What I Create

Join in the part of "What I Create" hosted by Andrea of Vintage Bella Studio today and visit all of the chicks who are showing their creations. I seriously doubt you'll be disappointed!
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What do I create? What don't I create would be the better question. I love creating...anything. I see something and it will spark an idea in my head and I can't wait to get at it. But mainly, I create a beautiful home for me and my hubs, Love Bunny. I call him that because he's a retired Marine, and he is a love bunny. ;-)

Oh, and the reason these are all different sizes is that I took them at different times with different cameras through the years and since they have sold, I may not have the original article to photograph and do the wider width I'm doing now.

Birdhouses are absolutely my favorite thing to create. I've created several and sold or given them away as presents or giveaways. I use fabric mostly as that's the medium I love most—gorgeous romantic, shabby, chic, roses fabric.

This is a styrofoam form that I decorated with scads of tulle and it sits atop the urn on a plant shelf—see 3rd photo down. It is very froufrou, which is what I love creating most—froufrou.

This is a mosaic I made once with just a few of the pillows I've made and sold or have around my home.

This is just one of several lamps in my home I've redecorated. Some are garage sale finds. This one I bought a new lampshade and added embellishments to it.

This is the urn I made around the Christmas holidays last year with branches and all kinds of gifts I've received from my eBay group and bloggers.

This is my Christmas tree topper I made last year out of a wreath, roses, greenery, pearls and icy icicles stuck in there. When it's on the tree I stick roses on top of that on the tree. Beautiful effect!

I also love decoupaging plates with fabric. They are for show only. You cannot wash them once the fabric is on them, but you can wipe them clean.

Another birdhouse I sold. This was was covered with "icing" and mica flakes.

Birds adorn most of my birdhouses.

Aprons are another love I have. It relaxes me to create and sew them—most of the time, NOT when I receive special orders. ;-) I still have some for sale in my store. This one was a Kaffee Fassett fabric. They are stunningly gorgeous fabrics. Very vivid colors.

Another apron I made from a Cyrus Clark discontinued fabric. I still have a bit of this fabric left and I'm hoarding it! It's beautiful.

If you've read my blog for at least a year then you know how I feel about camping. I hate it! When hubs bought us a pop-up camper I made him promise me that I could froufrou it up...as much as a pop-up camper could be. This goes in it when we set out for the wilds of Idaho. I made it.

I think this little one is still for sale on my shop. It is darling with all that netting.

This one I painted while just learning how to paint roses. I then put German glass glitter on it.

This went to our granddaughter's house for our great granddaughter who is due May 26th. I can't wait. It hangs from the ceiling in her bedroom.

Little cones I've made to hang on trees.

I had to make this for my front door. I told you it's a girly house!!!

These I did for a giveaway and just love them. After I did them I was sorry I gave them away. I still have fabric to make more just like these though. As I said, fabric is my favorite medium.

I love making these cuffs also. They soothe me and are quick to whip up for gifts. This one is not for sale. I made it for ME and intend to keep it. When I wear it to church, ladies gawk at it and ask where I got it.

A hostess apron made for special occasions. It sold quickly.

Baby bibs and booties are also fun to make when expecting a great granddaughter. This one is already in Miss "A's" house. We don't know her name yet so we just call her Miss "A".

And this one is probably my favorite of all I've ever made.

I created this little painting as I was trying to learn how to paint roses. I'm terrible when it comes to rose painting but it's a passion so I struggle through it every few months to see how much better I can be.

I could sit and make these for hours...days actually. They are what calms me more than anything. Coffee filter roses.

Again, shoes for Miss "A".

Ribbon roses are also a mindless thing for me. Just sit and twist. Very calming.

I just started pinning fabric to this form and voilà, I had a Marie Antoinette type doll for my family room coffee table.

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A Few Thoughts About My Blog and Blogging

Aren't these cards gorgeous? I have them in the short hallway into the laundry room and bedroom. I just love looking at them.

I was making things for the new princess to be born in just a couple of weeks. I had this idea for a bib for our soon-to-be-born Miss "A" and got busy on it today while hubs was away.


I made this little bib, booties and shoes for a lady in our ward who is expecting her first girl after having 2 boys. She probably doesn't have a thing froufrou-y with 2 very boyish boys so I had to do something, right? The reverse side is a beautiful pink paisley.

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I travel around the blogs and some things I see just don't make sense. Bloggers who have multiple ads on their blog and don't blog so much as advertise. I guess it depends on what blogging means.

I don't have the energy or the dishes to do a table setting once a week! Where do they find the settings to do it every week? I just bought some plastic dishes from Target and Wal Mart and am loving them but I doubt seriously anyone would want to see them in a table setting.

I see vignettes and tablescapes but don't join in very much because, let's face it, once you've seen my home, you've seen it!

Then I came across a blogger who has some similar sentiments as I do.

My blog centers around home decorating, some crafting (a lot lately!), a few random thoughts about my funny, witty and humorous life and my outlook on life. As with her, my home is the center of my world. As with her, I relish getting my mail in the morning. I want to go out to the mailbox and retrieve it myself. Since being retired, Love Bunny is trying to usurp that from me and I'm rebelling! I told him the mail is my "responsibility." Also if he sees an ad, he'll fall for it and buy something we don't need. I'm the "keeper of the home" in this house. Don't try and take that away from me. I relish my job.

As with her, I have a modest following and have giveaways. I love having them. I also want the people that follow me to have the bigger possibility of receiving the prize. Believe it or not, I had a giveaway once, emailed the woman, announced it on here and she never responded. So I gave it to a friend who I knew would have loved to have it. I'm not going to beg you to take my giveaway.

As with her, promoting myself has always been hard to do but I've sucked it up a bit and asked for help. AND I've received it from some gracious bloggers. I'd promote your blog if you asked me to do it, and I'd do it for nothing! I do relatively few ads and I get a request from several but I don't want it to be about ads. I want it to be easy to read, delightful, helpful, funny, beautiful—because I DO live beautifully.

I love blogging. It's a creative outlet for me as much as crafting and making beautiful things for my home. I love doing the photography because it helps me expand my horizons. I love the writing of the blog itself. It helps me hone my skills, and it keeps my brain active. I also enjoy sharing beautiful things with the readers. I want it to make someone happy and be a visual feast for them.
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Rose Ball to Decorate the Bedroom for Pink Saturday 4/17/2010

Happy pink saturday and thank you to Beverly of How Sweet the Sound for having this. This past week I visit 4 bloggers I'd never been to before and enjoyed each one. It's getting harder and harder to find chicks I haven't visited before! The new ones are Monica at The White Bench, Yoli at Apronsenorita, Phyllis at Aroundrhouse and Valrie at Poemsmyway. No, I didn't misspell Valrie! ;-)
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First of all, a view of my sofa table bearing all the little shoes I've made for Miss A and her arrival in May.

The soles of her new shoes.

I made this hanging ball from styrofoam and coffee filters made into roses. If you follow me on any kind of regular basis you know I love making these. So I made several ahead and glued them to this 6" ball. Just a few shots of it up close so you can see it well. Now, these are formed coffee filter roses, not just twisted and stuck in tightly, but pulled apart and then tucked in. I like the look much better. I only used about 18-20 of them instead of several dozen.

I used different colors mostly because no two turn out alike, and I like to experiment with different colors and techniques.

I love the way it turned out since it is my first one.

It hangs in my bedroom over my dresser.

I also needed something to put on a jacket to wear the other day and whipped up this little pin for it. I actually just safety pinned it to my jacket. You can do this, chicks! I did this in about 20 minutes from start to finish cutting, stitching and ragging the edges.
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Puttering With the Camera for Pink Saturday

Happy Pink Saturday. Please go visit with Beverly at howsweetthesound to view all the participants and get your fill of PINK. Ooops, almost forgot to put in the names of the new bloggers I visited last week. Actually, there are 4 of them and darling blogs: Postedfromhome, Rahrah, Comicallyflawed, and Lookinthenook. Go check them out and have some fun, sweet chicks.

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First of all, these are the first pair of shoes I made for Miss A, our great granddaughter due in May. Squeeeeeeal, she's going to be a very fashionable and pink little sweet chick. "Baby's got a new pair of shoes!" ;-)

Flash off:

Flash on:



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Hopping around the blogs as I do and being an amateur photographer, and I do mean amateur, I notice photographs more than anything. They're the first thing that grabs my attention. I've seen them so dark I could barely make them out, and I've seen them so small when I'd like nothing better than to see them magnificently large in all their glory. That's one of the reasons I changed my template recently to the stretch one. I wanted larger photos. That's also one of the reasons I purchased a Canon Rebel XS. I wanted the best photos I could take with a camera that wasn't going to start a war with Love Bunny. But I've told you the story about that. ;-)

Anyway, since I'm by myself tonight I've been puttering around the craft room even though it's in such disarray I can barely get a space to craft. I wanted to make some more ribbon roses. And since I made it, I thought I'd share some more tips on the cameras. After all, don't we all want beautiful photos?

These are in sequence from the first one I took to the last one I took and just about all of them were different setting for light on the camera.

This one was taken with flash off, incandescent lights on in the room. See how yellow it is. I've cropped every single one and we'll go into that later.

This one was with the flash off also but the little arm lamp over the table was off. So no lighting in the room. I had this setting on auto and let it adjust itself. Not too bad.

The flash was on with this one. But the setting was on auto so it also adjusted itself.

With this one the flash was on also, but the light was turned off and the setting was auto so it turned out rather blue.

Flash off but the swinging arm light was on casting it into a very orange-ish color.

Flash on and setting was auto also on this one. No lighting was on in the room. BTW, I took these about about 7:30 pm so it was dark.

Flash off and lights on in room.

I think this one is probably the best. Flash on, backed away a bit from the table and snapped it. You don't want to get too close or too far when taking closeups. Let the camera work for you.

Okay, with that being said and explained very basically, the one other thing to get closeups is this: set the "Quality" of the photo to the absolute highest you can get. That will allow you the biggest pixels in width and height. My Rebel is set at 3888 x 2592, its highest setting for quality. So when I crop my photo to just show the rose it comes up really close. Every single camera has that on it. You just have to look at your "menu" and figure it out. There are a lot of settings on the new digital cameras and it is NOT as hard as it looks. When you get the camera just play around with it for a day or so. Then read the instruction book! READ IT. Then play around with the settings. As you play you'll want to reference the instructions and they'll make more sense to you after that. I can't say that enough: READ THE INSTRUCTION BOOK. It will help you get beautiful photos. Plus youtube has videos for just about any camera and they have been very informative for me in getting to know this new one. After all, you want the best you can get if your family is in the photo, right?
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