Gnome and Wool Flower Card

I am so tickled to be a part of the Susan K. Weckesser design team for the remainder of the year.

I love her stamp sets. 

 Many of them are whimsical.

One of my favorites is the What's up Gnomey set.

So I wanted to share a little card I threw together with that set yesterday.

I stamped and cut out the gnome.

Inked the edges of my cardstock.

And cut a few flower shapes with my Sizzix and the Sizzix Flower Layers 3 die.

The flowers are cut from scraps of felted wool sweaters.

And then I dug into my extensive vintage button collection...

I sewed the buttons onto the centers of the flowers before I mounted the brown card stock with 3-d foam squares.

I like the texture.

Thanks for stopping by....

Workbench Wednesday: Tie Dye Beads

It is Wednesday again.

That means I am going to give you a glimpse of what I am working on.

How about these tie-dye beads...?

I spritzed some of my homemade alcohol inks on these white beads.

The effect is a funky tie dye look.

I like it.

They still have to be rinsed.

So they will lose some of the vibrancy and be more muted when I am done.

These are even more fun to make than they are to look at...

A squirt, squirt here and a squirt, squirt there....

I hope your workbench is filled with vibrant color too....

Thanks for stopping by...

Perfect...and Not So Perfect....

So this summer, I spent a morning taking photos.

It is not something I do every day.

Just some days.

Often I will take lots of photos one day and then use them for a dozen posts later.

I was taking pictures of different places outside.

Shifting up and down a few inches to change the look.

Trying to make sure you don't see anything I don't want you to see.

I moved from one area to another.

I always love to take flower photos.

Rudbeckia is a favorite.

As are these African Daisies.

While I was taking the daisy picture, I noticed this little guy.

He is not as perfect.

I would normally shift left or right to find a better picture/specimen.

But then I got to thinking about how a lot of us do that.

Focus on the perfect one.

Glance past the flawed one.

And I decided to take different photos.

Real photos.

Normally I would shift for this one so you could not see the trash cans.

And I would shift left so you would not see the stuff on my work table.

Silly, really.

I am proud of my work table.

It is from a high school science lab.

I love working at it outside.

You can see it has wool sweaters on it here.

Cutting the wool outside keeps all the fuzz and lint out of the house.

And I get to breathe fresh air, listen to the birds and look at my yard.

This little spot serves to camouflage the trash can area.

I stacked the cement blocks to build a little wall. 

 Then I put flower pots and boxes around it to hide the plain cement blocks.

Morning glories climb an old trellis I made from bamboo...

And a few of my rustic mushrooms provide some visual appeal (to me anyway).

Looking back at my work table from the other direction...

Normally I would shoot this at a different angle so you could not see the trash cans.

Why?

Most of us have trash cans, right?

Why should I pretend they are not there?

My trash cans don't match.

Do yours?

You can see how I throw two burlap coffee sacks over the fence for photos...

Now you know my behind-the-scenes tricks...

If I turn around, you can see my clothesline.

I love my clothesline.

It is green and natural and my clothes smell so good when I bring them in. 

 I love hanging things up too.

  It is meditative.

Turning the other direction, I show you real again.

See all that grass growing between the cracks in the sidewalk?

I don't like when that happens.

So I would normally angle the camera up, so you would not see.

In front of that round brown shed is my secret garden.

I love the mishmash of plants and herbs and flowers. 

I never have a plan.

  I just plant them.

And seeds blow around and seed themselves...

There is my hypertufa experiment from a few years ago...

My rough birdbath...

This rustic little birdhouse sits outside my round shed.

Normally I would not show you my rain barrels with their peeling paint.

Or my stakes for fairy lanterns that are bare right now.

So today I am sharing some of the not-so-perfect parts of my yard.

Trust me, there are many, many more.

But I wanted to get real today.

Because we all have weeds, and trash cans and things we just have not made perfect yet.

Thanks for stopping by...

                  Linking up with these great blogs.

Plaster dipped silk flowers...

Have you seen plaster dipped silk flowers?

I saw them last fall and was enchanted. 

 I wanted to try it for myself.

Sometimes, the crafting gods deliver what I need right to my doorstep (almost).

Last winter, a small silk flower arrangement blew into our yard on a windy day.

There were red, white and blue silk roses stuck in a piece of styrofoam.  

The flowers were all faded and my husband was going to throw it away.

I saved it just for this project.

I mixed plaster with some water to make a little thinnner than pancake batter consistency.

Then I dipped each rose into the mixture and pushed it down several times to coat all the petals.

I hung them on this card display.

The newspapers below are very important.

The red and blue roses required more than one dipping to cover the flower as much as I wanted it to.

These were the white roses and I only dipped them once.  I liked the finer, more delicate look only one coating created.

They have the look of porcelain.

The blue and red ones were dipped twice and have a chunkier look to them.

You can also see where they were touching the hook below on my rack as it left a mark when the flowers were removed.

I wanted to make a coastal arrangement to say good bye to summer.

First I spray painted this hammered aluminum two-tiered stand.

Then I added my plaster flowers and some coastal touches.

I started with some spanish moss to fill the trays.

Then I added starfish, seashells and pearls.

I gathered another handful of smaller shells and went back to fill in some bare spots and cover  any chips in the plaster.

I also added some of the plaster-dipped leaves.

It is a fun coastal arrangement.

Right now it is on my front porch next to the door.

For these photos, it is on my workbench on the back porch.

I think something like this would be so fun to do for a coastal wedding.

Some sisal rope would be a great addition as well.

I really enjoyed this process.

It was fun and easy to do.

They are pretty fragile so it not something you want to do for things that will be banged around or handled a lot.

Once I am done with them in this arrangement, I may do a fall version with leaves and a Christmas version with either poinsettias or evergreen branches.

I removed my roses from the stems, but you could make an arrangement in a vase too.

The plaster hardens in the cup relatively quickly but it was hot and humid when I did mine, so they took a minimum of overnight to dry.

Thanks for stopping by....

                  Linking up with these great blogs.