By Joyce Hickey
If It weren’t for the fact that I'm not a glittery sort of person, it would be right to call me a magpie. I collect everything: scraps of paper; ribbons; boxes; bits of twine; printed cellophane from bouquets; coloured tissue; calendars; anything that I can envisage using in something else. Shelves lean under boxes labelled with their contents: matt ribbons; gold flower bits; Christmas sparkles; beads; gold paper; silver raffia. An engineer's map cabinet stores large sheets of handmade paper, each drawer named according to its contents: Light Years holds tissue paper; Auntie Estie holds blue and green (she always said they couldn't be seen, except with something in between); Firestarter is the home of yellow and gold, orange and red.
I've always made collages and as a child was usually found at the kitchen table covered with bits and scraps and stuck together with Dad's glue (I was particularly partial to Copydex). Later, I started making Christmas cards for friends who were well used to my propensity for puns - one year it was a pair of sheep under a starlit sky (Merry Christmas two ewe), the next a snowman with a parcel (Snow time - like the present?).
Then the paper fetish really started to fester and sharing a house with like-minded "make-and-do" friends led to many productive evenings in two-channel land. (One of them got married in Tasmania and imagine our delight when, arriving at the house on the eve of the wedding, we were hauled out of the camper van and presented with a box of treasures with which to make the next day's place cards.)
In the days when I didn't realise how much time I had, I used to sell my cards to colleagues, friends, shops and galleries. Now, apart from special occasion and baby cards, most of my "making and doing" is made and done by my two small sons who love their scissors, paper, glue - but know better than to venture within a ruler's length of my shelves. And while they slept I made these cards.
The first, in traditional Christmassy colours, combines matt gold paper from I don't know where with thick green, bamboo-ridged paper hauled home from India dotted with tiny blobs of gold sealing wax. Curiosity almost singed the cat, which led to the scratchy bit towards the top of the tree but adds to the handmade feel (never homemade, please, that's for cakes and jam).
The more modern card uses purple Thai paper bought in Daintree on Camden Street for our wedding invitations in 1999, as well as silver spotty paper I got in Ikea for my friend's wedding invitations in 2002, and the concertina is the last scrap of a roll of Christmas wrapping paper from the Pier. I always use these Italian-made Mediovalis cards from Daintree; I love the deckle edge and the off-white colour.
Maybe, when I have more time, normal card-making activity will resume. But in the meantime I will increase, reuse, recycle every scrap. And make sparkly reindeer with two deliciously sticky little boys.
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By Joyce Hickey for the Irish Times
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