Under The Red Roof

New Flocked Wallpaper Assortments!

I've just listed six new flocked wallpaper assortments in my etsy shop.

Caribbean

Pacific Sunset

Pink Tiara

Prairie

Rural Oklahoma

Seashore

Lace Fabric Cuff

The other day I decided to wash a bunch of old lace that had a funny odor. I came so close to throwing it away because I was stupid enough to stick the whole pile in the washing machine which caused it to garble and jumble together in horrible knots.  OMG....it was a mess. Finally I forced myself to sit down and patiently untangle the whole thing. It wasn't too bad once I resigned myself to it. After that task was complete it was necessary to iron it since I had let it completely dry in jumbled form. I'm not big on ironing, but it was oddly satisfying watching the lace transform from a smushed up mess to gorgeous, old, hand-tatted loveliness. The whole episode made me want to make a lace covered cuff. Once covered with 3 different laces it, of course, needed something else. I particularly love the strip of antique metallic lace covered in patina (on the right above the ruffle). The old Swarovski component is set in raw brass which I think looks particularly good with pink or amethyst rhinestones.

I have quite a few more cuff ideas. Still want to do more with scanned wallpaper. I think a retro geometric has great possibilities. I also have some antique French floral fabric I bought specifically for cuffs so I certainly need to give that a go. These are pretty time-consuming. Lots of hand stitching. I couldn't possibly crank out more than one a day and that's if I had my days to myself which I DO NOT. So, not sure when I'll have another one to show. THE CUFF IN MY PREVIOUS POST IS SOLD (thank you Jan).
I'm hoping to have some new flocked assortments within the next couple of weeks. New patterns. I've also got a Mega Pack listed in my etsy shop:)

I'm planning to try very hard to be a better blogger so please don't forget about me:)
P.S. I'm pretty sure those are freckles and not liver spots on my arm. I think......I hope.....yikes, now I'm not sure.

Hi Everyone:)

Not sure how the time slips by so fast for me. I guess it's been forever since I blogged.  School's out (of course) and we're working around the house. Got the mudroom painted this week and it's very refreshing. Carefully moving things back in an effort to keep it from getting all cluttered again. I'm trying to work up the courage to tackle painting my artroom. I've decided there is no way I'm moving all this wallpaper in order to paint behind it. We'll paint around it. PERIOD.
Last night we saw Pixar's new movie Up. It was sweet, poignant and funny so much more up to Pixar standards than Wall-ee. I'm also excited for Toy Story 3. I think Toy Story is my favorite of all Pixar offerings.
I made a sort of quote craft for my living room last week. It's on a 16x20 canvas panel and it's meant to make people around here think. I seriously doubt it's working, but a mother can hope:)


Just a quick little throw together using some of the many letters I've amassed over the years. It's an Annie Lennox quote. Needing to get that stamped at the bottom.
I've also managed to complete one, single fabric cuff. I'm planning to make more next week. Here's the finished piece. I like this one better than the first one because I made some changes which keep the hand of the fabric nice and soft.




I also have a new assortment of Vintage Wallpaper Mega Packs in my etsy shop. Click here to see all the patterns in contains.

New Flocked Assortments!

I've listed five new flocked assortments in my etsy shop:)

Mega Packs!

Just letting you know I've cut and listed more mega packs:)

Interrupting your regularly scheduled program to marvel at the hormonal fluctuations of early teens

How many of you have teenagers? My oldest son is 14 and provides for me the GREATEST amount of entertainment you can possibly imagine. Now, my husband would totally disagree that it's entertaining. He seems to be highly offended by the door slams, the "leave-me-alone" wails, the eye rolls, the forlorn glances all of which can turn into giddy, OMG I-love-life exuberance within a split second. NOT exaggerating....literally a split second. I swear you NEVER know which Sybil is coming out that bedroom door. I'm pretty good at predicting the behavior of just about everyone I've ever met, but I gotta admit Luke keeps me confounded most of the time. The only thing I can predict is that his behavior will be unpredictable. I always assumed girls were more hormonal than boys and I can remember friends assuring me that was not the case so I was somewhat prepared, however, it's a little like preparing for an F5 tornado....ya just can't ever REALLY wrap your brain around it until it's blown through.
Now, it's good I have a sense of humor and don't take things too personally because he could bring you way down if you let him. He gets his father pretty keyed up. I'm not sure what's going on with Brian's memory....I mean....don't you remember the teenage mood swings?? I certainly do. I guess I'm also pretty naturally laid back. Sometimes so laid back one has to pinch me to make sure I'm alive. I'm just very live and let live. I embrace all positive lifestyles no matter how different they might be from mine. I encourage independence and uniqueness even excessive uniqueness probably more often thought of as weirdness:) I love pink hair or black and purple hair or any other color one might come up with. I only wish I could do something so radical with my own hair and not look like an idiot wanna-be. I'm just too plain and regular looking to pull off something so fanciful. If I were a teenager today I think I'd be Goth. I would have been brave enough to go all black with some pink chunks. I've always been a deep thought person and one who enjoys going against the grain. It's my basic nature. My mother always called me the "rebel without a cause" but I prefer the word "nonconformist." Bloody hell if you think you're gonna make me conform. Bite me...................So, I guess it's no wonder I have a son who is pretty much a carbon copy of me. I guess I had it coming. Of course, it makes me proud:) The boy loves his music. ROCK music that is. Do you know there are about 90 sub-genres (if you will) within the rock genre these days? We just had plain rock. I guess it's now called Classic Rock. REO Speedwagon was my favorite band with Journey a close second. Pretty tame by today's standards, but I can remember being in love with Jethro Tull when I was a junior in high school and I vividly remember the motion of sliding that particular 8-track into the player in my Z28 Camero. Luke has introduced me to some fantastic music which has significantly broadened my palette. I made him sit for some photographs because I'm SO BAD at candid shots. It's my camera's fault. It misses everything because it's so slow. I'll refrain from turning this into another camera rant:)

Sat him in front of the wallpaper wall because where else could one find a better backdrop? This annoyed him from the get-go.

 

The typical pose. ALWAYS plugged into his iPod with cell phone in pocket:)

 

The "gotta problem with it" look.

 

Forlorn and.................

 

"God Mom can't this be over!"

Yeah, I guess it's over. For now anyway. I was thinking I might let him dye his hair black and get an earring if he maintains a, let's say 3.5 GPA in high school. I'll have to give that some thought. I'm not near the nonconformist I once was. Probably better run it by Brian as well:)

Back to the Regular Program

I have quite a few emails stacked up and a few convos. I promise to answer all of them by tomorrow. I can't move my neck at the moment and, as always, a comfortable typing position eludes me. I'll go ahead and say here that YES, I will be putting more mega packs together and I will also be making fabric cuffs. I'm trying very hard to force myself to put scrap packs together. I'm not sure why the scrap pack thing trips me up so much. I hate putting those things together for some reason. It's boring as hell, but I can always watch TV or listen to public radio while I do it. I know some of you are wanting them so I promise to really try hard to make it happen.

Thank you for indulging me my walk down Puberty Lane:)

My Spin on the Fabric Cuff

For the most part I'm happy with the way this turned out. My next cuff will see a few mechanical changes, but I will stick with this look. I decided it would be cool if I could get the wallpaper onto a cuff so I scanned a favorite pattern and did a gel medium transfer onto fabric. Of course a gel medium transfer changes the hand of the fabric but it's not too bothersome with a cuff because it doesn't drape anyway.




I hope you can get an idea of what it looks like. I have quite a few ideas for more of these, but I also have ideas for some other things so I'm not sure what will win out.
The dirty pink antique ribbon on this cuff is absolutely spectacular, but it's very delicate. It's probably Edwardian era and it's the kind that has paper wrapped with the ribbon around the roll. Kiss of death for those wonderful old ribbons unfortunately. It severely limits the way it can be used so I rarely buy paper wrapped ribbons. However, this one was so special I couldn't resist. Before buying these ribbons with paper on the reel be sure to give a good yank at the selvage to see if the ribbon holds up. Most often it will disintegrate. Extraordinary ribbons are still worth buying they just need to be used in ways that don't require lots of stitching. You can also use carefully placed dabs of fabric glue to give reinforcement.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope everyone is well:)

Ribbonwork

I've been enjoying playing around with various types of ribbonwork and embroidery.  I've graduated from the 5 petal flower to this puffy beauty. This brooch is currently listed in my etsy shop.


I'm messing around with another idea at the moment and hope to share it soon:)

More Mega Packs

I've put together several more Mega Packs. The packs contain 25 different wallpaper patterns all very nice. Given the comments on my previous post it appears my wallpaper collection is a bit astonishing. I guess I do have quite a bit, but I can't think of anything I enjoy collecting more. Swarovski runs a close second. I can use some, share some and still have plenty to stick on a shelf and admire. What's not to love about that?? At this point I see no end in sight when it comes to collecting wallpaper or Swarovski. My love for both continues to increase

 

I've just completed a custom brooch.

 

I'm almost finished with another ribbonwork brooch featuring a new flower.  I really like it and should be able to post it tomorrow. I'm still spending quite a bit of time embroidering, but I'm fantasizing about paint and paper. I swear living alone with art supplies and a computer would be a dream come true for me. Better than anything I can think of:) I've also had this to keep me company. It goes nicely with stitching.

Covering My World With Wallpaper

Still working on my studio trying not to let the progress I've made fall into disarray. One day of inattentiveness and everything can go south. I'm working up the courage to start going through drawers. I did spend a day organizing my wallpaper. It was scattered hither and yon without rhyme or reason. When my wallpaper gets terribly unorganized, I begin to feel like I don't even have any because I'm so unclear about the patterns and where they are located. Finding a particular paper seems impossible. A long time ago Heather suggested I put a swatch of paper on the end of each roll and I poo-pooed her off. She was so right. It's the ticket. I never listen to people.....always have to figure it out for myself. It's a bad character trait.



I finally bit the bullet and covered a bunch of storage boxes. I don't much enjoy doing these kinds of tasks. It's the finished product which makes it all worth it. TAL elevates the process as well.


Holly gave me the olive green with the bows. Such cool and unusual paper.
Here are a few random studio shots:



Notice the tin baby powder container? This is from my own baby days. How it got saved is a mystery as my mother was NOT a hoarder. All my packrat genes come from my dad. Mother was neat, efficient and always on top of her game. She saw no valid purpose in keeping such things as baby powder containers. How this particular relic managed to survive is a mystery to me. The only thing I can figure is she felt the powder inside was still perfectly good. To this day it lets off the soft, sweet aroma that never fails to evoke newborn baby images. You know the smell. The baby powder tin is a symbol of survival for me. It's a little miracle. When Mother cleaned out the cabinets inside the house she didn't have Dad hovering in order to save what she might consider garbage. Now, when she got it into her head to rummage through the garage his radar put him on high alert. I remember feeling such profound relief when he would shew her out of the there. That garage was the bane of my mother's existence, but it was our crowning glory....my father, brother and me. It yielded more treasure than 20 flea markets and 20 estate sales put together. It seemed to breed treasure.
See the old metal bell in the photo below the baby powder photo?? It came from my grandpa's Pontiac dealership back in the 30's/40's. It was our sick bell. We lived in a 3 story house with bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom in the basement. Mother's days were spent, primarily, on the middle floor so if Jack or I was sick we needed a bell to beckon her. My kids use it too and it can get downright annoying. My mom never seemed the least bit annoyed when she answered the bell call. I don't know if she was a master at faking or if she actually was part Florence Nightingale. Toward the end of a sick day around here I'm sure I'm visibly perturbed.
The Pontiac bell fell under Mother's sacred criteria. Not sure why maybe because it was useful. I have quite a few things from my grandparents even a tin rattle that belonged to my mother as a baby. I honestly think it slipped by my mom's relinquishing hands because it was never useful to us. She would not have let us put that old, tin rattle in our mouths. I'd sure like to know where the Luke and Eva (my grandparents) coffee mugs went. My grandmother MADE those mugs. Every coffee drinker in our family had one. None of them remain....only in photos. What was that woman thinking??? What the hell did she do with those mugs?? I wish my dad could have saved them. I do now realize, if not for my mom, we would have lived in one of those nasty, dust-covered houses with stacks and stacks of papers, napkins and ephemera even I would call meaningless. I got a big taste of how Dad ran the house after Mother died. The man saved polystyrene containers and microwave Dinty Moore soup bowls. I had to throw it all away every couple of weeks. It killed him every time. He is truly the granddaddy of all packrats.
Okay, back to the wallpaper. A LONG time ago I started covering a large wall in my living room with a patchwork of wallpaper. Great idea for a hoarder because you don't need much of any one pattern. Most people wouldn't do something so outrageous in their living room, but I have always liked doing unexpected things in unexpected places. This house, particularly, is a monument to my eclectic, bordering on eccentric, taste because I'm not planning to sell it. I plan to live here for the rest of my life. My family has always embraced what I do. So very glad my husband is a good sport about it. Not sure what I'd do if I didn't have full decorative license:)



These pictures seem blurry for some reason. Here are some closer shots with a (little) bit more clarity. This wall is wonderful to me because each of my papers is special to me for one reason or another. The wall also contains papers from friends like Heather K. and Holly. It contains a VERY SPECIAL paper Holly got off ebay which is so rare it almost makes you cry to look at it. Another piece is Holly's favorite wallpaper of all time. Some of my paper came from a lovely older woman who has been collecting all her life. She is selling off most of her collection because she must downsize. Her papers are very special to me because I feel like I'm carrying on her legacy. Loving her paper as she loved it.


So much to look at on this wall. You can get lost in it. History and beauty. No better combination:)

Jewelry Fun with Swarovski:)

So I finally decided to start and finish a jewelry project.  Can't tell you how happy it makes me. Anyone reading this blog knows the wonderful feeling of completion. See that rather INCREDIBLY FANTASTIC--never seen anything like it--vintage Swarovski beadball??? In rose if you can imagine the luck. I LOVE rose with vintage gold plate. It's my favorite combo. Talk about something you will never see again.  I also like the way the vintage wallpaper accents the piece sort of marrying my two favorite vintage items. I am contemplating making another one of these for sale in my etsy shop. Let me know if you are interested.
I just finished listing a Swarovski chain pack and a new Swarovski assortment pack. Here's a look at what the assortment  consists of:

 

This is a great assortment containing a little bit of everything from chain settings to jewelry components to sew-ons. I love this stuff:)

I should add my apologies for the difficulties I have in photographing jewelry. It's intensely frustrating to me, but I can't justify spending $1000+ to get a proper SLR outfit. I just have zero desire to spend time learning equipment like that so I know I would have way more camera than I can handle and my frustrations would probably increase. Not sure how to solve the problem so I guess I'll just blow it off for now:)

I'm off to answer my etsy convos. They are stacking up:)

Hello out there:)

I really didn't mean to go this long without blogging. Time flies. I've been cleaning out my craft room and it feels wonderful. I even moved furniture! Having a small craft area has it's difficulties, but I won't complain because I know I'm lucky to have a whole room of my own regardless of the size. I would be so much better off if I didn't feel such a great need to buy everything in bulk. All things are much more appealing to me if they are in quantity. From toilet paper to rhinestones. I guess it works since I can sell part of my stash in order to fund the continuing cycle.
Here are some photos of the new way I'm storing my Swarovski crystals. I got these jars from an ebayer in Canada and they are a great solution for storing without burying.


Those are sew-ons at the top of the above photo. I'm amassing quite a collection of those:)

I will be selling some Swarovski chain very soon. I just need to finish the packaging.

I've made a couple of brooches in the midst of a clean studio. Love listening the This American Life while stitching. This first brooch is a custom and the second one is in my etsy shop.


I've assembled a NEW mega pack of vintage wallpaper with 25 sheets of wallpaper! In the sidebar, you will find a link to my etsy shop:)

I completed an ATC swap and, of course, forgot to photograph several of them, but here are a few. One of the swaps was fabric for fabric so I did my ribbon flowers.



Hope all is well with everyone. I'll try to keep this blog more current and maybe, someday soon, I'll actually think of something interesting to write about:)

More Ribbon Work

Here are a couple more ribbon work brooches I finally had a chance to make. I spent the day listening to TAL while making French knot after French knot. Therapeutic for sure. The kids played in the snow, yes, snow. Not as much as the forecast predicted, but plenty for the kids to have fun and make a nice batch of snow ice cream. I loved snow ice cream when I was a kid and I still love it. I try not to think about how polluted it might be. We only have it once every couple of years so I figure we'll live.


I've also listed a couple of different wallpaper packs if you are interested. One is a mixed pack of flocked and regular and the other is a mega pack with 23 different patterns.
Luke and I have struck a deal that I will watch a Kurt Cobain documentary with him if he will watch All The President's Men with me so I'm off to get it rolling. It's been years since I've read or watched All The President's Men and I'm looking forward to it. Luke loves political history so it'll be right up his alley.

Brooches for Sale!

These and others are now listed in my etsy shop:)

Could it be Spring??

I'm starting to feel that fresh-slate, hopeful feeling spring always brings. Love that feeling. I've been cleaning out and organizing all over the place and I've got NEW INSPIRATION for my etsy shop. I'll be working this week to get all new, springy offerings listed. The flocked assortments currently listed will remain up until the new listings are ready. All the assortments will change to better match the coming season.
I'm also trying to focus on getting my creative juices flowing. I've been a little dry lately. What do you do to get the juices flowing? I made an ATC yesterday and it was fun. I need a 2 or 3 hour span to sit down and crank out more. Maybe some of you would like to trade? Email me if you're interested. I haven't made ATCs in years. Forgot how fun it is. Jennifer Paganelli does a cool thing to fuel her creativity. It's been her creative jump starter for nearly 2 decades. She'll be teaching a class about it soon so if you're in her area check it out. She is one of the most encouraging and kind people I've met in blogland. I've seen lots of other artists use Jennifer's technique for creative focus. I have a stack of magazines waste high right beside me as I type. I need to start cutting and pasting. Be sure to actually read Jennifer's post about the class because I know you will completely relate to what she's talking about. I can get very hung up by looking at the work of other artists because it often makes me feel like a schmuck by comparison. The key is to trust in your own creative vision without using others as a meter for your success. It's not easy, but it's extremely important.
I'll leave you with a couple of shots of some incredible old millinery showroom samples. When I saw these on ebay I was overtaken with the need to have them! I wanted to preserve them as showroom samples keeping the tags with color names intact. I mounted them to some wallpaper covered foam core and hung them in the dining room. Hoping to someday create a nice shadow box for them, but, for now, this is a heck-of-a-lot better than where they've been which is buried in a box on my studio floor:)