French style mini journal

Crafted from a collage of vintage lace and linens, With a Marie style shoe stamped on pink satin for the focal point on the cover. The beautiful cream bow is silk ribbon.

 The tiny flowers and leaves are made by me from silk ribbon, the larger pink flowers is from the rayon seam binding.

 An inside look at the many ephemera pages, you can journal on these add photos, add your art and keepsakes.

A close up of the inside cover, a french style stamp on pink satin, and  the first page is a vintage embroidery transfer. It measure 6 inches by 5 inches.

Flowers for our MAMA flower swap

I made these flowers  from velvet and netting and organdy, with rhinestone buttons for centers.

 

 We were to use winter colors, I chose red, rose and gold,  we only had to make 5 for the swap but I made several in other colors for my art work.

French style mini pouch swap

This mini pouch is one of the 2 I made with the kit my generous partner Bobbi Ann sent me. I made the flowers with some of the material she sent. The back ground material was so pretty in pink gold and blue and it set the color pallet.
Here is a close up of the flowers I made with the gold organdy and satin material in the kit. I made them in the singed fabric style. I added the vintage butterfly pin to compliment the flowers
Pouch number 2, the lavender and purple flowers were included in the kit and went perfectly with the fabric for the pouch.
The gold material is a pocket and I added the Paris label. It was fun putting together the pouches from the material Bobbi sent.

Half doll swap

We were to make a kit for dressing a half doll and send it to our partner. It was to include fabric, trim, bling and put it all together in a handcrafted bag. You can see the fabulous rhinestone button, and the cute pink button with rhinestones around it, and the rhinestone bar this was for the bling..
Here is what I included in the one I sent to my Partner, 3 different fabrics, for the dress approximately 13 different trims, almost 2 dozen hand crafted silk flowers. A decorated bead tube with crystals and beads, a package of fresh water pearls in pink, the colors of choice for my partner were Pink And Cream
In the upper left corner you can see the bag I made it is a collage of vintage lace, doilies, silk ribbon embroidery, and regular embroidery. I love the tags, they are from a stamp set I got on ETSY I used copic markers to color the tags, they are great but expensive, I am just getting familiar with them.
I got everything in the bag I wasn't sure it would all fit but it did.
I love this bag, I worked really hard on it to make it beautiful for my partner, I made the silk ribbon flowers, did the silk ribbon embroidery and the embroidered feather stitch that hold the layers of lace and vintage linens together. I also made some fringe at the bottom form beads and crystals. I hope she likes it, I do. TTFN

Felted wool butterfly pincushion

Felted wool is so much fun to work with, I like to hunt down wool garments at the thrift stores and garage sales and use them for my projects. This pincushion is my own design and handcrafted by me. The tiny hand dyed velvet strawberry is full of emery so it will sharpen needles. I handcrafted the ribbon flowers, the pansy is made from wired ribbon and the leaves and the yellow flowers are from the ever famous seam binding everyone is using, and the tiny lavender roses are from satin ribbon.
You get a better view of the butterfly from here, it is a double layer of felted wool with a running stitch to outline the butterfly and hold the 2 pieces together.
This will be featured on my ETSY shop http://www.etsy.com/listing/85111326/up-cycled-felted-butterfly-pincushion

Altered journal blue and yellow

Here it is my latest art journal. This one features yellow and blue as the accent colors, on a tea stained back ground of a collage of vintage linens. I made the flowers, the large ones are in the singed fabric style, and the small ones are made from organdy ribbon. I used lots of lace and did some embroidery on the cover.
Sheet music was used for some pages, also pages from vintage magazines, clip art from the Graphic Fairy, ledger paper, tags, lace and stamping were used to decorate and make the pages.


The inside cover and the first page, I used wall paper to make the half page and stamped a saying and butterfly's for a tag. For the medallion I layered circles and finished them off with a button. On the inside page the Carte Postale was stamped on dupoini silk, and the ribbon and trim are also silk.


Some of the inside pages, with tags made from decoupaged napkins,The pocket the tags are in is from some material I found with wonderful writing on it. You can see more of this in my ETSY shop.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Rosesinwinter

Altered bottle from swap kit

My flicker art group had a altered bottle kit swap, we made kits to decorated a bottle and then swapped with out partners there was no bottle included in the kit. Marie was my partner and this is the bottle I made from some of what she sent, she was so generous I could have altered a dozen bottles.
The cameo was a button, I cut the shank off and used it for the focal point. I had several kinds of lace to choose from and used 2 of them for the back ground. The little roses were on ribbon, I cut them off, and used a different piece of the lace to make the tiny rosettes and glued a rose to it.
Here is a full view of the bottle, you can see the beautiful gimp used at the middle and bottom of the bottle, as well as the feathers. About the feathers, they are from Marie's peacocks and these are rare as the bird doesn't shed them, so we are left to guess as to how Marie got them :) The Green Berry crowning the bottle was made from some of the French wired ribbon she sent. The ruffle it is sitting on was made from the selvage of one of the laces.
A close up of the focal area of the bottle, you can see the lace rosettes, I did add the crystal to the center of 2 of the rosettes from my own stash but that is all. She also sent some bead trim and I glued that around the cameo. The bottle is PINK it was a sake bottle the sake was horrible tasting but the bottle is a pretty PINK. If you would like to check out our flicker art group here is the link. TTFN
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1698630@N20/

ROSES IN WINTER: ALTERED TEA BOX

ROSES IN WINTER: ALTERED TEA BOX

ALTERED TEA BOX

My pictures never come out in the order I want them. This is the end view of the tea box. I used an image from the graphic fairy, she has many and shares freely.
This is the finished box. I covered the box with paper first, I cut some flowers out of fabric glued them on ,then added vintage lace, ribbon and the images from Graphic Fairy. I stamped the Eiffle tower and glued it on, added vintage buttons, made singed flowers to finish it, I glued the singed flowers over the fabric flowers I cut out and glued on, this was for dimension,, and it looked much better than the flat fabric flowers.
The original box ( this is really good tea BTW). The reason I came up with this is that everyone is doing match boxes and I thought a box is a box, so why not do a tea box and alter it and make it pretty and fill it with goodies and send it to a friend, or swap with a friend.
Another end view I used dupioni silk on this end and stamped French words, you can see the singed flowers better in this pic. TTFN

Gift journal

Pages, One thing I really like about this style of journal are the pages, you can make them any way you want, out of anything you like. Here I used wallpaper ( the green plaid pocket), sheet music, on the left side is the back of a page that I colored using chalk and stamps. The figures on the right are from a new set of stamps I got on ETST, I really like them.
This is the introductory page, you can see the tag with the Happy Anniversary greeting, it is my daughter and son-in-laws anniversary this is my gift to them. The pictures on the right are mine and I made a collage of them and added it to the back of another page.
This is the cover. I do so love pink with white, it is such a lovely combination, the flowers are those made from singed fabric they turn out so pretty, I don't know who started this craze but they deserve a medal or some recognition. I used an iron on transfer for the image of the Victorian girl. The battenburg lace is from a place mat, I love to re purpose things and re use and up cycle as the new term goes. i used an old piece of broken jewelery and the pink bow is from dupioni silk, and the pink tie is also silk.
You can see all the journal from this picture, I had a wonderful time making it and I am pretty sure my daughter will like it.
Bird nest are one of my favorite things, and have been for many years, I got this one from the Graphic Fairy, she is so generous with her art images. On the left I used a page from the farmers almanac, and a page from a business ledger, I put lace on many of the pages, I have boxes of it and seem to always aaccrue more than I can ever use.

New trade at our Marie style trade group

Pitty my pictures are a bit out of order, any hoo this is our trade tussie mussies in the Marie Style. I made this one for our lovely Marie. I used vintage lace, hand crafted flowers, and made the bead and crystal fringe .
Every tussie must have some goodies, and here are the ones I added, some vintage lace on a painted vintage clothes pin, some vintage flowers, a velvet pansy, the ever famous rayon seam binding everyone is using. A darling mushroom birdie and that was about all I could get to stay in the cone.
This is a better peek at what is in this little tussie. I am anxious to hear is Marie likes it, I hope so because I want to make people happy with what I make, because that makes me happy.
If you would like to join our happy little group join here
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1698630@N20/

Fall color flowers

Flowers flowers every where. My on line art group had a flower exchange, and I got a bit carried away with the flower making. I only need to make 5 flowers but I ended up with dozens. This was a new color way for me, I am usually into the pinks and lavenders and blues, so these yellows and oranges and Autumn reds, were a bit out of my comfort zone, once I got started tho they just kept coming.
Pansies made from wired ribbon of various lengths. Pansies are such fun to make and they turn out just like the real thing only in ribbon. I used the oranges and yellows and added a bit of brown to a couple of them.
These were also a great deal of fun to do, they are the singed material flowers, you cut your shapes from the material, it has to be material that will curl when exposed to heat so you have to experiment and not burn down the house. You hold the petal shapes over a flame, I use a candle and let the petals curl a bit and then you stack the petals together and sew in beads for the center.
The ones in the upper right were crafted from lace, it was an experiment that turned out well. I will make many more of theses for filler flowers.
Roses, my favorite flower, the big one in the lower left is brown, hard to tell from the pictures, I used grosgrain ribbon it was a nice change form the silk and the satin I usually use. I think it gave them more body, I crafted these on buckram and had to do a bit of sewing to anchor them down, but they are nice and flat on the back so they would be great add on's.
Now I have to decide which I am going to send for the Swap with my fellow MAMA members.

French ephemera journal MAMA swap

Our on line art swap group had this French journal swap. My partner was Holly More. This is what I made for her. Above are the center pages, I made the oval frames from card stock and covered them with rayon seam binding and I made the little yellow flowers and the leaves from silk ribbon. I used jeweled brads for the cream colored frame.
I made the pocket on the left from some pretty material and trimmed it with vintage lace and ribbon. The flap on the right folds out and there are some surprises inside.
These are the first pages, a double pocket on the left with a cloth tag and a framed picture of Marie on the right.
Here is the cover, I did some embroidery and added seed beads but they didn't show up in the photo. The flowers are the singed ones that are so popular. I so enjoyed making this for Holly and I know she liked it as she told me she did, that always makes it worth while when your partner likes what you created for them. TTFN

Marie style french journal

The cover made from vintage linens and lace and embroidery. This is a swap with an on line friend Kelly Deal at dreaming of vintage.
Streets of Paris pages, I thought this might be something you would see at the Paris fair. The pocket on the right has a mini album in it for more tags, ephemera, photos, and such it is a double pocket so small tags can be added in the front pocket behind the bike.
Here you see the inside page that set the theme for the journal, a picture of Marie, and the pocket on the left holds a tag with the Eiffel tower on it.
Notice the lovely cut work on the right hand side, it was part of a napkin that was stained and worn, I used the good part to make the page. On the left is another pocket decorated with handcrafted flowers, the pocket holds another mini journal, that makes 2 extra journals in the album.
I wanted it to be pretty for Kelly when she opened the box so I tied a 3" ribbon around the journal and added a pretty rose. And yes she did like it.