy store (located in China) that sells beautiful papercut pieces, all made by hand. I purchased two of them and they are now framed in our home. After reading about the history of traditional chinese papercuts and admiring the contemporary aproach to this technique by Rob Ryan plus the provocative art of Kara Walker I just had to make one myself in order to experience how it feels to cut off lots of tiny pieces of paper. My report is: WONDERFUL and RELAXING EXPERIENCE. I folded a regular letter size paper in half and I then started cutting carefully following the design idea that I had in my mind for the border. I felt more free cutting directly on the paper instead of drawing a design because this way there were no mistakes to make. Then I opened the sheet of paper to make the center, I just kept cutting (slowly) as if I was drawing with the knife. In the pictures below you can see what it came out. The white color makes it look like lace.

When I was making this papercut I thought a lot about life and about how somehow we build our personalities this way, by "cutting off" little pieces of this and that in order to give shape to who we want to be. How many things do we leave behind in order to grow up and create our own "papercut design"?. From being a child to becoming a teenager and later an adult we go through a whole slow and deep process. It is fascinating to me how we "shape" ourselves over the years without even noticing it. Then one day we look back and see how much we have changed. We will never be perfect and we shouldn't but that's exactly the beauty of life as well as the beauty of art: They are always a work in progress :)

And now I wish you a wonderful weekend my friend and I will see you again on Monday!
Elsita :)

GIVEAWAY: Gemini pin! :)

Our giveaway today is this pin that I made out of inkjet shrink plastic and stiffened felt. It features a little print of my illustration titled Gemini and it has a gold plated pin attached firmly to the back side which makes this little piece very easy to wear. I decided to give some movement to this pin instead of making it flat, that's why you see some little waves all over the edge of the plastic part. If you would like to win this pin you just need to say Abracadabra 3 times. I'M KIDDING! Just leave a comment in this post and I will announce the winner on Monday!

Have a wonderful day and see you tomorrow!
Elsita :)

Winner of the tiny painting (And new characters :)

And the winner of the tiny painting is: HEIDI KENNEY! Yay Heidi!!! And thank you sooo much to everyone who participated in this giveaway! This time I opened the book myself (with my eyes closed) in page 31 :) If you didn't win the tiny painting don't worry because there will be more chances to win a little something in the future. I promise to keep these giveaways going once a week! :)

Now I am so excited to introduce you to Miss Albertina and her special student Pascuale. Miss Albertina is a fourth grade Teacher from the Elementary School where she has been teaching for over 20 years now. One day Pacuale's Mom and Dad invited Miss Albertina for lunch because they wanted to talk to her about their son.

Pascuale's parents were so concerned about their son because he didn't show any interest in the world, he was sad and he did not want to go to school. Pascuale's parents were desperate and they thought that Miss Albertina could come out with some magic idea to help him since they had already tried everything.

Miss Albertina said: OK, let me think about this an I will call you during the weekend with a solution. Pascuale's parents waited for the call with their hearts full of hope. Then on Sunday night after Pascuale was already in bed Miss Albertina called and she said: I have the solution!

And now we should be thinking about what the magic solution was! This is something that I do with Natalie all the time, I start telling her a story and then I let her create the rest of it. In the beginning she got mad at me but now she loves it! I started doing this since she was very little and it is amazing how this game pushes her to be creative and to come out with her own ideas. In the beginning her stories were pretty basic but now they are getting more and more sophisticated. She makes up lots of problems and then she finds the solutions to them. When she is talking I remain as quiet as possible which makes her keep going, she loves me to be a good listener. The best part of it is that then she does the same thing in real life. Natalie is so resourceful, her level of frustration is lower and lower everyday because she is getting so used to finding solutions by herself and it all started in her imagination. I didn't do the job for her, I just created the conditions for Natalie to use her own mind and I am so impressed with the results.

We, as adults, are not different from children. We, even more than them, need to come out with solutions to our daily problems and the quality of these solutions is directly connected to our creativity. If we feel comfortable being creative in our imagination then we will feel comfortable being creative in real life. I try to teach myself how to see problems not exactly as problems but as opportunities to practice my creativity. When I see problems this way I get more excited about finding solutions, it really helps me see life with positive eyes. Problems will keep coming no matter what, I am so sure about it. That's why the point of this post is for us to think about our "brain muscles" and about using them as often as possible. And right now I am doing that because I am thinking about all the possible magic solutions that Miss Eduardina could come out with in order to help Pascuale :)

I wish you a happy and creative Monday my friend!
(And don't worry about Pascuale because he is going to be a happy boy very soon!)
See you tomorrow!
Elsita :)

(Miss Eduardina, little Pascuale, the magic bag that he is in and the three little drawings are now available here)

Treasures from the flea market! :)

Bill and I are flea market fanatics. Before we had the kids we used to go to the flea market all the time but then we had to stop because it is hard with the children. But the other day we decided to try again and the children were just fine plus we were sooo lucky! Take a look at the treasures that we found:

This wonderful authentic japanese doll for $25 :)

This little sweater for $7

Old stamps for $15 :)

And my favorite! THIS LABORATORY KIT!!!!
One of the jobs that my Mom had when I was growing up was at a hospital (she wasn't one of the Doctors but an Auxiliar de Limpieza, as they say in Cuba, which is basically the person who keeps the place nice and clean :) She had access to a laboratory, that I never got to see in person but she always brought me all these little bottles etc. from over there and I dreamed about having my own laboratory. In fact I created my own primitive laboratory in our backyard and I used to prepare the most crazy mixes with water and other elements from the kitchen. My ultimate dream was to have a microscope because we had one at school and I just thought that it was pure magic seeing all those little things that the human eye cannot see. It took me all these years to get my own microscope!!! Can you believe it?? You can see it up there in the picture. I can't wait to continue my old experiments!

Now I have to go but I hope to be back tomorrow with the secret formula for the eternal life!
Have a great day!
Dr. Elsita :)

There is a branch for every bird! :)

The other day I went to Ross and got this wonderful little jacket (first picture) for $12.99. I was walking through the alleys of the store where thousands of pieces of clothes were waiting for their perfect buyers, but non of them talked to me. I was ready to go when I heard something, like psshhshh... WHAT? (I said) Then I looked to my right side and there it was! I saw the little jacket looking straight at me like saying: YES, it's me, you found me!. And I said: ABSOLUTELY, I am taking you with me little jacket! I felt in love with the design, the color, the fabric and the attractive numeric combination of 12dot99 :o!. Once in my studio I saw this bird and brach and CLICK! I immediately got inspired to do something with the jacket! In the second photo you can see what I did. This was a very simple thing to do: I just drew the bird and branches on the fabric with a regular pencil and then I filled up the shapes with this textile paint using a brush. I then ironed the fabric from the back to fix the paint.
Yay!!! Now my little jacket and I are like best friends and we go out together looking happy!

Have a wonderful day and see you tomorrow!
Elsita :)

(I am sooo glad to know that you liked the little buttons from our last giveaway! Thank you for participating in the game!!!)