What's A Garden Kite?

I was recently asked what in the world is a garden kite? A garden kite is my take on Lloyd Reynold's Weathergrams. Traditional weathergrams have too many rules for me.

Garden kites are meant to be ephemeral and I like to hang them  outside so I can watch them flutter in my Zensical garden. The kites begin life as Kraft paper or brown paper bags. I'll sometimes ask for my groceries to be put into a brown paper bag or I save the brown paper that is sometimes used as packing material. For ephemera, I'm amazed at how long Kraft paper will weather outside.

I cut the Kraft paper to 5 .5 inches square (or 13.97 cm) I like this size, but you can choose a size that appeals to you. Holes are punched for the hang cord and a tail for the kite. I use a reinforcement for a little bit of stability.

I don't use a particular layout except that a design of some sort will go in the middle. When I make a garden kite for myself, I'm not very fussy. You can use whatever materials you like. Sometimes I write with a Sharpie pen. I don't bother to rule up lines, but just write out whatever sentiment I've chosen.

 Here I've written with a 1 mm. Pilot Parallel Pen using Moon Palace Sumi ink. The sumi ink doesn't bleed or feather on the Kraft paper and doesn't run when it gets wet.

Any writing is done first and then some sort of drawing goes in the middle. 

 Himself got a new wallet with a Celtic knot dragon embossed on it. The Young One is fond of dragons so I copied the design. I drew it on tracing paper and transferred it to the brown paper using Saral Transfer paper.. I went over the Saral lines with the Sharpie pen.

Red is her favorite color and I used colored pencils to color in the design.

I don't bother to seal the design. As I said, I'm surprised how long the kites hold up in the weather. For the kite tail I use 6 strand embroidery floss in various colors as that is what I have on hand.. You can use whatever you like to make a kite tail: yarn, ribbon, thread.

I didn't have the right shade of red embroidery floss so used some red cotton crochet thread. A piece of tie for a hang cord, and the kite is ready to be put outside.