At-Home Retreat

I've been feeling really down in the dumps this winter for many reasons which I won't get into here. At one of the very lowest of those depths, I was talking with my husband and we discussed some ways that might help to lift my spirits and help my self-confidence. In the midst of that coversation, I mentioned something about needing to go to a creative retreat where I could connect with other creative people, but money was obviously a concern. As we further investigated retreat possibilities and there were none that were close enough to our home and they were many months off as well. We then moved on to something more immediate and my husband offered to give me an at-home retreat - he would take care of all the cooking and just let me relax and create to my heart's content all weekend!

So a couple of weeks ago, my husband gave me my at-home retreat. He made lasagna and deep-dish pizza, brought breakfast home, ran out for coffee, even gave me a goody bag of Ghirardelli raspberry-filled dark chocolate squares! I got to just create art as much as I could and as long as I could stay awake. I cut and soldered, made earrings, painted canvases, and anything else that I could squeeze in. I also created the fabric ribbons in the picture above. Those began by painting the selvedge edges of some of my Spoonflower fabrics. Once they were dry, I lettered them and added some little accents. Now I've got about 6 yards of totally unique, calligraphed ribbon - what exactly I'm going to do with it I don't know!!!

Hopefully, I can come up with something fabulous by the time I go to The Creative Connection Event!!!! During my at-home retreat weekend, I finally got a chance to look through some of the magazines that I am so far behind in reading. As I was looking through the latest issue of Where Women Create, I came across an ad for the event and got so excited that it was going to be just down the road in Minneapolis (the closest locale to my home along the North Shore). I became a bit disheartened when I saw the cost as I haven't had regular, full-time employment in about four years, but talked about it with my husband. He was so supportive and we decided we were going to do everything we could to get me there!!! I told him that this was all I wanted for my birthday, anniversary, everything - so my deposit has been sent in and in September I'll get to connect with a whole bunch of other creative souls at The Creative Connection Event!!!!

Long story short - I have a honey of a husband!!!

Revamped Nightstand

I've been feeling way under the weather for way too long and haven't had the energy to blog in way too long! But I'm back and ready to report on the creative projects that I have been able to work on. The biggest project was redoing our bedroom as we finally got a new bed which was long overdue. With a new bed coming, I wanted to give our master bedroom some new life without spending much money, if any at all. One of the elements of this project was to revamp our old nightstands to coordinate with the new black bed frame that was coming. I wanted something that you wouldn't find anywhere as well as something that reflected my love of typography and collecting quotations. I started by repainting them in black. Then, I found a couple quotes related to sleeping and napping, worked with them in Photoshop, printed them on antique scrapbook pages and then decoupaged them into the recessed panels of the doors. They look pretty cool next to our comfy, new bed!!!

Valentine's Day gift for my hubby...

I've had this box for over a year just knowing that I could do something fabulous with it. It was a gift from parents that began life as a Christmas coffee collection container from Starbucks. I just thought it was so cool as it had two sections that lift up and resembled a book, I only had to figure out it's newest purpose.

My husband and I have been talking since we got married almost four years ago about putting together a box that would hold brochures, suggestions, dreams, hopes, little gifts, etc. that each of us could access to get ideas to surprise one another. I realized this Starbucks box was the perfect container for this project. I couldn't just leave it as it was - it had to be a lot more creative! So for the last couple of weeks I've been perfecting the graphics for all the elements of the box. I combined vintage elements from my collection as well as some fun French graphics I found at The Graphics Fairy and created others when I couldn't find exactly what I wanted. Once I had them all designed, they were printed out and glued to the box and then sealed with some beeswax to add a more vintage-y feel.

Now the fun part of adding ideas and little surprises to the "Love Wishes" box begins! I can't wait until this weekend to see hubby's reaction!

XXXOOO

Spoonflower Contest

Spoonflower's latest fabric of the week contest features insects. I was inspired to create a honey bee fabric! I'm very excited to come up with coordinating fabrics for this one!

Dual Duty Coasters

I had a brainstorm for dual duty coasters so I stitched them up using my Set the Table fabrics that I had printed up by Spoonflower. One side can be used for regular glassware and when you flip them over, you can slip in your stemware! If you stitch them up in all kinds of different fabrics, they're also great drink identifiers for your next party and you're tabletops will always be protected from water rings!

Jot Thoughts Box

My office/studio space is always a work in progress, mostly in terms of trying to stay organized and keep items in their place when they're not immediately needed. I always need a place to jot a quick note for an idea or a shopping list, but can't always locate my note paper when I'm in the midst of a project. This lovely jot thoughts box began as a candle box for a beautiful and wonderful smelling candle that I received for Christmas. The box was too elegant to just toss and I found it perfectly housed a 4-inch memo cube! I took out my container of corrugated cardboard coffee sleeves, added some silver ink, trimmed up some old paint chips that coordinated with the box colors and trimmed them in silver too and lettered "Jot Thoughts" in silver paint pen on a couple of them and attached to the box. Now I can always easily find my notepaper!

Printable weekly menu planner

My husband and I are trying to improve planning out the meals for the week so we're not making constant trips to the supermarket, making better use of what we already have in the house and be kinder to the environment! So, to make the process a bit more fun (for me, anyway!) I whipped up these cute menu planner sheets that coordinate with my Set the Table fabric designs available at Spoonflower. You can fit two on one letter sized sheet of paper, and to be even more environmentally friendly you can print on both sides of the paper and just flip it over for the next week. You can download the file for the menu planner here.

Ribbon Rose Necklace

Completing this ribbon rose necklace has taken longer than expected (as usual) but I'm so excited it's finally finished. I think it turned out beautifully and can't wait to wear it out on date night this weekend! The finishing touch was the cording which I picked up while my husband and I were in Savannah, Georgia. I stumbled upon this fantastic little shop called The Paris Market and though I would have loved everything in the store, I had to limit my purchases, but one of the items that intrigued me was a little spot filled with grab bags for $5. The bags contained all sorts of old jewelry and beads and I spied this one with some other fantastic beaded cords and a fabulous bag of tiny turquoise beads!

Placemats

Finishing up placemats was a bit more difficult task than I had hoped but eventually got all stitched up late last night in the midst of watching the Golden Globes - all the movies I have yet to see!!!

Stitching them up was put on hiatus for a couple of trips - the first was searching out Christmas dishes that mom fell in love with that are now on clearance, so she called up my sister and I who live in two different states across the country to head out to the department stores and search for Johnson Brothers Friendly Village dishware of which I managed to find four place settings; then I was off to pick up a few office supplies!

Once those errands were taken care of, I could finally focus on sewing the placemats from my own fabric design and printed by Spoonflower! After cutting out all the elements, I got to stitching. I'm thinking that I'm still going to add a bit more hand embellishment as I did around the circle applique once I get to the craft store and pick up some greenish perle cotton - I think they still need a hand-stitched border around the whole thing...

Full Yards of Set The Table

My grand plans for the weekend are to finally begin transforming the full yards of my Set the Table fabric in green into actual placemats and other fun kitchen stuff, since the fabric finally arrived from Spoonflower!!! Although I would like to get all of my sketches for the fabric into wonderful objects, I'm trying to be more reasonable in setting my goals! You can also see the blue and yellow versions of the design. I hope to get the red version all sorted out this weekend, but let's not get ahead of ourselves!