My Mini Fallas

Well, the Fallas 2017 are almost here and I finally finished my mini-album from the Fallas 2015))) If you are curious what it is I copied a piece of an article by Liam Lacey from his blog in the end of this post.

So it is a decorated Grungebook base by Tim Holtz.

The flower is

made from scratch using Tim Holtz flowers die, painted with watercolours and touched lightly with golden wax.

The chipboard is painted and covered with crackle paint.

Collage

With this post I would like to enter 

MixedMediaWorld#22: Anything Mixed Media Goes!

And the article I promised (*the pictures are from 2015 made by my husband and my daughter*):

This is a longstanding Valencian  celebration commemorating St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. The tradition goes that, at the end of winter, the carpenters would have a bonfire of their left-over wood.  Others say the event dates back to Romans, who traditionally greeted the spring with bonfires, but like most fiestas in Spain, it’s now  a combination religious event,  civic bonding exercise and  street party.

While  bonfires are at the heart of it,  this isn’t your average marshmallow roast.  The falles ritual, which is year-long,  involves the construction of a series of “monuments’ or giant paper-mache figures. Each neighborhood has fund-raisers throughout the year to finances artists  to construct the figures called niñots.  Each construction, which consists of an arrangement of niñots is also known as a falla (pronounced faya) and they’re amazingly elaborate. There’s a contest to pick the best falla, along with  band concerts, a flower festival in which bouquets of flowers are attached to the skirt of a wooden Virgin Mary.

All week long, people walk about in traditional costumes — bell-shaped dresses and mantillas for the women, broad-brimmed hats and stockings and waistcoats for the men.

The figures in the fallas  represent all kinds of characters — local personalities, allegories, celebrities, historical themes,  politicians — and there are text commentaries at the foot of each one. (Unfortunately, my knowledge of Valenciano is even more limited than my Spanish:  It appears they are mocking a tailor! Is it a local character? A protest against austerity measures? An ad for a clothing company?)  But if there’s one caption to define the whole event, it would be something like: All this is temporary, so have fun. 

Hope it was not too boring to read)))

xxx Inga.