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.

My Favorite Lifestyle Book and More

My favorite lifestyle and decorating author is Alexandra Stoddard. I bought her book, Living a Beautiful Life, many years ago when we lived in California. It is the epitome on how to live graciously in a frantic world. Of course, there are lots of decorating tips in the book, but for the most part it is just about living life. Or as the cover describes it: "500 Ways to Add Elegance, Order, Beauty and Joy to Every Day of Your Life." And it keeps that promise! I absolutely adore it and have even found some old copies since it was published in 1986 and given them as gifts. I believe the women who have received a copy from me have love the pleasures it offers inside the covers.

Another of her books called, Creating a Beautiful Life, which I also enjoy immensely, is described as "From starting fresh to freshening up - inspiring ideas to help you turn your house into a warm and welcoming home. I suggest you try finding them to read as you'll not be disappointed. I try and live my life graciously and it shows in my home.

Here are the 2 books. It looks like 3 but the Living a Beautiful Life has 2 different covers as I discovered when looking for more of these books.

The illustrations aren't in color but I've colored mine. I relax when I color and this seemed the perfect thing to do to this particular book.

I am also a "marker" of books. I use different colored pencils or markers to highlight thing I want to remember or go back to. She encourages this in her books. She also leaves room at the end of each chapter for "Grace Notes." Plenty of space to add your own grace notes.

Another page I colored and marked on the other side.

Ah, but this little book is something special. It's a grandmother's remembrance book. "A Book of Special Memories for the Family to Share." It all bright pink with beautiful green leaves on the cover and all the way through it also. I did one of these for my son and my daughter, but this one I've had for a very long long time waiting to see what I'd do with it. Well, the time has arrived that a woman I know is expecting her very first grandchild soon and it's to be a girl. So this will be her special prize. She's going to have to read this post to know it though. I can't wait till she finds out. But she is a painter of roses so I know she'll love it.

My "Room" Dilemma

I've got to make space somewhere! Here is the dilemma. As you can see a couple of posts back I have my office filled with craft stuff and hardly any room left. I use it for a home office and shooting photos and ebaying.

Then I also have a sewing room and haven't done much sewing lately, but do sew occasionally. And I also use the kitchen table to paint on because of the limited room in the sewing room and office/craft room.

This is standing at the doorway looking in.

This is standing in opposite corner and looking at door. I was rearranging the fabric at the time these photos were taken. It's now nice and neatly stacked.

Since those are metal shelves I could possibly stack more fabric on there if I needed to. Anyone wanna buy some beautiful fabrics?!?!?!

This is just inside the door on the right. It hold mostly fabrics I don't use much. The rest of the "stash" is in the garage attic. And yes, there is a LOT of it out there and in here! I'm thinking of taking the fabric off the 2 gray shelves on the left and using that for the crafting items and painting supplies. I could collapse the table when not using it and bring in the little foldable table from the office/craft room in here and freeing up the space in there. It's becoming quite a jungle in there to get around.

The room is on the south part of the house and would give more light for painting and free up the dining room table. (I just hate it when you go into old people's houses and their dining table is stacked up with a lazy susan full of medicine bottles. Ooooops, hang on a sec.........we're old too! But no way will I ever do that to my table. Only pretty frou frou-y things on my dining table.

Soooo, whatta ya think, chicks?! Does this seem doable to ya? Any obvious problems I'm not seeing.

My First Birdie!

Oh my, can we say that at least my first attempt at painting a bird is at least "respectable"?!?! I'm happy with it. Since I can't do much else lately with this coughing I've been practicing on some bird's nest and then I saw this darling little bird from my friend Lorena and thought "hmmmm, can I do that?" I tried and this is my very first try!! Wooooohoooooo!!!!!!