While waiting for my son to finish his soccer practice I took a few pictures of Lake Michigan at sunset. Beautiful lake it is!
This place is called Montrose beach at Lake Michigan.
They have a small space designeted as a nature area with birds and insects one will not see in other places.
Russian Artists team on Etsy just had its Summer Wedding Essentials contest. Fifty six team shops took part in the contest submitting their hand made wedding-themed items. All of the entries were fantastic! They can be checked out at Russian Artists Facebook Page.
Although all of the items submitted were amazingly beautiful, creative and unique, I picked up a few of my personal favorites. All of the wonderful items presented will make any wedding an unforgettable experience!
1. Dog Crochet Wedding Floral Collar by mailo
2. Event Decor for the Wine Glass by MamaTita
3. Tea Set, Original decorative painting by Yury Tarler
4. White earrings with pearls by HoneyCase2
I love taking pictures of flowers. Most of the flowers are so exquisite, tender and glamorous! Even if they are not flowers still somehow radiate positive energy and happiness. Clematis with its wide range of purple, violet and pink hues definitely deserves to be noticed. A unique shape of the flower's petals and stamens makes it a great object for macro photography.
As a result I've got a number of abstract images of clematis colored mulberry, orchid, pale pink, purple and white. All the curves and twists add sophistication to the images.
The flowers could be a great inspiration for artists and craftsmen. Their tender color mixes and delicate lines could inspire jewelry makers, felting artists and many other wonderful members of hand making community to produce unique and stylishly colored pieces.
There are over 200 pieces of Clematis that comes in a wide variety of shapes and colors. The plant is relatively easy to grow. It doesn’t take too much space. Clematis is a climbing plant that could be grown into a beautiful fence in your yard.
I've never seen a dogwood in bloom prior to moving to Virginia. However, in Richmond, VA dogwoods are everywhere. Beautiful in their simplicity dogwood flowers add color to our backyards. They come in all shades of pink, white and even greenish colors.
April is the dogwood month as all the trees start to bloom. One can see spots of red, pink and white in the otherwise bright green palette of spring forests. In the fall dogwood's bright red berries will be an excellent source of nutrients for birds, rodents and other small animals.
Covered with many large and beautiful flowers dogwood trees look rather like brides waiting for something great to happen in their life. Plant a dogwood in your yard and you will have a fairy bride coming to your yard every spring. 
I continue experimenting with hand dyeing and food coloring. The results are always beautiful and rewarding. To hand dye a felted wool brooch we will need one pack of KoolAid or a similar powder and white hand felted brooch layers. You can read about creating hand felted brooches in my post on How to make felted wool flower brooch
To prepare coloring I mix one tea spoon of powder with a little bit of water in a plastic container. It sometimes makes sense to prepare a few containers with slightly different coloring. You may go with strawberry and cherry for example.
When the coloring solution is ready gently apply color to each layer of the brooch puring it from a tea spoon. I usually start in the middle leaving the edges of the layer intact. It makes sense to use a plastic tray to protect your surfaces and the coloring is quite intense. When all three layers are dyed it's time to put them into a microwave. I normally microwave the whole set for a few minutes. The goal is not to burn the wool. Microwaving helps the wool to absorb the dye. The color will now stay on the fiber.
When the layers are ready I let them dry over night. With hand dyeing one has so much freedom! It's up to you how to apply the color and where to apply it. One can make the brooch bright and vivid by applying concentrated coloring or pale and light by applying just a few drops of color.
The final stage of our process is to actually assmeble the brooch. You can use a hand felted bead, a button or a glass bead to attach in the missle of the brooch. I personally like large felted beads as they make my brooches look more like flowers!
I will definitely continue experimenting with food coloring. My next project is to start mixing different colors! Stay tuned!
My first ever Giveaway ended yesterday, June 24th. Thank you so much for participating. I very much appreciate your time and attention!
I ran the number of comments through a random generator.
Let us congratulate Tina Reynolds who won the set of my handmade beach bracelets in berry cream sherbet!!!
Congratulations Tina!!!
On my recent visit to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden I was absolutely stunned by these strikingly beautiful and exotic flowers! I had no idea they grow in Virginia. Nelumbo Nucifera commonly known as Lotus is a rather large plant with leaves sometimes measuring as much as 24 inch. in diameter.
Lotuses are apparently edible and very few people actually know about it. For centuries natives of Australia, Japan, and southeast Asia have been using different parts of this plant in their cuisines. According to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden official page lotus leaf stalks are added to salads and their seeds taste like almonds. The flowers' roots are pickled and their stamens are dried and turned into tea.
I personally like the beauty of Nelumbo Nucifera flowers. Large and unusually shaped they are of tender pink and vanilla hues. A dried seed cup looks like an alien spaceship and with no doubt could be turned into a great house decoration.
I so much like summer colors of pink, berry, strawberry, raspberry, sherbet and fuchsia. They add color to any summer outfit. In combination with grey these colors look very elegant and stylish. I handmade this set of three bracelets in pink for a summer at the beach. They are water resistant and easily adjustable. The bracelets attach well and will fit any wrist.
I'm hosting my first giveaway ever! One lucky giveaway participant selected by True Random Number Generator will win my handmade beach bracelets in berry cream sherbet next Thursday, June 24.
I was in a romantic mood yesterday and came up with this Paris themed collection of items. It's all about pink airy and light flowers, elegant and beautiful women, streets and rooftops of Paris. I've been to this wonderful city a few times and wish I could return back every year! I just wanted to share a small bit of Paris with you!
The following wonderful fellow Etsians were featured in my Paris in bloom East treasury:
JaneBoFelt, Justlena, Kristybee, AliciaBock, moonbeamwishes, daimblond, CafeSprinkles, JuliaFelt, cushyadornments, Beautyland, afiori, TonyaUtkina, plumprettysugar, wickedpen, VitalTemptation, SucreEtCannelle
I just found out that my Paris in Bloom east treasury was featured on Etsy Front Page. Nice! :)
The Bahamas is a nice place to go. It's exotic, beautiful and very friendly. The beaches are white, the ocean is blue with all the possible shades of aquamarine, turquoise, green and people of the Bahamas are very warm hearted and hospitable. The colors of the summer are all there. 
If you stay at one of the hotels on either the Cable Beach or other beaches of the capital of the Bahamas, Nassau, you can always get on a local bus called "Jitney" and for just a few dollars get to one of the lovely local restaurants that serve fried snappers, conch salads or Bahama-mama cocktails.
Most of the local Bahamian restaurants are located at the place called Fish Fry where tourists mix with Bahamians for an authentic meal or a sip of exotic drink. Conch fritters, conch salads and fried fish dishes are very good! Cooked from local fresh catch, these meals are quite popular not only with tourists but locals as well.
Beautiful flowers, shrubs and trees add to the overall cheerful vacation mood. Some of the plants that in less sunny and warm climates are mostly grown indoors and are normally very dull and plain, are enormous and booming at the Bahamas. All these bright and vibrant colors and flowers, I'm sure, inspired many talented artists and craftsmen.
