Welcome!

I devised this "Cranes of Thanks" project because I love origami, working with children, and the "heroes" that defend our country!  I am teaching youth to fold paper origami cranes which will be placed on a coloring page with a letter on the back to be sent to our soldiers overseas.  This project will continue until we have completed 1,000 Cranes of Thanks!  All of the supplies have generously been funded by DoSomething.org.

Click HERE for some examples of children's coloring pages.
Click HERE for examples of what teens could make.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Creative Spirit at the Ronald McDonald House

Yesterday I toted all my Cranes of Thanks supplies to the Ronald McDonald house through wind, rain, and bad traffic... but, boy was it worth it!  We finished 13 cards (19 if you count my mother's) which doesn't sound like much, but a LOT of love went into them.

Here are just a few of the cards that were made.  Can you feel the creative vibe???  I love the psychedelic stars in the bottom right hand corner and the camouflage picture is great too.  The top half with the pink camo says "my version" and the bottom camo says "the real version."  Cute!


One mom made the two cards pictured here.  The first is a very colorful heart with "thank-you" written all around it, and the other reminds me of some sort of famous pastoral painting (but probably without the origami cranes ;)


Below are three more creative cards.  The one at the bottom is bamboo and the guy colored the origami crane to look like a panda - I love all the shading on his picture!  In the top right we have a blue heart with some nice pencil designs.  At the the top right there is a lovely card - I *love* the clouds in it!  They sort of reminded me of the album cover "Painted Red" by Jj Heller (of course, I looked it up again and the clouds aren't really the same... oh well =)  Also the water is really pretty!



I seriously think this was the most creative location I have been to so far!  We had some other cards made, but I forgot to ask permission to put them on my blog, which is a shame because they were also lovely.  All of the designs gave me new ideas and inspiration to make more of my own... which will hopefully give future participants ideas of their own which will give me ideas which will give others ideas which will... well, you get the picture - this could become dangerous y'all!

Here is one more card I forgot to include with the picture I took last night.  Pretty, huh?  I can't decide whether I like the heart or the background swirlies the best!


As I said, we only made 13 cards but, using OperationWriteHome.org math, that equals at least 52 smiles.  Don't believe me?  13 smiles from those that made the card + 13 smiles from me + 13 smiles from the shipper who gets to screen the cards + 13 smiles from the heroes that get to read the cards... plus all the smiles in between, and if the cards get passed around to more than one hero!

So a big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in saying THANK YOU to our heroes last night!

8 comments:

  1. They are wonderful - and obviously made with great love

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  2. I love your "smile" math... :). Great job on the cards...

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  3. Thank you for putting such a special project in place. It was nice meeting you and knowing that we will make a difference in the soilders life :). Needless to say it was fun and took our minds off of the seriousness of being at the Ronald McDonald House. Many blessings!!!

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    1. I have really enjoyed doing this project and hope to come back. I'm so glad it took your mind off things, that was the original intention of my project - to help somebody going through a difficult time make a difference for someone else who might also be in a difficult situation. Thanks so much for participating!

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  4. These cards are completely epic! I love them so much!

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