Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is Chinese New Year!  Yay!  I made some decorations to celebrate. (Also because my brother is hosting a Chinese New Year's Party and he asked me to make some decorations.  He noted that for my hard work, I'd be paid in homemade dumplings.  I thought it was a fair trade.)  

I made this dragon banner:

Dragons are a traditional way of celebrating Chinese New Year.  Dragons are a symbol of China and are thought to bring good luck.  If you've ever been to Chinatown during Chinese New Year, you've probably seen the traditional Dragon Dance.  If you've never seen a Dragon Dance, check out this YouTube video (it's under a minute):

The video is from Flushing in Queens, NY, where there's a very large Chinese population (and people say the yummiest Chinese food).

I used gold foil circles to add that festive feeling.

I made the head out of a patterned piece of paper.  I thought that a little bit of tone-on-tone patterning made it a tad more interesting.

I'm in *love* with this stencil-ish font I created in Illustrator.  I'm going to have to make a stencil with the full alphabet because it's just too cool!

I used spray adhesive to attach the black layer to the red layer and I accidentally sprayed the wrong side of the black layer at first (eek!) so stuff keeps sticking to it.  Got to laugh stuff like that off, right?!

And I made this super crafty centerpiece:

This is a stylized calligraphic version of the Chinese character for "Year of the Ram."  (2015 is the "Year of the Ram" -- sometimes called "Year of the Sheep" or "Year of the Goat" -- the Chinese character refers to all of those animals.)  

And here are little circles for each of the Chinese zodiac signs:

Happy New Year to you!  If you'd like to wish your friends a happy new year in Chinese, here's a website with some easy phonetic pronunciation.  As for me, I'll be eating dumplings!

Thanks for stopping by!