All Aflutter {Felt Flutter Rounds}

{Felt Flutter Rounds: A cozy place to set your teacup}

Spring is on its way with warmer weather yet still chilly nights...and just in time, I devised these "felt flutter rounds" for a cozy place to put your cup all the while reminding you of nature's pretty critters, soon to be seen in your own backyard. Perfect for a Spring tea party or Mother's Day...which is also just around the corner!

{Gather}
~3 different colors of wool felt~

(I used a sage green, rosy pink, and off-white.)
~fusible webbing~
~iron~
~sewing machine (or needle & thread)~
~scissors~
~paper & pencil~

~straight pins~

{Make}
1. Cut out paper patterns for the butterfly and circle. For the circle, I traced around the lid of a tin can with a 3 ½” diameter. For the butterfly, I sketched a butterfly design onto paper with a height of about 2” and a width from 2 ½” (top wings) to 1 ½” (bottom wings). To design your pattern, look in a book, online, follow mine, or create your own!
2. Pin paper patterns onto felt (or hold firmly in place) and trim around the pattern. For one flutter round, you will need 2 circles and 2 butterflies in contrasting colors. (I used off-white felt as the alternate color to back both the circle and butterfly.)
3. For the top butterfly, cut out a variety of raindrop-like shapes on the wings. Start at the pointy end of your shape by folding the felt a bit and cutting over the fold at a diagonal. Unfold and continue to cut up along side and into a rounded top. (A small, sharp scissors works best. However, various hole punches would work okay too.)
4. Cut out fusible webbing to roughly fit inside both circles and both butterflies. Iron felt pieces gently on a medium setting until fused together. (Note: It is a bit easier to iron the butterfly with cut-out markings directly onto your contrasting color and then cut around the shape after they’ve been fused together.)
5. Using a sewing machine or by hand, simply stitch across the circles (now fused together) in a wavy fashion to create a “trail” leading to where you want to place your butterfly. (It’s helpful to stick a pin in the spot where you are planning to attach your butterfly onto the circle so you know where to stop sewing.)

6. Fold the butterfly in half and sew (by hand) along through the center, pinching together and pulling thread tightly, to make the wings stay a bit aloft and giving an appearance of being in flight. Then, stitch just along the center of the butterfly, attaching it to the circle.

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There are many ways you can further embellish your felt flutter round. I preferred to leave mine simple with just the butterfly trail stitching, but you may prefer to stitch around the entire circumference of the circle, or embellish in any variety of ways…for example, adding a few little felt flowers along part of the coaster’s edge would be pretty.

Faux Flowers, Shop Harmony, & Sneak Peaks...

Do you ever feel like there is just so much you want to do, so many ideas competing for priority in your mind, that it’s hard to really get any of them accomplished? That's been me lately. I’ve been in one of those very creative spurts. I’m not sure what drives them, I only know I have very little control over them. So lately I’ve had plenty of random things in the works that I’m quite excited about. And I think it’s pretty apparent from the layout of the photo collage above just how frenzied the right side of my brain has been lately. (That’s the creative side, correct?)

So it’s a bit odd that I should be talking about shop harmony…
But amidst this recent creative frenzy, I’ve also been thinking quite a lot lately about having consistency in my shop…consistent colors, fonts, wording, and style elements that ultimately convey the idea and feeling behind LillyBonBon. It's taken a while to get to this point...for me, it's not something that can be forced. I've been trying new things often yet not feeling quite satisfied. But that’s what keeps us striving to become better, no? My focus for LillyBonBon is always to come across as pretty yet woodsy sort of artwork. Not pretty as in the “super cutesy/sugary-coated creations” way. And not too woodsy as in the “total treehugger/earthy/gritty” sort of way. But in a way where pretty and woodsy complement each other, meeting happily in the middle. I wasn't really aware of that in the beginning, yet as time goes on I can see that it is my style just naturally coming out, something that I then want to further define. Yet I don’t want to be restricted by any of these notions either, feeling as though I can’t try something that isn’t in harmony with all this. So I’ve been changing fonts. Trying different packaging elements. Rethinking color themes. I’m finally happy with some of the latest shop revisions…for now. So I thought I’d share a few peaks of what I’m talking about...new business “thank you” tags, new design elements, a new color palette, etc...

One of those things in the works are "faux flower" sculptures…sweet flowers for cupcakes that will never fade. I attempted the first one (shown in the collage) in shades of pink. And while I’m pretty happy with the result…it was rather difficult to do the paper mache-ing in all those tiny flower petal crevices. And so I wonder if it's worth it. But the first time is always the hardest, isn’t it? So I’m sure I’ll be working on perfecting this as well for quite some time.
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P.S. In addition to the faux flowers, here are a few other little peaks of what I've been working on lately...

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More soon! ~xoxo

Honey Heaven {a royal treat}

While down in the Cities last week, I came across this delicious French honey upon recommendation from my favorite cheese lady. She gave me a big spoonful and I was immediately sold. It tasted so pure, so sweet. I do enjoy the bear bottle honey...you know the one...but this was altogether different and divine. Hub and I enjoyed it this past weekend daintily drizzled upon thin rosemary crackers spread with roquefort. Perfection! The cheese lady said that some people were buying this honey last Christmas for gifts...I'd love to get honey for a gift if it tasted like this.

I'm so smitten with the jar's botanical-inclined lid too. I'll be saving this jar for certain to use when making jam next summer. Isn't it sweet?All honey aside, the rest of our weekend was just as sweet...Hub built a birdhouse...I made some royal birds...we unexpectedly took part in Earth Hour as we just so happened to be eating dinner out at this time on Saturday...as they went around the restaurant loading all of the tables up with candles we were a little confused but then we figured it out. Okaaay...but it made for a romantic atmosphere nonetheless. We enjoyed a very restful sunny Sunday at home and took a nice walk too. Now there are murmurings of a snow event in the wings but I will not, no matter how tempted, put any more gloomy, snowy pictures on this blog (at least until next winter!). I realized that my photos on that last post were so depressing...and it put me in a sort of blog-holding pattern...stuck and uninspired as to how to move beyond it. But I think I'm climbing out of my blog funk. We'll see what's next!

Hello, Spring? (and spiky things...)

Hello, Spring?

Are you there?
I was hoping you would be here by now. But I know that’s unrealistic…especially here in this corner of the world in March.

It's been raining all day long (and all of last night too), just at the right temp of 32 degrees so the rain is slowly dripping off railings and rooflines, freezing into tiny, spiky icicles and cloaking all the trees and their branches in an icy armor. Some of which are succumbing to the newly added weight and breaking off altogether.

It was a good weekend though all in all, despite the lack of sunshine...I acquired this vintage flower frog while out and about yesterday. I quickly set it on the windowsill to prop up a sweet card that recently came in the mail. It’s funny how such a little, spiky piece of old metal can bring a bit of cheer to me on this awfully gloomy day. Now I have to go out into this icy world. Wish me luck!

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P.S. A bit of sketching this weekend also produced some new paper mache sculpture ideas...coming next, if all goes well!

Hello Spring...

The week started off with a flurry of productivity and has dwindled down to a feeling of not being able to accomplish anything very completely. And it's good to remember that plugging in the espresso machine will not successfully get your English muffin toasted. Oy. It’s snowing big flakes here on this first day of Spring in Duluth.

Yet inside the greenhouse, things are sprouting! A little update…It’s day 7 in there (I'm counting last Saturday when I planted them as day 1) and I’m amazed at how fast some things are popping up. The chamomile seeds were the first to show on day 5! Now the grass has quickly followed suit. In my childlike wonder, I feel like I’m in elementary school all over again when we planted seeds in old one liter pop bottles.

I dreamt of being in Paris last night. Of course it was nothing like being in Paris in real life but all the same I felt I was really there, mildly disappointed upon waking. This is likely due to my recent thumbing through of my very ancient “English to French, French to English” dictionary that I dug out in order to have a somewhat meaningful back and forth communication with a sweet Etsy customer located in France. I could barely string together sentences as my few years of high school French are basically long forgotten yet it came back just a little as I looked up various words. Thankfully her English was far superior to my French. I think this exchange stirred up some French memories and I’m thinking perhaps it is time for another trip to Paris, n’est-ce pas? Especially at this time of the year, on the verge of Spring when I’m so anxious for flowers and garden-y things…what I wouldn’t give to be standing in the gloriousness of Monet’s garden in Giverny. Sweet memories…I’ll have to get my photos back from my parent’s house…mum and I had been working on a joint journal/scrapbook of our last trip there together…after my graduation from college in the summer of 2001…we really need to finish this, oui?

And finally, a little tag I made today to add a little handmade-ness to a baby gift...I used my exacto knife (and a protractor first) to cut out a tiny circle to frame a cute little baby graphic I had...glued onto the backside and added a rub-on and some dainty flowers to embellish...et voila! (See?...I do remember a wee bit of French!)

Off to bake some bread now. Ever since I made homemade bread for the first time, I honestly don't think I've bought a single loaf of sandwich bread...bakery baguettes and ciabatta bread, yes...but no more Brownberry. I’ve found this to be so much more economical and far more tasty!
Have a happy first weekend of Spring!

~Au Revoir~

Inside the Greenhouse...

I planted a variety of plant and flower seeds yesterday...something I haven’t done for a couple of years. But on a trip to Target the other night, I couldn’t resist picking up a seed packet for chamomile…a sweet, tiny, daisy-like flower which can be dried and used for tea. I’m so excited! So that got me digging around in our seed box…a messy cardboard box full of random seed packets, envelopes of seeds I’ve saved from flowers over the past few summers, and a variety of seeds my mom has given me from her garden.
I love seed packets with their pretty photos displaying what you’ll grow (hopefully, if all goes well). And I love seeds even more…so tiny in size, yet amazingly big on hope and promise. I hope some of the things I planted will work out…red poppy, chamomile, verbena, salvia, yellow snapdragons, basil, 3 types of tomatoes, green pepper, and grass. Yes, grass. Another promising, hopeful thing to witness growing right under your very nose.
P.S. And on another garden-y note, I also picked up these 2 adorable little garden gnome stakes (at Target too). I can't wait to plunge them into the earth amidst some flowers come Spring. Are they the cutest?

Mycology + Wedding-ology

My desk has turned into a cluttered mess of staticky packing peanut pieces, clinging to my hands and clothing, multiple scissors scattered about, and skinny wire poking this way and that. But I like it. I’ve been getting some requests lately for wedding cake toppers. An unexpected (yet delightful) result from my recent humble beginnings of creating cupcake toppers. I never really imagined doing wedding cake toppers. I always thought wedding cake toppers had to have the traditional bride and groom figurines, adorned with pale flowers and a plastic stand. But now I realize, thanks to some individuals on Etsy (who are apparently more broad-minded than myself when it comes to thinking in terms of wedding cake toppers) that they can be anything...a pair of owls, sweet birds, or even mushrooms. And I love how this has evolved and is keeping me constantly challenged and inspired to create new things using my wire/paper sculpting technique.
My latest request was to create two mushrooms, one with a veil/ring around the stem…to make them look very realistic, true to nature. My customer sent along a photo of the cake she was inspired by…a lovely Martha cake no doubt, which is right up my alley. I absolutely love it! So I thought I'd share a few photos of the finished result plus the Martha cake because it is just too sweet...covered in sprawling ferns and sprouting mushrooms all about.

I made tiny little tags to tie onto each mushroom, just as a fun part of the packaging for the recipient. Tied around one mushroom in brown and white twine, the tag says “happy.” And tied onto the other mushroom is a tag that says “wedding!” Now when it comes to originality, these mushroom toppers really do take the cake!

( Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)

Ripped {Mixed Media Cards}

“The winter’s so…the winter’s sooo long”…

These words from a Decemberists’ song were tumbling through my head recently, feeling as though I could completely relate. I suppose it is just that time of year and many people are feeling this way...but I’m feeling so entirely cabin feverish, experiencing winter blues, and wishing I could yank warm weather and green grass and flowers right out of the bleak winter sky. But I'm really learning patience in this season of my life.

So the other day I found myself looking through photos (on my computer, since I never print them anymore, one of the pitfalls of digital for me…I sort of miss dropping off a roll of film because you had to in order to see your photos…and you didn’t take 6 million because you knew you could always delete the bad ones later…yet I have a hard time going back and deleting…so I’ve sort of just given up on printing actual hard copies of my photos lately)…

But anyway, I was looking at photos of last year around this same timeframe and on into Spring. I’m not sure why really but perhaps just to remind myself that I made it through a long Winter last year and came out just fine on the other side into the bright, hopeful, vibrant season of Spring. A season full of birthdays and gatherings and buying flowers for the garden. Outdoor adventures and discovering new things sprouting to life all around.
And as I was perusing these photos, I came across a few photos that I'd taken of cards I had made last year that we, in my circle, call “rippy cards”. That is, we rip out pretty pictures and things from catalogues and magazines and turn them into cards. Part of the charm in this style of handmade card is in the torn, frayed edges of the lovely pictures which are so readily available.

I thought I’d share a few of my own “ripped” cards for your own card-making inspiration along with some notes on different materials I used to embellish them. Cards which, by the way, just happen to feature "rippies" of grass and flowers, an umbrella and spring raindrops...things that for me can't come soon enough!

Enjoy!

(I made this rather elaborate card - below - for my mom last year for her birthday. It started with the rippy (umbrella picture) and then I went a little crazy layering the rippy with many other materials…my paper cuttings, red & yellow paper posies, and rub-ons. And it turned out to be one of my favorite handmade cards to date.)