Here is a gift that I have given to my daughters which has brought much joy to the entire family and continues to give after we are done.
It is a poster that you color yourself. These posters come with 10 very basic colors, and they range from simple to complex. They cost around$10 US. One company that makes them at this time is called Western Graphics Corporation. They come in a plastic tube that is closed at both ends with a cap that is stapled into the tube. On the tube will be a small representation of the poster inside the tube.
What we like to do with these posters is put them on the coffee table and let every member of the family add to the poster as they see fit. We don’t use the 10 pens that come with the poster, however. Where we bought the poster was a local Hobby Lobby store. At the same store were sets of 100 Water Color Ink Pens, which give much more variety and in some cases you can even blend them on the poster. The information on our current set of 100 pens(cost is between$14 and$19 US) says’Tri-C(tm), P.O.Box 17009 Lansing MI 48901. I suggest you get them only if you intend to do more than one poster.
Now the hard part is that for this to work, you cannot really set rules. Art is art, vision is vision, and if you want someone else to share their vision on a common surface, then expect things on the poster to not look the way YOU would like for them to. In the end, when the poster is completely through, there might be one or two things that stick out completely, and these are the things that will over time set that poster apart from all the others in the universe.
When a poster is through, one final cost will seal your artistic group effort for all time. If you have a Kinkos in your town, you can go there with the completed poster, and ask them to laminate it. They may or may not provide this service in your community, as there must be a market for the service large enough to justify the expense of getting the equipment capable of laminating a project as large as this. But when you are through laminating, the poster will last an unknown length of time(well, I haven’t seen one go bad yet!)
I have done one of these posters for each of my daughters(I have two). They hang them on their bedroom walls, and I look at these posters from time to time and can remember who did that funny dragon, or that beautiful unicorn, etc. As time goes on, they will take their little copy of family art with them on to their next life with their husband and children, and who knows where the poster will go from there?
But another thing you can do with these posters.
We sponsor two children in other countries. So far, only one of these children has received one of our’family posters’. It isn’t that we don’t want the other one to have a poster, but the organization that performs the activities of sponsorship does not allow anything but monetary gifts because many gifts other than this will simply’disappear’ on the way to the communities. Our sponsored child in the Dominican Republic expressed interest in art and painting. We made the poster, laminated it, and sent it to her, along with the set of pens that originally came with the poster. We got a picture back months later with a little girl grinning from ear to ear, the poster hanging in the background!
Some of the themes of these posters may offend those who are offended by things such as unicorns and dragons. If you intend to do one as we have and ship it to a sponsored child, consider any religious scruples which might cause negative connotations from those in the recipient’s community. There are posters for Enchanted Forest, Wildflowers, Castles, and I don’t know what all. I think we have completed their present series, and unless the market picks up, I guess we may run out of new themes, but I have been doing these posters since the 70’s when they first came out.
It is a relaxing family activity to color these posters, and no matter who you give it to, the act of giving that springs forth in the art of the participating family members is a much more precious gift than something which fades away. It says, I love you and I want you to remember it as you look over this poster and see all the contributions to it that I have made. But it also reinforces that no great thing is completed alone, that it takes family to do something that lasts, and that family love is the strongest and most beautiful of all.
Maranatha!