Making paper flowers

That's right, it really is a simple pleasure to create paper flowers and put them in a vase. They don't look real but they do look lovely and bring a smile to your face. Especially if you live in a climate that decides to stay winter for a month into spring.
Way to go Maritime provinces.

 My Pinterest page,
https://www.pinterest.com/slawkat/paper-flowers/  has paper flower projects. I made a few to add to the milk glass vases so they had flowers in them for a local wedding trade show. Here are a few photos.

 The above photo is a few twigs collected in the yard. Had to put on a big pair of boots. The best thing was I could walk on the snow without dropping 2-3 feet into the snow. I made crepe paper flowers and used food colouring in a little bit of water to add colour. The paint brush was a Q-tip. I used green and white masking tape to attach the flower to the twigs. Then painted the masking tape and trim with a little two tone browns using tole paints that were in the house.

These paper flowers are made with coffee filter papers. They were painted with food colour and dried. I just cut the circular paper into a spiral and wrapped the paper into a flower shape. Add a few green paper leaves and wrap with green painter masking tape onto a wooden skewer. 

You may want to use a bit of glue as you wrap and shape the flower.These are fun to make. The instructions can be found on the Pinterest page provided above.

 

These tissue paper flowers are the most colourful and have the most impact to catch your eye. They are sitting on my window sill for all the neighbours to enjoy. I had memories of making these flowers for wedding cars. We used coloured Kleenex tissue. What fun we had making a huge pile of these flowers. As a small child I wondered if you could blow your nose into the flower. I wish I had done that.  Have you seen coloured Kleenex lately?

 

 

This post is flowery, colourful and fun for anyone who want to try making a paper flower. The projects can keep children busy for a couple of hours too. Hope you go to the Pinterest page and look up the instructions for making paper flowers. Make a bouquet and bring it to someone who you think could use a little cheering up!!

A little Obsessed with Milk Glass Whaaa!

It is true, I am a little obsessed with milk glass. The obsession started with my friend Teri Wilson XO, who told me Martha Stewart did a show and or had an article in her magazine about her milk glass collection. I recently found a video she has on carnival glass and milk glass. It has a brief history and is informative.
http://www.marthastewart.com/919226/carnival-and-milk-glass#919226
TeriXO and I collected some bud vases in the early 90's at second hand shops. My mother and brother brought a few piece to me as well. I use the one mom brought me for cranberry sauce for all my turkey dinners. There is a very simple recipe for the cranberry sauce in the Canadian Living Christmas book, Published in 1993 on page 131.

Here is the recipe.

In a 2L or 8 cup microwave save container, combine 3 cups of cranberries, 11/2 cups granulated sugar, 2tsp grated lemon rind (Can use other citrus). Cover and microwave on high for 7 to 9 minutes, stirring once (I stir twice). Let cool. Makes two cups and can be refrigerated up to one week in an airtight container. I might add that my cousin Deb put Grand Marnier in hers.

It isn't Christmas and I am not cooking this until next fall so lets get back to the milk glass. The collection has grown so much that I decided to make it available for rent. I have an extremely reasonable rental rate and equally unreasonable lost or damaged rate. I have enough for a wedding, perhaps even two weddings depending on the needs of the event. 

Above are a selection of footed vases. There are 13 in the collection.

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Here is a sample of short and tall bud vases. 21 tall and 18 small in the collection. There are also bowls and other items available to put favours, flowers, candy and other items in. This is the website. It is the first site and will definitely need tweaking, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

http://brilliantandbold.wix.com/mlkglsrental

The reason to rent the vessels is they are lovely, vintage and should be shared.

If you visit the site and have suggestions for improving, I am always up for helpful feedback. Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

 

 





Heart Rocks

One summer I walked around on the beach with my head down searching for heart rocks. They had to be shaped like a heart. I can remember finding some at Lawrencetown Beach, Martinique Beach and one at Black's Harbour while waiting for the ferry to Grand Manan Island to visit my cousins. It is  beautiful island and if you ever have a chance to go, I recommend. Here are two links about GM Island.
http://www.whales-n-sails.com/about_grand_manan_island.htm
http://www.grandmanannb.com/index.html
I want to return to this peaceful little Isle, bring my bicycle and ride, ride, ride. The second link has a hiking and cycling page.

 

Here are the photos of Heart Rocks.

 

 

The above photo is the Blacks Harbour Heart Rock. As an OBS nurse I bet you know what I think of that little bit of seaweed which happened to be sitting on the rock!!

 

The three above were noticed at Lawrencetown Beach NS while out for one of the few early evening walks last summer.



Last but not least are the Martinique Beach NS heart rocks.

I hope you enjoy the Heart Rock Photos. Remember too that as long as your heart is beating your heart rocks too! And I will finish this short blog with a phrase my brother Bill from Banff always say, "Rock On"



More Mittens and a little garden talk.

How many of us were caught up with this story? What colour is the dress? The first time I was the photo it was blue and black. It then changed to every colour in between blue/black and white/gold.
http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

I actually spent only a bit of time on this subject. The rest of the week was spent in the sewing room making more mittens. Here they are.

It is a way to use up all the wool in that room. After it is all used up I will have to restrain myself from buying second hand wool sweaters. It is so hard to not pick up a real colorful used itchy sweater that you know will not be worn again in it's present form.

Lets hope the weather continues to improve. It will be fun to get into the dirt and garden in the spring.
Last year I took a patch of ground and every time I had scrap fruit/veggie pealing, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells etc I would take them to the patch and burry it in the soil. About once a week I would take the shovel and chop it up. I can hardly wait until the spring to see how it broke down. It smelled so good. If you can say soil smells good. It the garden this year is better than last it will all be worth the bother.
Another fun thing to try this spring will be the sweet potato vine as found on this Pinterest page.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/338966309429538584/
Have a great few days to anyone who read this.

Drawing is a simple pleasure.

It is a fun thing to discover you like to do something and are reasonably good at it. Not perfect or excellent but better than ok. In my fifties I started drawing the odd thing. Mostly cartoon characters that my children and grandchildren would like.
That lasted a while then I stopped. My recent idea of drawing greeting cards had lead me to this next post. A couple friend of ours lost their mothers within one week of each other. I found a photo of a momma lion and her cub to draw. Here it is.

Smitten for the Mitten

The weather in Nova Scotia has been so unusual this month. we have had snow, rain and ice pellets all in the same day. Nah actually this is typical in a way, except for the flash freezing.
We have about 4-6 inches of ice in the driveway. Many of the side streets are in the same mess. Subsequently besides going to church, work and the grocery store there is little getting out.
I try to find something to do and it is during this time I clean, fold laundry, sketch a little something or make mittens. I try to make them a with a bit of designer flair. I use second hand sweaters that look like they were over worn. or shrunk in the wash.
 The pink mitts are so warm. The wool felted so well. The mauve pair are cashmere inside and out.

They are so cozy and soft inside.

 

This pair is cool because the zipper that was on the neck of the sweater is now a pocket on the mitt and can be used to carry small change, a cell phone or even a plastic doggy poop bag. These are also warm and cozy. If you are interested in owning a pair let me know.

One great way to use grandma's or grandpa's old sweater is to turn it into a lovely warm pair of mittens. My email contact is flipkathy@gmail.com

Stay warm and cozy all!

The Mourning Dove Greeting Card.

First blog ever. I am a learn as you go person. Here goes! I would love to share my new greeting cards. I drew a pencil drawing of a mourning dove and sent it to a friend as a birthday card. He actually took a photo of the dove. I drew it, scanned the drawing, sent him the original and proceeded to turn the drawing into a card.
I went to an online photo editing site to clean up all the graphite mess on the outside of the drawing as well worked on the edges of the dove. http://www.picmonkey.com/
It was a fun process. Here is the mourning dove. I have to say the cards look even better. I ordered them from Vistaprint. If anyone starts following this blog and knows of another print option I would love to know what the options could be.

 

 



If you are interested in ordering some greeting cards, these are black and white, blank inside. As I create more sketches I will blog them. Hopefully I can have another created real soon.