Favorite Vintage Home Pieces

Some images of loved items in my home. All are vintage, estate found or handed down. Hey that would be a good catch phrase.

DIY Snowflake Garland

My husband Geoff, stepson Elliott and I made the most simple and sweet snowflake garland this week. I tried making cutout snowflakes a few weeks ago thinking I knew how but then, to my suprise, I realized I really did not know after all.

Well, I ran across this fabulous post on creating snowflakes so I used it for some help. I did cut out step 5 though as it made the snowflake sorta hard to cut, maybe it's because she was using junk mail and magazine paper and I was using used scrap computer paper. Also, it wasn't necessary for us to have the snowflakes be as intricate as the poster's was (and we were working with a 6 yr old and the dexterity skills are sometimes lacking :). So basically we did step 1-4 then cut off the top and cut away along the sides.

Then, I simply ran a string on jute twine in the holes cut in the snowflakes and hung along our mirror. Came out really fresh and sweet looking. Super easy way to get some festive home decor!

Winter Holiday Desktop Backgrounds

Perusing one of my favorite blogs, PoppyTalk, I found a post with some darling seasonal desktop backgrounds. Currently using the second image and loving it! So calming and peaceful.

First image: Geninne Zlatkis, Second image:  Desert Friends. Click to take you to the artist's site where you can download the background for free!

Fabric Design Class

Fabric samples from a fabric design class that I took at the Visual Arts Center in Richmond, VA this past summer. Learned some great techniques such as block printing, shibori, immersion dying, and stencil printing. Would definitely recommend it for any textile design lover.

From top left going clockwise:

1. Mod leaf design I drew on craft foam, then cut out and stuck to transparent paper. Applied thickened dye and stamped to fabric.

2. Shibori technique winding silk fabric around a pole, then wind some string around, then scrunch and place in dye bath.

3. Stencil printed my chevron design with a discharge paste on blue silk fabric, then ironed to lose color. Created an awesome grungy effect!

4. I placed masking tape in diagonal stripes then sprayed concentrated dye from a squirt bottle, wait until dry and then take tape off and viola! Taking the tape of and finally seeing the design is pretty fun.

5. Triangle design using craft foam stamping.

This class really got me interested in textile design and now I'm a bit obsessed with it but in a good way. This last photo is a photo of one of the scarves I made for the Bizarre Market at Chop Suey Books in RVA. I dyed the scarf and then screenprinted using a discharge paste. Intensive process but lovely effect. See more of my hand dyed and/or printed things in my shop.

DIY Craft Packaging

New packaging that I've created for orders from my shop this month. Shipping is strangely the most satisfying and fun part of the process sometimes. I just love having my handmade goodies come together in a pretty package. It's really rather simple too, I just buy twine at my local craft store, print the tags on speckled cardstock and cut, kraft boxes and cello bags can be bought from this etsy supply shop and cute thank you tags you can get here.

I'm a sucker for receiving a nicely packaged item myself so I know it's an important step!

New Geometric Necklaces

New necklaces in the shop! In love with these color combinations right now. Especially gray with any color.

Screenprinting, Sewing, Leathercrafting & Jewelry Making

A bit of what I've been up to lately. Check out the shop for more details.

Desktop Background Wallpaper Art

While searching for a vintage mid century style desktop background and found a great website for desktop wallpaper art. They've been doing a Desktop Wallpaper Project Series featuring some awesome wallpaper from some great artist. I got sucked in and ending spending way more time than I'd like to admit searching through the many posts. Definitely check it out if you need something refreshing and inspiring on your desktop.

I decided on the one above for the time being. Here are some other ones I loved (and saved for later) below:

Though I'm not the biggest Sheen fan, I had to include this last one because the design is pretty awesome. :)

Vintage Style Senior Portraits

My little sister asked my to shoot her senior photos this year and I gladly obliged. We wanted to do them in a bit of a vintage style yet still keeping it pretty modern. We picked our favorite locations around Richmond, packed up a few outfit changes and off we went. 

For most of the photos, to apply this vintagey style in photoshop, I played around with the curves, contrast, saturation etc, used the burn tool for the edges, used the sepia and magenta filters, and applied the lens distortions for a vignette effect. Here are some of the final pics. 

Ain't she a doll? This was the first time I've done senior photos and I'm pretty pleased with the result as was my sis. It's nice that we could doing something that to fit her personality for her senior pics.

And finally, congrats to the grad! She's coming to VCU this fall so she'll be down here with me in Richmond for the next 4 years. Yay!

DIY Thrift Store Jewelry Display

So as you can see from the above photo (clump of jewelry thrown into a gifted but boring, sorry!, jewelry box), I was definitely in need of a new jewelry holder and I looked for ideas on online about making a DIY jewelry holder out of upcycled thrift store materials. Though there were a wealth of amazing and original ideas for DIY jewelry displays (just google DIY jewelry displays) and I decided to just wing it and see what I could up with from a quick thrift store trip.

I found this. I wish I had an original photo before I spray painted, but this thing (I'm still not sure what it was) was painted white and had pink wooden heart attached to the ends. I thought it would be great to hang necklaces from so I took it home and spay painted it with some left over green spray paint. Super easy and super useful.

Yay! Easy to get to, non tangled necklaces!!!

While I was at the thrift store, I also found this little mini cabinet display that I also spray painted with the same green spray paint. The screen is perfect to hang earrings on and it opens up to little cubbies where I now stash my rings. Mission accomplished.

Other really great thrift store DIY jewelry displays:

-Old window screen to hang earrings (can be painted or left rustic if you find an old wood or metal screen)

-Wooden shutters are a great display for earring also. I find that these are abundant at thrift stores for some reason. They can be painted for left as is.

-Large frames can be a great display for necklaces. Just take the glass out and cover the inside with a great fabric or lace find, stick in thumbtacks and hang your necklaces on them.