Well, kind of. At this point, it is just paint, but I will be covering the insides and outsides with a little Lemonade!
It is that time again, time to play with new products for CHA (the Craft and Hobby Assoctiation summer trade show). Once again, I am thrilled to be creating show samples for BasicGrey. I wish I could show you some of the goodness they have in store for you, but it is top secret. Instead I will give this small sneak peek of one of my projects in the prep stage.
I am so exicted about this project and can't wait to share it soon. Hopefully it will be as cute when it is done as it is in my head right now.
I am so exicted about this project and can't wait to share it soon. Hopefully it will be as cute when it is done as it is in my head right now.
While it is a lovely plant with a very pretty bloom that is truly unique. . .
I have one bit of advise for you . . .
Be sure to plant it in a space that you won't mind if it takes over. This whole section of my side bed is filled to the brim with Gooseneck Loosestrife that came from just one small start only a couple of years ago. Believe it or not, this is after having trimmed a lot of it back last year. It is completely crazy!
Like most of my other wedding items, it is available in other fabrics and ribbon colors.
I really love the handle on the basket. It is heavy gauge wire that is wrapped with green thread. Two strands of the wire are intertwined and then comes down onto the basket in curly tendrils. It also has ribbonwork leaves sprouting from the stem handle.
I really love how it turned out. I plan to make another basket in the same shape with silk ribbon embroidery on it also so look for it soon!
If you would like to see more photos of this item and read a few more details, you can find it in my shop 
I have been picturing this book in my head for a while and just had not gotten the time to sit down, draw out the pattern and then figure out how I wanted to assemble it.
The cover has heavy mat board inserts that have been covered in batting before being covered so it has a solid structure but is padded and soft.
I made the sample in white silk dupinoi but can make it in any of the other fabrics and colors I offer. The flower color can also be any of the 41 colors I offer.
The silk cording stem on the cover winds around to the back of the book with an additional leaf.
The inside pages are stitched together and then adhered to the inside book binding. The pages are blank and have a deckled edge and are slightly staggered from one page to the next. I left the pages blank so that the book could be used as a guest book, a journal, a photo album, or scrapbook. I like the idea of using blank pages for a guest book so that wedding guests can write messages to the bride and groom rather than just the traditional single signature line.
You can find the book and additional photos of it in my shop 
The design trails around to the back cover also.
The inside has a packet of cardstock pages that are sewn together and adhered to the inside spine.
I think it would be a lovely wedding guest book, journal or photo memory book.
I have a little tweeking left to do with the design, but you can look forward to seeing this offered in my shop soon!
This picture is from last year, but it gives you an idea of how huge the task was. This is only half of the side bed that was packed full of iris. By this year they had multiplied greatly and were horribly intertwined into everything else in the garden. Some of the roots where the size of small sweet potatoes!
After two full days of pulling and digging, I ended up with two full trash cans and a wheel barrow full of plants removed. Mind you I left a bunch because I felt I should since they had been growing on our property for probably more than 30 years. At one time I really would have felt bad about trashing this many plants, but at this point they have become so overgrown and invasive, I really didn't mind anymore.
I had terraced off the side bed a couple of years ago with some really old bricks that piled up in our garage. The bed is really wide so I wanted to keep a path through the center. The iris were all originally in the space between the house and the bricks but had began to spread beyond that. Now with it all de-irised, I have move a lot of my taller plants like coreopsis, coneflowers and shasta daisies to the space between the bricks and the house. They are all looking pretty rough after the move but I anticipate they will perk up soon, at least I hope so!
Next up I need to continue moving a couple of things between the brick and the sidewalk. I want to focus on low growing things in the front portion and keep taller plants to the rear. I have a peony to move still that has probably been in that spot for 30+ years. I suspect it will be a big job so I saved it for another day.
One really nice perk to removing all of the iris was that I discovered that hidden in them and being totally lost was some really lovely daylillies that I had completely forgotten I had. I am really looking forward to seeing them fill out and thrive now that they have a little space.
I used one of my ribbonwork poppies on this bag and combined it with a trailing stem of hand dyed silk cording and ribbonwork leaves.
The flower center is filled with pink and cream vintage stamens and Swarovski crystals on wire stems.
The stem trails around to the back of the bag with two more leaves.
Next up on my desk, a guest book. . . if it comes out like I see it in my mind, I think it will be amazing! Stay tuned!
This bag, like my others is available on a variety of fabrics and is fully customizable as far as choice of letter and colors of flowers.
I really love the ribbon used on this sample, it is all hand dyed silk. I don't personally dye my ribbons, I think some day I might like to learn to do that, but for now I will just continue to support a couple of really amazing ladies who make what I think is the best hand dyed ribbon there is.
It is probably a little hard to tell, but in addition to the tiny petite seed beads I normally bead with, I also added in 3mm Swarovski Crystal Bicones. I absolutley love Swarovski Crystals and use them in just about everything I do. I am thrilled to have found then in such a small size so that I can now include them in my embroidery.
You can find this bag in my shop 
Next time I will have to rig me up a little desk so I can have a full workspace!
I was even more surprised that in the time it took to get my camera from my studio in my basement back out to the porch that the birdie was still there. As I sat there a while, the little birdie finally started moving, hopping down branch by branch until she was on the porch floor. Slowly she waddled under the rail and onto one of the hydrangeas that are as tall as the porch. She then worked her way down until she was on the ground. She then waddled through the flower bed to the sidewalk. By that time I had gone to the flower beds myself to pull some weeds. She stood on the sidewalk watching me. As I moved closer, she waddled a few steps more. She hopped a bit here and there, but clearly could not fly. I felt worried that she would not make it back to the nest so I decided to catch her.
We then began a procession down the sidewalk that wraps around my house. The closer I got the faster she waddled looking like a tiny penguin. Finally when we reached the back yard she stopped and looked up to me as if resigned to the fact that she couldn't get away. I picked her up and carried her back to the porch and up to the nest. She stepped out of my hands and back into the rose bush but not into the nest.
Later in the day I looked out the front window to see if I saw anything happening near the nest and saw that she was still sitting in the same spot. I took Emma out and lifted her up to see the bird. She decided should be named Baby Brownie Bird, well, because she is a baby, a bird, and has a lot of brown on her. Strangely, she didn't fly or hop away but just sat there wet and shaking.
I came back out in a bit and saw that she worked her way back down to the porch floor. Now I was curious what was going on. I realized that mama bird had not been around during any of this. She always had made her presence known before, but not this time. I got a chair to climb up on to look and found that the other babies were dead in the nest. I poked them with a stick and saw that there was some insect activity, they were very dead. No wonder Baby Brownie Bird did not want to go back in!
A bit later I went back out to check on Brownie and found that she had made it down to the garden. Since the dead birds were in bad shape, I decided that I should probably knock the nest down so that it didn't start stinking and get really gross. I figured that we would just have to make a new home for Brownie. As I started to poke it with a stick, I realized I heard chirping, teeny tiny chirping. Huh? This nest is an odd one, I had thought that it looked like two nests before, like a nest duplex. One part was a very usual cup like nest, the second part like a big cocoon and all closed in. I had thought maybe mama had gotten carried away and built some type of protective wall or something. I did not realize that actually was two different types of nests. Then I noticed a very new, freshly hatched baby bird laying on the porch rail below. I figured I knocked it out when I was poking around earlier at the dead birds. I couldn't figure out how to put it back into the cocoon side where it obviously came from. Great, now I am a bird killer! I felt guilty and had to bury it. Now I can't knock the nest(s) down because there are still babies, very new babies in it , but yes, next door, also a nest of decaying birds. There is just no way I can scoop the dead ones away. I am sure that I won't be able to stomach it and also without causing too much trauma to the other nest.
Ugh! Bird dilemas. . .
