Iron Craft: Heritage Craft

This week for Iron Craft the challenge was to create something that would reflect your heritage. 

 One of the things that I decided to make a commitment to is spending more time with my children.  I do okay in this department but there is lots of room for improvement.  If I was single or at any age where my kids did not want anything to do with me (hope that day never comes), I would have done a Polish egg or a tile mosaic.  Something.  I dunno.  What I really wanted to do was do some traditional Polish design on this step stool that I have been meaning to paint.  Another project for later on.

Instead I see this idea for paper mosaics to do with children.  I always have a hard time figuring out what to do with them.  This was a great project- little prep time!  And my daughter who is five can practice with scissors.  A bonus since this helps with writing later on.  The idea couldn't have been more perfect.

While mosaics are not primarily Italian- there are a lot of mosaics done in Italy. I went with it.

"In parts of Italy, which were under eastern artistic influences, like Sicily and Venice, mosaic making never went out of fashion in the Middle Ages. The whole interior of the St Mark's Basilica in Venice is clad with elaborate, golden mosaics. The oldest scenes were executed by Greek masters in the late 11th century but the majority of the mosaics are works of local artists from the 12th-13th centuries. The decoration of the church was finished only in the 16th century. One hundred and ten scenes of mosaics in the atrium of St Mark's were based directly on the miniatures of the Cotton Genesis, a Byzantine manuscript that was brought to Venice after the sack of Constantinople (1204). The mosaics were executed in the 1220s." Wikipedia