The Growing Collection

Took a trip to the local Goodwill yesterday and brought home a treasure load of vintage ceramics and milkglass:

The Couch: Remastered

The back alley foundling couch is finished!

Before: 

I had already removed the NINE layers of fabric and the original stuffing, which for all accounts was completely nasty.  Notice the barf green paint on the wood.  The stuffing you see here is salvage foam and stuffing from a different couch we cannibalized and tossed.  Up-cyling!

After:

Ahhh.  SO much better.  I stripped off the green paint and replaced it with a matte black.

Notice the trendy Ikea fabric?  'Stuff White People Like' would be so proud.

The cushions?  Up-cycled foam, of course.

Triumph!

Starting Business: Part One- The Apple Blossom

Now begins the paper flower journey!

I've been collecting crepe paper, stamens, glue, tissue and all sorts of extra crafty things for a week now.  Last night I decided it was time to crack open the flower books and learn my destiny.  I started with flower number one:  the Apple Blossom. I figured, hey it's small, there are a bunch of them so I can practice them a few times.  Its probably going to be cake.

So wrong.  It seems the smaller the harder.  Which looking back is like:  duh.  My fingers, having not tinkled the ivories like they used to are not so nimble.  Still, I think they turned out pretty swell:

Here's the whole branch, with several clusters of white and pink blossoms and buds.

Up close.  I love how the insides look!

      

Next challenge: Poppies.

Catching Up

Well, its been two life changing months so now its time to get back to blogging.  I hope you agree.

.....

The Husband's internship finished last month and at the moment he's busy ghost writing.  We've both been starting up various new projects and side jobs.  It seemed like the most lucrative idea seeing as the economy hasn't really bounced back like all of us recent grads have been hoping.  Tay, with the help of my (part-time-job) boss, is hiring himself out for conferences and Sunday sermon illustrations as a spoken word poet.  He's pretty good (if I do say so) and he's already made a tidy bundle doing so.  He's also a freelance writer and editor at the moment.

I, on the other hand, have been working happily part time with Ministers Label Publishing as the publishing coordinator.  I get to work from home and learn new skills all the time.  Nice! 

Remember all those crafty projects I did for the wedding and for...well...general life?  Mum has been encouraging me to try my hand at selling some of it.  At first I thought it was pretty dumb.  Like, something cute moms always say, but isn't that practical.  But I kept thinking about it, in fact I couldn't get away from it.  After eight solid months of job shopping in earnest and coming up empty handed, I think its time to get professionally crafty. 

God has been generous to us lately- sending a bunch of profitable music gigs and projects our way so we have a small amount of start up capitol.  Ever since the wedding I've been in love with paper flowers.  And I'm not the only one.  Etsy has lots of people who make crepe paper doodads and bouquets, but no one seems to sell them singly or in half or whole dozens.  With my knack for craft, I think I can make these things. My favorite paper artist is Lalalaurie.  She has a great sense of whimsy and nature.  I'd love to make flowers like her.

In preparation for my new endeavor I've done some research, found flower patterns for about 40 flowers, and found a few wizened old ladies to converse with.  The most handy resource I've found so far has been ourpaperflowers.com, a little e-book put out by a tiny little old lady whose been making these things for ages.  She put together a 93 page booklet that includes patterns, how tos, and supply lists.  Awesome! 

The hard (and pricey) part about this is the crepe paper.  Dennison, the mother of all fancy pants paper makers made the best, heavy weight crepe paper anywhere.  Its the only stuff that really does the job.  Unfortunately they no longer make the stuff, or at least very much.   Most folks buy up vintage stock when ever it comes up.  I've bought a few sheets on ebay for crazy low prices along with some cute vintage stamens.  The real place to get paper is Blumchen.  They have great paper colors, stamens...well, everything.  But its not cheap.  I ordered a few sheets today just to play with.  We'll see how it goes.  Rumor is they have the best paper and all vintage stock.  (salivate). There are a few discounted paper suppliers, and I might give them a try too after I play with some real crepe paper for a while. 

I'm pretty excited to get to play with paper,  even if its only for a little while or it never sells.  But like Mums always say...you never know.