morris & co

Recently my Mom forwarded me to Morris & Co, a company who still makes William Morris fabrics. After oohing and ahhing over the pictures online and downloading their pdf catalogues to browse through, I saw that you could order free samples of four prints! I made my selections and recently received my four squares of fabric.

top row: Brer Rabbit and Rose & Thistle

bottom row: Bird & Anemone & Honeysuckle Bull

Even though you can't see a rabbit on it, I really like the colors of Brer Rabbit. As I'm sure the prices are well out of range, I guess I'll just have to piece the four of these together and hang them somewhere to display their prettiness :)

northwest coast jewelry

Both my Mom and I really appreciate are from the Pacific Northwest, especially the beautiful silver jewelry made by the Tlingit and Tsimshian. When we went to Alaska when I was in High School my Mom got me a beautiful silver ring with a raven around it, which I still wear often today. I'm very glad I had some sense of style (or at least what was pretty) in High School and my Mom was willing to see the ring as an investment piece for me :)

I did do some searching recently and found some people selling online...

Native Spirit Jewelry Ltd ebay

Sa-Cinn Native Ent Ltd

Art from Above etsy

I think they're all wonderful, impossible to choose a favorite!!!

new liberty fabrics

I love some of the new Liberty Art Prints for their fabric.

Some of them are very Japanese in style, but I think I like them mainly because I am a sucker for all things Liberty (at a price of course :) )

There are two or three variations on each print in different colors, but here are a few of the patterns I liked.

vibrant

subdued, but I like the dots in the background

big, lazy, purple flowers

graphic flowers

like under the sea

cool landscape print

I'm a sucker for tiny leaves, it reminds me strikingly of the classic Liberty Glenjade print

fish pretending to be bird in Strawberry Thief

And I just realized that I got this as a remnant in my last Liberty visit :)

Hopefully I can get some more of these patterns as remnants,

given time of course :) :)

Ha, if only I was rich enough to wrap presents in Liberty fabric...

unexpected gifts

Amidst all the post I received Tuesday came this little beauty of a gift, which made its way all the way across the pond from my Mom, and as it turns out is made by someone local in Philadelphia!

I love the wrapping it came in. It was wrapped in a page of Sherlock Holmes' A Study in Scarlet. The miniature book itself is made from "antique leather from an olde chair, Holland 1800s. Patched in spine with newspaper from my attic (insulation) also from the 1800s!"

How cool is that? It also sits at exactly the right length and is light enough to wear while hard at work :)

blackspotbooks

liberty obsession

I told CJ all about my Liberty finds over the weekend and now that Ste is back in the UK I have the camera capability to show them off.

First we have fabric remnants...

A few, like the second one from the left, are two pieces of the same style.

When I showed Ste he commented how they were all "really nice"...

I really like the retro one with the peachy cream background...

and two pieces of this tana lawn print as well.

And now on to hankies.

The women in my family have what can only be called an obsession for Liberty hankies, but for the past 3 years the nice ones have seemed to be few and far between...

Until this past weekend.

Including the triple packs I got 16 in total.

Three with the picot stitch edge and two of the pink/purple Ianthe pattern.

And a triple pack with the multi Strawberry Thief...

Another triple pack with pansies...

And the last triple pack with green/blue Strawberry Thief and that pretty lawn print.

Obsession, yes, but a beautiful obsession at that.

happy mother's day

Happy Mother's Day :)

dollface

I was into dollhouses when I was little- I had two, one was a little wooden one that can be made from those craft store kits (which I'm not sure if they have any more) and was painted purple. The other was a masterpiece of a dollhouse, made by my grandfather and modeled after the house I grew up in. My mom and I then decorated it exactly like our house, or as close as we could get.

These ladies however have taken dollhouses to a new extreme level...

Don't they look incredibly close to the real thing? Supposedly these ladies furnish their dollhouses as they wish they could furnish their homes, complete with mini mock-designer furnishings...

source: nytimes

60s mom

I really like to look at my mom's high school yearbook

she went to a very artsy school where many students (like my mom) learned and lived

years later she found out that she was thought of as the 'mysterious' one 

(she missed this class photo)

I like this photo because it is taken with the wooden statue who has been mutilated to only have a middle finger...

the boys look very smart yet nonchalant...

... and the girls all have their individual 60s style

... and my mom is the beautiful mysterious one.

this is one of my mom's friends who now lives in London and who has had multiple lives

what a school, what a school

craft time

being stuck in the usa it is easy to resort to reality TV to pass the time while waiting for paper to be pushed.  One of the more entertaining TV shows is Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?  Some of these brides/weddings are so out of control and stressful that they make me cringe in pain.

To balance out these programs someone should really create a TV show about doing weddings on a budget, on a more personal, sentimental level, because isn't that what weddings are really supposed to be about?

With that in mind I have making my own wedding invitations the past two days (did I mention I'm planning a wedding ;0) ).  Although it does take some time to make them (mainly because I am measuring everything by hand and using some scissors like a razor blade), I get great satisfaction out of knowing I have made them myself.  

ingredients:

sky blue card sheets (each sheet can make 6 cards), cream envelopes (which can be used to determine the size of the cards), glue stick, white card stock to print photo on, cream paper to print inside invitation, decorative flowers and flower punch to embellish the front, embossing powder to turn ink stamps into fancy embossed type

flowers from the scrapbooking section of the craft store

embossing effect

invitation inset

finished front

assembly line

all I can say is that if you try this you should be imaginative and never think that your idea is too complicated.  We ended up going to two craft stores (AC Moore and Joanne Fabrics) and to Staples.  I had a general idea in mind before I went (blue background, photo on front, embellishes), but I didn't think about the possibility of ink stamps, and especially not embossing.  

It is your wedding day after all, make it special..... :)