Yellow Flower

I stumbled upon a gigantic yellow flower on Pinterest that goes along with the outfit below. 

 I love looking at all the clothing outfits on Pinterest... maybe it might inspire me to finally rid myself of sweatpants!  

The created outfit is found on Polyvore.

  I quickly headed over to see where the flower is from, kirnazabete.com. I about died when I saw the price!  335 dollars!? Yikes, that must be some flower!  Maybe it has gold dust sprinkled between the silk petals? :)

Lanvin Flower Brooch - kirnazabete.com

For about a dollar's worth of fabric, I tried knocking it off.  The original is made from washed silk.  I couldn't find yellow silk in our local fabric store, so I went with 100% polyester yellow.

 ( I know, a huge step down from silk)

I traced a silk petal from a previous store bought flower and on paper enlarged it by hand into various sizes.

I mostly used the larger petals.  To give the petals texture without having to sew much, I carefully burnt the edges and then held each petal over the flame until it crinkled.  There is something so fun about burning polyester....but if you do this, be sure to keep some water nearby.  

For the center of the petal, I used a 10 x 1 inch strip of the same fabric.

  I also burnt the edges and center of the strip to add texture.

Next, I stacked each petal until it looked the way I wanted it to, and then ran a thread through the center.  

For the center, I rolled the fabric and stitched it in place. 

I was still curious how the silk would burn, so when I was at the store, I picked up red dupioni silk to make a similar flower. All I can say is silk really stinks when it burns.  It smells like burnt hair, not very pleasant. 

I burnt the edges carefully, and started a couple of petals on fire. Yes, water nearby is very important!

 The silk petals lay flat, so to give them texture you have to pinch and sew in place.   

For the center of red rose, I took smaller petals and folded them into thirds. 

 There are three small folded petals in the center.  

The flowers were somewhat time consuming, but really, it wasn't too bad.  I had the excuse to catch up on Season 2 of Downton Abbey while I made them. {Love that show.} Nicole introduced me to Season 1 when I was down with my appendectomy.  I was hooked from the first episode!

See you soon!

Valentine Candy Bouquet

 This is what happens when I am stuck in the house recovering from being sick with limited access to crafting supplies...I get creative with candy! I didn't have the energy to hit the craft stores, so my major shopping trips were to the grocery store. It's amazing what you can find if you look hard enough!

I have a hard time passing by the Valentine bulk candy without stopping to fill a bag.  Red and pink gumdrops, jellybeans, red hots....I can't help it!  They are just so darn cute.  I also found Valentine candy corn. Gross to eat, but they make perfect petals for flowers.  

  

For the base of the candy flowers, I used Styrofoam discs that I painted red with craft paint.  I poked the small dowel into the Styrofoam disc and added a bit of hot glue to stabilize the foam. 

Each piece of candy was added with a hot glue gun. I made sure to use a low temp gun to avoid some serious burns to the fingers!

I also grabbed a bag of gummy ring candy (Peach O's) at the store that fit perfectly around the large gum drops. 

For the heart shapes flowers, I used heart shaped cookie cutters to cut into the foam. The cookie cutters worked surprisingly well on the foam!  

I gave it a good crunch with the cookie cutter and then cleaned the rest up with a knife.  I think the red hot hearts are my favorite.

Painting the Styrofoam the same color as the candy helps to hide the gaps.

 Nicole and I have made candy topiaries a couple of times, like the Jelly Bean and Halloween topiaries.
(I missed Nicole this time...she didn't want to catch what I had!) In those cases, we used Styrofoam balls, which are easier to place candy around.  You have to get creative with candy placement on the discs. 
I filled the edges of these flowers with red hots to avoid getting too bulky.

I hot glued layers of Styrofoam into the glass vase, making sure there was room for the jellybeans to fit along the side. Next I added the flowers, then filled the vase with pounds of jellybeans. I used heart lollipops to fill in the empty spaces. All of the stems were wrapped with green floral tape and the heart leaves were made from scrap paper.

It's nice to know I can still enjoy Valentine's candy without having to eat it.  It's also a lot less tempting to eat when there's gobs of hot glue on each piece! :)

 

Wedding Flowers Finished!

Just wanted to give you guys a glimpse

of how pretty everything turned out for the wedding flowers

I was responsible for last week.

I had to make up a bridal bouquet, a groom's boutonniere, 14 boutonnieres for the dads, grandfathers and brothers, 6 corsages for moms and grandmothers and then 5 bridesmaid bouquets.

Phew, sounds about as exhausting as it was.:)

The bride wanted all shades of purple with some white and a touch of orange.

I was a bit paranoid because when I had brought them home

into my A/C'd dimly lit home,

 (yup, I thought somehow the darkness would make them last longer....)

they looked burgundy...

and I was sick to my stomach.

My Mom had to come over and so did Candace

to give me a pep talk about how I would salvage this tragedy.

Luckily the next morning they looked purple in the daylight.:)

As usual, everything takes a bit longer

then I anticipate and I never leave enough time to take decent pictures.

Thank goodness for an amazing sister who meets me at

the wedding location,

and we tried to sneak some pictures

of the flowers, hoping the family didn't think we were

too creepy snapping pictures of them on their special day.

Can I just say I slept soooooo well that night,

just knowing they were all done and so was I!

Thanks Candy for being such a wonderful photographer

and even more for being such an amazing sister!

Peeking At Wedding Flowers

Aren't they GorGeouS?!!

I just got back from picking these lovelies up.

Tomorrow will be a full day of cranking out bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages.

Oh yeah, did I tell ya I really don't have any experience in putting these together.

And yes, they are real and can die really easily....

and it's summer time in June.

Good thing they are so pretty cuz

my anxiety levels are through the roof.

Candace snuck in with her camera to my all-curtains drawn,
super A/C cooled house to sneak a picture of my latest project.

So how did I get caught up in the middle of this craziness?
For some reason I felt completely confident
after I watched a tutorial on bridal bouquets

a couple of months before Candace got married
by Martha Stewart.

Even I was convinced that with Martha's

great instructions, that I could put together wedding flowers.

My innocent victim was Candace.

We used fake flowers since getting married in Idaho and a reception in Washington

make real ones kinda ridiculous.
I accidentally mentioned this to one of my friends, who then mentioned it to another....
and now here I am.

The wedding is Thursday so tomorrow will be a crazy day.

Stay tuned for some more lovely pictures
and enjoy these sweet ones of my poppies Candace took.
She's really becoming a whiz with her camera
and I'm glad to benefit from her kindness to be my photographer!

Cool!  My favorite and I think gonna be framed for me!

So pretty huh!
How could we not share!:)

Pink Pearled Lovebird Heart

I've always loved the idea of lovebirds and I'm not sure why.

Yes, I'm a hopeless romantic....

We have an abundance of cooing doves here

and I have to admit I love hearing them throughout the day

chatting away.
With our third heart Candace and I wanted something different but still romantic

and the doves seemed to be calling out to us.....:)

 (insert cheese here...oh yea it already is here.)

Well really, my little girl had something to say about what color we chose

and it's no surprise....she's all about pink!

We painted this heart a nice brown burnt umber

which has a "stain" appearance when you water it down a bit.

(can you tell which pictures my crappy camera took and which one Candace's did?)

Paired with some pretty pink paper, little doves, some cute cherry blossom buds and pearl corsage pins

all that was missing were the love words. 

Sometimes it can be really hard to find the perfect paper when you have an idea stuck in your head.

We knew we wanted something light and vellum was the perfect fit.

We googled "famous love sayings" and up popped all sorts of fun quotes.

We combined them all on a word document, picked a light shade of tan and printed them off.

After trimming them into a smaller version of the heart we

glued them on with a glue stick along the edges.

Next we plucked the little blossoms off the branches and skewered

them with the corsage pins.

These blossoms were plastic and the pins held them perfectly in place.

It was so easy my daughter had a blast putting them together!

We just trimmed off the excess pin with some pliers and hot glued them in place,

out lining the edges of the vellum word heart.

We glued on the little love birds which got a quick highlight of that

Gorgeous German Glass Glitter from Meyer Imports,

glued on a bow to hang it from and there ya go!

We've been pretty busy this week working on our latest "knock off" project

and we're really excited to do the big reveal!

Now if we can just get spray paint to cooperate with this cold weather!

Stay tuned......

Busy, Busy, Busy!

 

Wow!  It's been over a week since our last post.  This time of year is crazy busy! End of school year stuff, weddings, family, yard work, Memorial Day and our dad had unexpected, and extensive back surgery.  Nicole has been a lifesaver helping our parents around the house while our dad recovers, she even climbed a ladder to clean dead birds out of their attic crawl space! Me?  I will bring treats! I can cook....I can't clean dead birds. :) Nicole definitely deserves the daughter of the year award!  

Yesterday was my sister-in-law's wedding. I have been hunting the stores trying to outfit four little boys. Her wedding colors were red, cream and black.  I found red ties for the boys and hubby, but needed an extra touch of red for me. 

( on our way to the wedding :) )

Thanks to blogging I was able to recall the kazillion singed flowers I've seen made. No matter how busy we are, somehow crafting sneaks into everything we do! 

  A few months ago we made a spring pillow, we tried Regan's tutorial- from A Day In The Life.  Her tutorial was great and her flowers are so pretty!  I did google organza and chiffon flowers and found the most wonderful site.  Her blog is called Calamity Kim.  I have gone back a couple of times just to stare at her colorful flowers.  You should check them out.

 These are so fun to make. I had great intentions of making the beautiful pearl and organza flower necklace I have seen on blogs, but it didn't quite look right on me. So, I hot glued a pin for clothing on the back and passed out the extras to the other family members.  We showed my niece how to make singed flowers about a month ago and she has gone to town making them. (I LOVE THAT!) She made flowers pins and hair accessories for everyone and some of the cousins in the family. It made my heart happy seeing all the red flower accents on everyone. Too cute!

I used a mix of chiffon and organza.

I singed the edges.  I usually just stick them over the flame and let the entire piece curl and crinkle up.  This time I gently held the edge to the side to the flame so the petal lays flat. 

I sewed on a freshwater pearl in the center.

On some I added a few beads to give it a little sparkle. 

Nothing new, but they are so fun to make.

Hopefully our lives will slow down a bit and we'll be back to share more projects with you.  I'm hosting the Memorial Day party at my house tomorrow, so I'm heading off to make some yummy food.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day!! 

Lavender Bunch

So nothing went as planned this week! 

I have been stumped decorating my fireplace.  I had this grand idea to make this spectacular mirror and it turned into a total disaster.  I now have a few projects I can send over to the Craft Fail blog! Yikes! :)

 

We did manage to come up with this spur of the moment... framed lavender. 

 This was influenced by an idea we saw in the magazine, 

Create and Decorate

 and by a painted burlap picture

 we saw in the incredible decor store.

 

We wrapped a thin board with burlap and hot glued the edges.  Then we used craft paint to coat the front of the burlap.  I was using a ton of craft paint, so after a couple of coats...I headed outside with some cream spray paint.  Much easier! 

After the paint dried, we clipped a few fake lavender sprigs and tied with twine and a tag.  Next we used hot glue to adhere.

We then tried it in an old frame....

And then without.  Which do you prefer?

This would be fun to try with herbs and hang them in a kitchen. 

Hopefully this week will bring much better luck with the projects. 

 We have some fun ideas I think you all will like!