Day of Creating Prayer Flags...in process

In my Medicine Art Womens Expressive Art group, we began creating our own Prayer Flags this week. Only 2 people came to group this week, but we all were so engaged, that it was nice having the space in the studio to work.  All I can say is what fun we had.. Here are some photos of our ongoing process.

 First we cut unbleached muslin into the size and shape we wanted.

Then we painted washes of Jaquard fabric paints on them and put them in the sun to dry.
Horray that it was a sunny, warm day.
The next step was using stencils of both letters and images, that we pounced onto the fabric...and wallah!  amazing things began to happen.

 Here you can see some of Roberta's in process.  We all got about 2 of them kind of done that day.

 This is Marcella showing off one of her prayer flags..

 These last two are the ones that I did that day.

 This will obviously be about a 3 session process, and with the other members of the group joining it
who knows how long we will be at it.  So many ideas are brewing in regards to this process.

Even my own entreprenurial mind is spinning, and I am thinking of doing a day long prayer flag workshop for others it was soo exciting and fun.

These are inspired by Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags, which monks hang so the prayers printed on them (traditionally in sanskrit with an image of the Buddha) can be whisked into the universe with help from rain, wind, sunshine. When we are too preoccupied to hope the best for the world at all times, the flags are a constant prayer. They're even left unhemmed intentionally, the quicker to disperse their  prayers.