quick flower tutorial project

I recently made these lovely flowers for my sister in law's birthday.  They are super easy to do, fairly quick, and involve supplies you most likely already have.  

You will need:

*yarn of any color you want for your flowers

*scissors

*glue gun and glue sticks

*small twigs, dowel rods, or other type of "stem" for your flowers

Choose your yarn and wrap the strand around two of your fingers as shown.  You can use three fingers if you'd like - this will make the flower head bigger.  I used two fingers for all of mine.  

Continue wrapping the yarn around your fingers, but not too tightly!  You don't want to lose feeling in your fingers.  I wrapped the yarn about 50 to 75 times around.  Experiment with what outcome you like best.

After wrapping the yarn around your fingers the number of times you want, slide the whole thing off.

Cut off a piece of yarn from the skein that is somewhere between 5 to 8 inches long.  Place the piece of yarn directly under the wrapped yarn pile.  Try to center it the best you can.

Next, tie the piece of yarn tightly around the wrapped yarn pile.  I double knotted it.  

This will pull the yarn together and you will see all these little loops.  Take your scissors and cut through all the loops.

Cut, cut, cut.

You will be left with this crazy looking pom pom.  Take your scissors and keep trimming off pieces of the yarn, making it even all the way around.  You can make it as long or short as you want.  Although, you won't want to cut too much off because you might show the center piece of yarn you knotted. 

Here's a finished example.  

Now you're ready to attach the flower head to the stem.  Twigs, dowel rods, whatever you want.  I used twigs for mine because that's what I had and I liked the idea of mixing the soft yarn with the rustic sticks from nature.  

Here's the finished set.  I displayed them in a glass Ball jar with pieces of brown felt for "dirt".  I wanted the arrangement to look like it was still growing in the ground, although the flowers would look just as good without the felt base.  I just tossed scraps in the bottom and arranged the flowers.  Finally, I  found two vintage buttons and tied a piece of ribbon around the top.  

Perfect, easy, and looks great!  

Now of course, I need to make some for me!

Acadia...four years later

We just came back from a 1 and a half week trip to Acadia National Park.  We first went to what we call our "favorite place ever", on our honeymoon back in 2007.  We decided to celebrate our fourth anniversary with a trip back to the park and some much needed relaxation.  

 Here's an overlook at the top (well, what we discovered to be the first of the three "peaks") of a mountain that we grossly underestimated the climb.  At the top, you could look out over the lakes, oceans, and land of the island.  It was a great first hike of our trip and an excellent place to enjoy a soft pretzel and maple mustard that we packed from our new favorite bakery.  (I admit that I became rather obsessed with these pretzel nuggets of glory....and the mustard was phenomenal.  I could eat one everyday.)

This is from my favorite "secret" spot along the park loop in Acadia.  There is a little pebble beach that isn't marked at all and you wouldn't know it was there if you weren't looking for it.  I have no idea how we found it on our honeymoon four years ago, but we did and we think of this place when we think of Maine.  There are all kinds of gorges between the mountain of rocks and when the water is rough, you can witness some pretty intense wave crashes.  I love this sheltered hole of water along the edge.  Check out the those colors!

Kinsey skipping stones on the "secret" beach.  

A trail in the woods we followed.  Who doesn't like the quiet of the forest with soft pine needles on the ground and moss?

Two of the videos stocked in our cabin.  We aren't movie people (we have only been to the movies 4 times in the seven years we've been together), but these scream us.  Seriously.  Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to watch them.   

We did have time for these books.  A Walk in the Park proved to be an invaluable guide.  It list all the trails in the park with detail information on the elevation, difficultly, terrain, and different routes.  We learned that when the author says "different and strenuous", he means it.  We wanted an easy hike one day and chose a trail described as "one of the most difficult and dangerous trail in the park".  (Jordan Cliffs, anyone?)  

I loved the bright orange book (which takes a certain person to enjoy) and the one with the raccoon proved informative when on our last night at the cabin, we saw a family of raccoons come right up to our (glass and locked) screen doors.  Raccoons are much larger in real life than you may think.  The only other time we saw one was in the middle of the day at a nearby creek back home and yes, it definitely wasn't healthy.  

We stayed here.  The cabin was in a wonderful location in the park and really close to trails (walking distance).  We loved this fireplace in the corner.  The window to the right of the fireplace is where the family of raccoons came up.  The cabin even had a small loft (which I named the "puzzle loft" because there were puzzles up there).  

Here's the outside of the cabin.  Complete with a birch tree growing in the middle of the wooden walkway to the door.  Love it.  

backyard garden projects

Last week, we decided to make another flower bed in our backyard.  This is the first tiny step in what we hope to be a massive backyard renovation.  Two major things we'd like to do include:

1-  Build a new patio.  Either by putting stone pavers over our existing concrete one or removing (which I assume would be very time consuming and not to mention rather backbreaking!) the concrete and laying flagstone in a free form pattern. 

Here's our current patio...

 I really like these pictures of what the flagstone could look like. 

2- building a shed.  The shed we have now is a small plastic one and isn't really too practical for storing garden tools, containers, and really anything other than our bicycles.  Ideally, we'd like to building on the very back of the yard in the far right hand side of the picture below.

Which brings us to our current project of the new flower bed.  We already have a small bed along the left side of our yard, so we decided to put this one on the right side along the rail fence.  We eventually want to make the bed a lot bigger and more in a half circle shape.  Possibly even with a bird bath in the middle once the ground is level.  But for now, we opted for a simple rectangle to get things started. 

First, we started by making shovel indents in the grass where the bed would be.  

Next, came over turning all the grass clumps and digging through and removing all the various objects we find in our yard....glass pieces, huge rocks, marbles, broken pottery, plastic lions, and the usual things. 

Once the soil was nice and clean of debris, I planted the new flowers I got from Kinsey's mother that morning.  

More plants, including my new favorite: Lamb's Ear (front center)

Rose Campion

Columbine (one of my new favorites)

These are not in our yard, but Kinsey's parents.  I love the circular shape inside the flowers and this dark color.  We plan on getting some in these color for our yard soon.

"Moonless Night" daylilies, which are supposed to have a dark maroon and black flower.  

Here's Kinsey giving the new transplants a nice long drink. 

Here's the finished bed after putting some leaf mulch around the plants.  (The green at the close right side by the post is daffodils.  They bloom along every post by this fence in the early spring.)

the gift of art prints

A few weeks ago was Kinsey's birthday.  One of the gifts I got for him was this great print from etsy by laurageorge.

The very top has the heading "things I'm thankful for" and includes just about everything we love.  

Here's a fun little card, too.  Also from laurageorge.  They kind of look like potato people.

This one I got for Kinsey last September for our anniversary.  It's from etsy by artsharkdesigns.

The print is actually of Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia.  Ever since we went to Richmond in 2007 to sell our crafts at Spring Bada Bing we've loved going to Maymont.  It is a huge outdoor area/mansion/educational center and has some really amazingly large trees, too! (In fact, I called it the "land of huge trees" in an old blog post about the park here .)  I was thrilled to find a print of this wonderful place and loved the couple with umbrellas image.  

Show is up....thumbs are blistered

Show is up and done! We hung my art up in the Yellow Wall Gallery at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore on Monday.  Here's a portion of the pieces before their titles and prices went up.  

I'm pretty relieved to have everything done.  This was my first time doing a completely solo show.  I'm very happy with the final 12 pieces that made it to the walls.  As you may know, most of my work is usually in round embroidery hoops.  I love using them, but it can hinder the overall design and shape.  By doing my work in proper rectangular frames, I was able to play around with a lot of ideas I've had in my head lately.  

While I love sewing and embroidering, I don't share that same love with framing.  So that's why the framing waited until the very end.  Meaning the 2 nights before the show went up.  Most of my frames were made of unpainted wood and needed to be painted.  Here's Kinsey painting the frames two days before hanging.  Yes, it's nighttime.  And yes, there is a few inches of snow on the ground.  And yes, he did have to shovel some in order to stand where he is.  This is why I married him.  (And because he can reach things like honey on the very back of the top shelf at the grocery store.)

This was by far the most crucial supply!  It's a heavy board that has acid free adhesive on one side that you stick to your fabric.  It keeps everything nice and even and if done right, doesn't show wrinkles.  This board also doubled as the backing of the frames because most of my frames were open backed.  We (okay, Kinsey) used small tacks and nails to attach the board to the frame and needless to say his thumbs are a little numb currently from pushing so many tacks down on every frame.
Making a last minute adjustment. 
Here's 2 of my favorites....well, actually 3.  

"someone is outside the tent"

"the logger's wife" and "the logger"

I love these two portraits!  I had the idea in the very last couple days and actually finished them the day before they were hung.  

Also, the artist reception will be this Friday, Jan 21st from 6-9pm!  More details are here!

Sneak Peek at the Art Show....

So my solo art show is less than 2 weeks away (opening on January 18th) and I've been pretty busy finishing up my final pieces and getting everything framed and ready to be hung.  I've especially enjoyed being able to work on a slightly bigger scale than what I'm used to.  I'm often hindered by the size of the embroidery hoop I'm using, so being able to do things in standard frames and rectangular shapes has been a fun change.
Here's a planning stage shot of a new piece I finished (see the end of post for the final piece).  I initially planned to do a full bear who was turning over some rocks, but settled on using just the back side of the bear.  Here's also my beloved rotary cutter and my brand new cutting mat.  I've been using a really old mat that had all sorts of ink spills and gashes in that sometimes made cutting a straight and even line a little challenging.  

Here's a detail of an embroidered ship that I'm in the middle of.  

Here's a before and after of one of my favorite pieces I just finished. I've been playing around with the concept of having a bear sort of "walk off" the page leaving behind his footprints in the snow. I initially had planned to do this in a circular embroidery hoop, but thought the overall design would seem a little cramped in the space. I decided to go with a more traditional rectangular shape for the design. I love the fabric that the brown bear is made with. I actually have no idea what the official name of this fabric is, but it's sort of suede like on one side and a more flat cotton appearance on the other side. The best part is that it doesn't fray. So it's perfect for using when you want sharp/complex edges and don't want to do a proper applique. I've had pieces of this fabric for years. I acquired a stash in my crafts class my senior year in high school in both this brown color and a forest green. Unfortunately, my stash has been dwindling down pretty fast lately.


And here's the after. I love the contrast of the white snow and dark tree trunks. All the trees were made from leftover scrapes of the felt from my owls. I kept the jagged edges on the trees for a little extra detail and more realistic appearance. This work also marks the first time I've ever including a child in a piece. A little reminiscent of Little Red Riding Hood perhaps?