Birds fly for peace

Yesterday Fiona and I installed our peace birds and imagine peace cards in our so named peace tree at the front of our house.

We hope that as they blow in the breeze they might send out some peace energy; and hopefully some folk walking by might pause to read the words and imagine peace.

Fiona's flags are underway...

I am well underway preparing for 21 September.

I have done some flags from old book pages which will hang on our verandah; I am continuing to make peace weathergrams that will hang on the tree at the top of the driveway and I have made two small indoor peace flags which will hang in the house or near the front door...

At the moment, my main peace flags are hanging in the shed-studio.

I feel as if I have made pebbles for peace here with my two small internal flags.

I am still writing weathergrams and will hang them in the tree closer to the day.

I would love to see what others are doing or thinking....

Peace flags a'fluttering...

Barry and I have been doing a fair bit of tidying up and sorting out around the place - a bit like a Spring clean I suppose.  In doing so, we came across our range of peace flags from this year and last and thought to ourselves; why don't we just hang them altogether?

We chose out the back near the peace bell deck, where we already fly Jennifer's flags from last year.

In the end we strung the recycled baby-wipes flags, Barry's metal flags, my peace crane fabric flags and Barry's last year's rainbow umbrella flags.

I think they look great and make me smile whenever I see them!

Looking out from the house...

Looking back at the house...

Closer up from down below…

From the side with the peace bell…

Closer up from the side with the peace bell and the breeze!

We also have my handmade paper with origami peace crane flags still flying out the front of our house as a welcome. I am so happy they have made it thru since 21 September…a month a half outside is not bad for paper I think!

Just wanted to share some of the ongoing joy of the peace flags around…go well.

Fiona's weathergrams are beginning to fly

I am making weathergrams again this year and have started hanging them in the tree at the top of our driveway.  I have plenty more to go and will be getting up on the ladder later in the week to make sure thee is a good set there for Saturday 21 September.

Barry has helped out by writing messages for peace as well.

Here they are in the making and the early hanging...

And a Hipstamatic late afternoon shot...

I also have some fabric flags I am hoping to screenprint later today - fingers crossed I get them done!

And I also remembered another random set of flags we were hoping to pull together, so the front yard should be ablaze with flags and colours on Saturday I hope, reminding people of peace and to stop for a minute at midday and be silent...

Indoor flags outside...

As Barry mentioned in the previous post, we accidentally found ourselves together out on the bell deck hanging our flags - a totally unscripted performance!

I was testing out my indoor flags - made of hand-made paper embedded with origami peace cranes.  They seem to work and I think they will look good inside.

This is them lying around on our tiles.

And this is them hanging - photographing into the bright setting afternoon sun.

And here they are along with some of Jennifer's from last year (top), mine in the middle and Barry's metal flags along the bottom.

Jennifer's flags live out the back where we see theme very day; ours will migrate to the front of the block during September for folk to see. I hope to start hanging my weathergrams this week as well!

The beginnings

As Barry said, it's good to be reminded to get out there and get making for our 2013 peace flags!  A while back I had a bit of a paper-making frenzy and tried to incorporate some peace cranes into the paper.

I have in mind that these hand-made paper flags might become my indoor flags for the year, and I am slowly working out what to do with them and where they might hang.

I am also planning on doing heaps of weathergrams again to hang in the tree at the top of the driveway which I loved last time. I am OK with repeating something... like a mantra perhaps?

I also think if I repeat the weathergrams it might become something that is known and hoped for/expected each year in a way - as people drive and walk by, they will be reminded that it's about peace. I hope.

A Flags for Peace book

Towards the end of last year, our local artists' group COMA (Collaboration of Maleny Artists) won a small grant to publish a photographic book about the Peace Flags local artists made and flew around International Day of Peace 2012.

We have recently published the book and have begun distributing it to local schools and libraries and elsewhere.

Here are some images from the book. Whilst we were focused on our local artists, we also put together a compilation of most of the international artists - but we may have missed one or two sorry.

If you would like to see a preview of the full book (38 pages) you can click here.

It is a beautiful way to share this project - for people to hold the book in their hands, read the stories and gaze at the flags...we hope it might mean more people join in this year. 

Requesting permission...

As some of you know, here in Maleny in Australia we encouraged a few artists to participate in Flags for Peace 2012, and to fly their flags on International Day of Peace. We included them here and here.

Since then we have been fortunate to receive a grant (around A$1700) to use the photographs of the Maleny Peace Flags and to publish them in a Blurb book. The book will be a hard cover, coffee-table kind of book which we will donate to schools and public Libraries in our area.

We have enough money to publish 40 books.

We are also hoping to tell the story of how the Maleny Peace Flags fit in with this blog and the project started by Mary Jane, and would love to include as many images from here as we can at the back of the book - to show how it fits together.

If you would be willing for us to use images of your flags as posted here and include them in our book could you please either leave a comment or email me (fiona.dempster1@bigpond.com) and let me know it's OK?

The book will also be available to purchase from the Blurb book site once we have published it. The cost will be around A$40.00 and we expect that it will be available sometime in December.

We are excited that we will have the opportunity to share the beauty and variety of peace flags, and the idea that artists around the world believe in peace and wish for peace.  It will be wonderful for the schools to receive a copy and who knows, it might lead to them getting involved themselves next year?

Thanks for your participation so far, and hopefully for your permission to use images of your flags in this publication.

Many thanks and go well, Fiona. Here are my peace flag weather-grams, still flying as the tree buds and grows around them...