When I was appointed to create the main decoration for 2012’s Christmas in my church (GKY Pluit), I was so excited and have many things running into my head about what I am going to make, I wonder if it is going to be paper cutting, origami like I always make before. But suddenly I have an idea to create something in 3D.. Then I have a meeting with the other Christmas committee , said that our theme is: The ONE, A Life Touching Christmas, which means, how can we touch other people’s life in this Christmas
Then I’m thinking about a flower which symbolizes love, “say it with flowers”, express it with flowers; the beauty of flowers is a universal language which everyone can understand.
Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul. Luther Burbank
This is my first trial flower, using white hvs paper, cut them in 2 shapes petals, then combine it using clear tape. But I think this way is too complicated and will produce too many various of shapes and form due to the difficulty of combining the petals.
Then I draw many shapes of petals that can be produce from one sheet of plano paper (110×79 cm), there I got 16 petals to be joined and produced 6 flowers. I create 3 petals combination from a plano paper which will produce up to 25 various flower shapes and sizes from the smallest (15×15 cm) to biggest (50×50 cm).
Committee decided to use earthy colors for our Christmas decoration, unlike other Christmas colors used to have (red and green), we are using yellow, champagne and bronze for accent, which create elegant look when the flowers attached to wooden elements in our church.
Calculating the needs of flowers, at first I thought 800 flowers will be enough to fill the walls, but after recalculate it turns out we need 1500 flowers. At that time I was managed to cut 300 flowers within 3 weeks, alone.. it turns out to I got all the blisters all over my fingers and barely can cut anymore papers afterwards. I give up doing this alone, so the day after, I gathered up to 30 pairs of helping hands and they help me finished 150 flowers in 4 hours working! Amazing! We keep doing this week after weeks and produced more than a thousand flowers by early of November.
Early of December it is time to arrange the flowers to be placed on walls, Christmas tree and some other spots in the room. Along this flower project, I’m working with my great partner, Daniel Chandra who arrange the construction, materials that will be used and help me to cut and gather up the friends too. Daniel is a passionate architect who also build Jakarta’s vice governor house, Basuki Tjahya Purnama (Ahok) in 2012.
We finished the decoration step by step starts from the Christmas tree, side walls, and the main backdrop for finalization and ready to welcome everyone for Christmas sermon (24-25 December 2012). Thank you everyone who help us and make this happen, from young to senior, men and women, friends, church staffs; hand in hand we welcome the birth of our Lord Jesus in our church, in our hearts.
The flower is not only for the church interior, but we also place is in our gift boxes. This Christmas tree is made out of 1000 gift boxes to be given to the unfortunate kids in many regions so that they can also celebrate Christmas together with us.
Christmas is not about other figure, santa claus, dwarf, or elf
…is about Jesus, The One and only, Jesus
…is not about giving and receiving wishlisted presents
…is about humble heart to receive a wondrous gift, Jesus Christ.
Merry Christmas!