My Crazy UK Flag Chair And Other Things...

 I know the first day of Fall isn't until September 22nd, but as we all know in retail it starts much, much earlier. In my mind August is when I like to start transitioning over to Fall...at the booth, mind you, not here at home...so I've been working on several projects for just that reason. I'll take pictures at the booth too, once everything gets in place.

 With Fall being my favorite time of year, it bothers me none to play with brown hydrangeas, rusty metals, dark stained doors and ummm...my weird British Flag chair.

 Yep, it's a deconstructed chair of sorts that I picked up at a yard sale this Spring and painstakingly painted the British flag on the seat. I put it in the back yard for a few days to get some weather and break up the freshly painted look of the flag....well, I forgot about my chair in the weather and discovered it just the other day once again. Whoops. 

 It had certainly aged, don't you think? I actually love what the weather did to it and I sealed it with some polyurethane to stop the paint from chipping any further. The chair didn't have a back and I thought it would be easy to cut a primitive back of sorts fairly easy when the time came.

 But then I had another idea. Wouldn't it be sorta cool if there was a basket in place of the back? I know that's rendering it completely useless to sit on (although, not completely), but it would render it into a really interesting display for a deck or porch. I imagine geraniums or potted ferns in the basket-wouldn't that look cool?
Just for the record: Justin does NOT think it's cool. He doesn't like the chippy paint or the basket idea....but I just reminded myself of what Eleanor Roosevelt said. Do what you feel in your heart to be right-for you'll be criticized anyway.  That can apply to painted chairs right? ;)

 I went to Hobby Lobby and found a basket about the same size as the backing space and tied it on with some jute twine-completely temporary. I might cut a back for it, but for now, it's a cooky flower-basket-UK-flag-chair-thing. The Queen can thank me later.

 Also going to the booth, a beautifully aged Texaco bucket. Nice and rusted to perfection, with no help from me.

I thought to myself, what else does my booth need for Fall 2013? A ginormous painted sign is what myself came up with.

 Actually, it's a scrap piece of backer board that I had from another project (more on that later). I framed it out using tomato stakes of all things and went to town painting.

 You guys have seen all my small versions of hand-painted signs, so I'm not going into the logistics and how-to's now, but this puppy is BIG and I'm hoping it will draw people in my booth.

 Surprisingly, it didn't even take me that long to paint, the hand lettering part is the most time consuming. Not that I'm anti-stencil or con Silhouette machine, I just prefer hand lettering...just me a pencil, ruler and an eraser. If you'd like to see the tutorials click HERE and HERE.

 I can't wait to get everything in place at the booth and of course can't wait to show you. I've got some smalls going in too and of course Flowers!!

I'll talk to you soon!

Autumn Pomanders

By now, you must know that I will stick nearly anything into a Styrofoam ball. I mean, why not!? For very little money and a three inch Styrofoam ball, pretty things could happen.
I have shown you how to do flower balls before....I used red carnations, check it out HERE, but since we are going into Fall, I thought I'd show you how to do it with fall flowers.
All of these flower balls are on a three inch ball, they just appear bigger, because the flowers are bigger. The bigger the flower, the bigger the finished product and vice versa, you get the picture.

I have my favorites, so I'll show you how I did one of them. I used hydrangea, big sunflowers, little sunflowers, spider mums and cosmos. My favorite ended up being the spider mums. When selecting your artificial flowers, they can be anything, just make sure the heads pop off and it stays together.
As well as flowers, you'll need paint, a 3" Styrofoam ball and a glue pan or gun and a paint brush.

Paint your Styrofoam ball with paint, I chose burnt umber, but any color will do, you can even match the flowers, I just had burnt umber out at the time. You are painting the ball just so white foam isn't peeking out from underneath the petals, (so I wouldn't pick a crazy color like blue either) This doesn't have to be full coverage, just get a good coat on and let it dry.

Pop all of the heads off of the flowers, I used approx. 20 heads of this medium size flower. Get more than you think you'll need, I'm amazed at just how many it takes. Start with the first flower, dap some glue on and press into foam.

Next, repeat on the opposite side of the ball, sort of in a north, south , east, west fashion....

Then start filling in all over the ball....

.....Until it is nice and full. Isn't it just happy looking?

Here's the cosmos ball (this one turned out really cute too)

The spider mum (with a few brown eyed susans thrown in)

The hydrangea one was the most painstaking, I will not be doing a second one of those, but these bigger flowers went very fast.

They could be a wonderful centerpiece, bowl filler, or could even be hung! I think it would be great to get even bigger foam balls and do ginormous ones for an autumn wedding or Thanksgiving! That would be fun!

At any rate, they have high impact and low cost. My kind of project. Have fun!

Fall Frenzy

Need a design boost? For advice and guidance on style, contact me!

Crepe Paper Flowers

As requested, a tutorial on the crepe paper peonies . I did do things a little different than Martha explains in her book....sometimes, the books don't always do all the explaining, so here is what I did.

If you have the Encyclopedia of Crafts, this project is on page 248. I liked the peony, but there are several flowers to chose from to make.

List of Supplies:

Crepe Paper

Floral Tape

Floral Wire

Scissors

Pom-Pom

First, create the stamen using the pom-pom and heavy gauge floral wire. Wrap a square of crepe paper around the pom-pom and secure with floral tape. Set aside.

Next, I cut 35 squares of crepe paper and cut into petal shape. I just eye-balled it, I didn't use a pattern as shown in the book. I cut five at a time, that sped up the process a lot. Start attaching the petals around the stamen using floral tape


I did two, sometimes three petals at a time, again to speed up the process.

If you've never used floral tape, it can be a little tricky. You just can't use it like normal tape, it won't work. It doesn't become tacky without pulling and stretching it. Don't pull too hard, it will break, but pull and stretch a little and capture the petals under it.

Keep building up the petals until you've used them all up.

This is what it should look like with all the petals attached and the floral tape properly used. It should be very tight and secure.

This step is not in the book, I didn't like how big the stamen looked, so I cut out the pom-pom. Use scissors to clip down the center and remove the pom-pom.


After the pom-pom is removed:

I did one without the pom-pom removal technique and I didn't like it, so all of the others I removed the pom-pom.

Carefully fluff out the petals, the crepe paper is great for doing that, and you've created yourself a beautiful crepe paper peony.

Have fun, I hope you give it a try!
Thanks for stopping by.

Where is the Love?

Can I make a confession?

Valentine's Day is a rip off. Ouch. There, I said it, do you hate me?

What's wrong with me. Every girl loves receiving chocolates and flowers and extravagant dinners for Valentine's Day, right?

I think it's a waste of money. If flower's are going to be bought, buy me some bulbs I can plant in the garden. Chocolate is great, but I don't like the heart shaped box thingies that you have to read the diagram to figure out what flavor you're about to bite into. Besides, I'm very picky about my chocolate (and ice cream) so it's best to stick with what I like.

Oh, the brutality. I did try to get into the Valentine's Day mind set, but I just couldn't do it. I had a tablescape in mind, and I'm just not going to do it. I had some crafts I wanted to make, but I just didn't want to.

The only thing that I have actually crafted and not necessarily for Valentine's Day, maybe more for Spring. Crepe Paper Peonies.

I was perusing through my Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts and stumbled across Crepe Paper Flowers, page 248. I did the peony in a fuchsia crepe paper and found it to be a little addictive and super easy to make.

I painted some glass bottles (Strawberry Crush Bottles) in fun spring colors and called it a day. That's my contribution to V-day this year. Was this too real? :)
Maybe I'm just grumpy and tired of the snow.

Do you love Valentine's Day or are you done with it?