Mother's Garden

In honor of my wonderful Mother who inherited Her mother's green thumb, I'd like to share some recent photos of her garden...

The backyard pergola

Her white clematis

Just a couple of her creatively arranged pots near the house.  The roses and peonies are in full bloom, too.

Happy Mother's Day!

To Mother

Splitcoaststampers Ways to Use it challenge this week encourages us to use pins of some kind on our project.  I just bought these new memo pins from Tim Holtz.  My plan was to do a Mother's Day mini album but the day snuck up on me so I'm using a couple off the photos and one of the pins on this card.  I still plan on doing the album.  The paper and embellishments are picked out; just need to add a dose of 'time' and it will get done.

The top photo is my grandmother and my Mother taken probably in the 1950's.  The lower photo is Mother feeding me.  (Exact year withheld to protect the innocent :-)  but it was originally a color -barely - photo.)

Project Notes: 

• The paper flowers were sprayed with light gold Tattered Angels spray.  It really shows up on these more so than paper. Is it because of their dimension?
• The ribbon threads through a cut on the side and some glue dots hold in place diagonally across the card.

Ingredients:  Stamps:  Inkadinkado for greeting
Ink:  Vintage Cream by PTI; spray by Tattered Angels
DSP:  Indian Summer by Basic Grey
Pin:  Tim Holtz memo pins

Quilt Blogs

On my blog's one year anniversary, I thought of some things I'd like to do more of regarding blogging.  One thing was to find more blogs about other interests besides papercrafting.  I love, love papercrafting but I also enjoy quilting, reading, cooking, and travel.  So I have sought out a few quilt blogs.  Here are a some favorites:

Amy's Creative Side - hostess of a semi-annual on-line quilt festival - http://www.amyscreativeside.com/
Quilt It - Marit is also a cat lover as well as a devotee to beautiful fabrics - http://quilt-it.blogspot.com/
Sew Girly has a focus on vintage fabrics - http://www.sewgirlyalterations.com/

I'm sure there are many more to explore.  The thing I'm most loving is how many beautiful quilts I see with simple designs.  Great fabric + a simple design = A completed beautiful quilt.

As for my own quilting, it hasn't gone very far. I did make one LWR quilt and have another ready to tie.  My 1930's reproduction quilt is at a stand still. I attempted to get organized a few weeks ago so I could quilt on weekends.  Typically when I'm making window treatments for clients, my quilting is set aside.  I devised a simple system to allow me to switch over to my stuff on my own time.  Well, it seems simple.  The problem is I just get caught up in other stuff.  I figure the next real motivating factor will be weather. My papercrafting space is upstairs where it gets a little warm in summer.  The sewing area is in the basement - heaven in July.  So sooner or later, I'm going to be like my kitty cat Jasper and the cool basement will be calling for my off hours, too.

5 Things on My Desk

Last week was a really busy week as we prepared to go to Little Rock for the wedding.  I did sneak in a little card making time.  This was made with left over scraps from another card using Basic Grey's Offbeat collection.  I made it for Kristina Werner's 5 Things on My Desk challenge and uploaded it to Two Peas.

The 5 ingredients were:
DSP:  Offbeat by Basic Grey and some Sweet Pea by Stampin' Up!
Rub-ons by Stampin' Up! in Choc Chip
Journaling Pen by SU!
Tattered Angels Sweet Clover spray

One project note:  I applied the rub-on before using the Tattered Angels mist.  I've found that rub-ons don't adhere well over areas you have just inked so I figured the spray might be the same way.

Can you believe the week is nearly half gone?  Better get back to work.  Thanks for stopping by!

TIPsy Tuesday - Photographing the Big Events

Isn't the bride beautiful?  This is my step-daughter Amanda who married in Little Rock this past weekend.  Her mother is helping with her headpiece. 

This is our third major family wedding in the last few years.  Along with my parents 50th Anniversary and assorted other family events, I've learned a few things from friends and from my own experiences about what works for me in photographing Big events.  This will NOT be technical at all.  I'm certainly not a professional photographer - a struggling amateur would be a good description. 
• The best photos are often the spontaneous shots made by non-professionals. Certainly a professional photographer is invaluable, but my favorite three photos from my own wedding were made by friends.   The photo above was not posed.  I just stood around snapping things that looked interesting to me.


• Ask a couple of friends to bring their own cameras and encourage them to take photos. You’ll be amazed at what different things you end up with because everyone has a different point of view – literally!  I think people take the best photos with their own cameras rather than those little disposable things.  My friend Phyllis took the only photo of a pretty photo display we did at my wedding.  I was very grateful for this keepsake.

• Take close-ups of flower arrangements, favors, and other inanimate objects.  The bouquets were resting in water on a side table in the brides room when I shot this one.  This photo can be used on the CD label for the photos I'll share with the bride, her mother and sister.  It would also be pretty in transparancy behind other pictures and journaling on a scrapbook page.

• Even if you are way across the room from your subject, don’t hesitate to take a shot of something. For this reason, I always keep my camera set at the highest resolution at events. You never know what tiny piece you want to crop out of a picture and that high resolution helps. You can resize down but not up!

• Capture the setup and even the clean-up if possible. Weddings and other parties are a process, not just an event.  At Jaime's (my other stepdaughter) wedding, I have photos of my mother arranging flowers from the assembling line of materials we put together.  It not only captures the work that went into it but how the process we used in case we want to do that type of flower arranging again.  Of course, we've run out of daughters to marry off now :-)

• Stay out of the professional's way.  I take some of the posed shots myself but I do it quickly and if possible, with the flash off.

• Make lots of photos of the crowd and decorations.  These are pictures the bride and family will want but not necessarily at a professional price.

• Use the close-up feature on your camera to get small details like the wedding cake topper.

The wonderful thing about digital is you can take as many photos as you like and always delete them later. Yesterday, I downloaded Amanda and Matt's wedding photos and immediately made a backup of those.  Now I can edit as much as I like and know the originals are safe.

Lastly, put the camera down some and have fun, too!

Best Wishes

Butterflies are the symbol of life so they are a good choice for wishing a bride and groom best wishes on their new life together.  The bride, my stepdaughter, used peacock feathers as an accent for her flowers and decorations.  After I colored in the feathers, I found this pattern paper from the Marachesh collection by Basic Grey.  It fit the theme and colors perfectly.  Sometimes things just work out as if you planned it that way!

We just returned from the wedding of Amanda and Matt and wish them much love!  More about the wedding later on...

Project Notes:

• The Cricut cut my scalloped square but I inadvertently gave the white paper too round of rounded corners.  So I added the Mellow Moss cardstock in between to fill the gap.
• "Best Wishes" didn't quite fit into the frame so I used markers to color and stack the words in an arrangement that could be cut to fit.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ingredients:  Stamp:  Peacock Butterfly by (oops I forgot to look.  I'll have to add a comment later
:-(     Kind and Caring Thoughts by SU! for greeting.

Ink:  Staz-on Black; various watercolor crayons and markers by SU!

Cardstock:  Mellow Moss and some scrap navy

Ribbon:  Stamper's Alley in Mooresville

Hardare:  Hodgepodge Hardware in vanilla by SU!

Brads:  Oriental Trading

Pretty Fabric Patterns

Pattern paper isn't my only patterned passion.  My first love was beautiful patterned fabrics.  I love it when a customer selects a pretty floral print like the chintz in the center of these pillow shams and on the window treatment below.  The fabric has 4 distinct floral designs spread througout that made it easy to use in creative ways. 

Originally the "back" of the shams shown above were supposed to be just a stripe fabric with something fairly solid for the placket covering the zipper.  But it as just too boring, too much stripe, too something.  And that pretty floral which covers the entire front side of the sham just called out to be combined with the stripe.  I had a yard of a fabric I'd bought for my own use years ago but never had done anything with.  My client loved the large green check portion so it got thrown into the mix along with a little cording made from the same fabric as the coverlet.  The resulting 4 fabric pillow shams are shown above.  I also did the little decorative pillow using some more of these fabrics and a pretty bullion fringe. 

A close up of the matching window treatments shows a little more of the pretty pattern fabric.  My customer and I love the same colors so this job was a particular joy to complete.

Cupcake Cutie

We've got a special birthday girl to send this one to soon.  She loves hot pink and purple!

Project Notes:

• This great stamp set from Hampton Arts has oodles of great cupcakes, even a border to use on the envelope.  However, I drew in the cake stand by hand with a black journaling pen before stamping.
• I forgot and stamped the border on the envelope in regular black ink rather than Staz-on.  So I used colored pencils lightly and the black didn't bleed too much.

There are also several great greetings with this set.   The one I used for the inside is "Happy Birthday Cupcake!" 

Ingredients:  Stamps:  Cupcakes by Hampton Arts; Itty Bitty Backgrounds by SU!
Ink:  Black Staz-on, Basic Black, Bold Brights and Soft Subtles SU! markers, Pink Passion
Cardstock:  Naturals White, Pixie Pink, Lovely Lilac