More Romantic Cottage Vignettes!

I've talked many times about vignettes, but they can be just about anything you want them to be. I'll explain about them below each picture.

Above are some of the aprons I've made. I use them as eye candy around my kitchen. Most of the aprons above have been sold on ebay but I plan on making more from the gorgeous fabrics I have on hand. Besides I use them! Try this in your own kitchen, dining area or even a boring hallway.

This is one corner of our family room, which is small by many standards but there is only me and hubby so it suffices. I probably break all the rules when it comes to pictures. Most decorators say to group them together according to subject, artist, colors, frames, etc. I say to heck with that! If I love to look at it then it goes where I want it to go. Of course, I want them pleasing to my eye, but I want to see all I can see when sitting in my favorite chair. I know I'm quirky but hey, that's just me! Here we can see things I've made, gifts of painting that have been given to me, favorite books and boxes I use for storing LOTS of things.

Same thing on the other corner of this room. More books, gifts from friends and souvenirs of our travels.

This little table "hides" in plain sight my brushes I use to paint. I do NOT have room for everything to be hidden in this house so I've used space creatively by sticking things in cups, pots or beautiful containers to make a home romantic, which is the style I love. Throwing in a little life-like fern to add a garden like feel to that tiny area.

Go ahead and experiment with your own things and style.

Easter Eggs in Pink Carton!

Look what I did yesterday! These are so cute. I painted some wooden eggs with pink and blue and then added pink and yellow roses with leaves. It's my first time of painting roses on wood eggs or any eggs for that matter. Oooooh, how scary that was! I was so nervous. The egg carton I had to steal from Jack's eggs! He asked me where the eggs were. I said they were in the fridge. He asked me what I was going to do with the carton. I said, "paint it, of course." He's used to these conversations by now. Hah.

I then added some little chenille chicks, grass I cut from green raffia and little posies. I'm rather pleased with myself. Maybe someday I'll be a rose painter of note! Sigh......................

Bird Nest and Roses Painting

I am so excited!! This is my first painting on canvas. I'm just learning and hubby gave me a few "critiques" on how it could have been better but it's my very first one I'm offering for sale. But look at it this way: there's only one way to go from here - UP!! Hah!! I'm on a roll now.........yep, I do have a tremendous sense of wit and humor!

Papier Machè Bowl Making

To make a papier machè bowl, I started with this old stainless steel mixing bowl. Start by coating it with vaseline for easy release after medium has dried. I started with homosote (found in any craft store and dries very hard) or you can use medium specific for papier machè or plaster of paris. Tear up strips of newspaper or old brown craft paper. Make the paste of the medium, drag the strips of paper through it and start covering bowl. As you can see I made it less deep than the bowl and started forming a "lip" out from it and just started molding it the way I wanted it to go. Very easy.

Let it dry; take off from the bowl. Then paint it whatever color you want. I decoupaged some old paper onto it.

Curve or form it any way you like.

Bottom of bowl.

Side view

French Flowers Gift Wrap Papers

These are absolutely gorgeous papers. I bought one many, many years ago and then found the other one a few years after that. Very hard to find and expensive when you can find them all in one piece. Strangely though the 2 books have differences in the papers. Each book I have has one of the papers missing. I've only used one out of each. I keep them for the beauty but they absolutely can be used. I collected beautiful roses papers at one time but the company I bought them from in Sausalito sold the business and never did quite measure up with the new ownership. I still have some of that wrapping paper and will probably never use it all up. But I'm going to sell one of these books. All the papers are beautiful and I don't think anyone would be disappointed in either book. They are all shiny papers and are 4x the size of the book. They are perforated in. So with knowing that one of the giftwraps is gone and there are only 15 instead of 16, let me know if you'd like to purchase it. I'll be offering it on ebay starting at $25.00 and that's a very good price for the excellent condition of the papers.