fragile

DH was out of town yesterday and today, so I've spent the day:
1) walking the dog in the cool of morning
2) browsing the bookstore with a mocha and a cinnamon scone
3) watching the last day of Le Tour as marvelous Cadel wins for Australia and Cavendish demolishes the sprinters
4) playing in the studio
However, don't be too jealous because in the hour before he gets home I'll be:
1) doing the pile of dishes that seems to always accumulate no matter whether anyone is eating at home or not
2) sucking up the dust bunnies who thrive under my furniture and occasionally have the bad manners to waft into view
3) shuffling the mountain of art supplies on the kitchen table back into the studio

BUT... meantime, I made another journal page using fabric and lace. I really enjoy this process, and was more confident making this one. Didn't bother Tacky gluing things in place, I just started stitching.

That's me at around a year old, I suppose, toddling around the married student housing that my parents lived in while attending Purdue University. I aged it a bit with Distress Stains, then lots of sprayed water until it ran and softened.

I used cross stitch fabric as a base. It's kind of stiff and I thought it might work well, which it did.

I lay down a couple pieces of flat lace, then the image printed onto fabric. Once those had a few seams in them, I dug around and found the very fine lace on the right edge. It was fairly long, maybe a baby dress hem or something.

Then I looked over the stamping I'd done earlier and settled on 'fragile.' Cut a bit of fabric to put to the right of it, and added some crumpled trim and some old buttons.

The bottom needed something, so I cut a point off a tattered old crocheted doily. I like the shade of it with the rest of the fabrics.

I like this a lot but it still isn't the heavily layered look that I so admire. I'm not sure I can do that LOL. It just isn't me, so I'll be happy with this and maybe try to add a bit more stuff on the next one.

This will be the right side of a spread. No idea yet what will be on the left.

from the shelves...

When I set up my collage area, I made a point to use all my old boxes, tins, and bowls. No more cardboard and plastic. Over the years, I've collected several old carved or wood burned boxes. I've seen them called glove boxes, altho not all of mine are the long and slender shape I'd associate with gloves. I love the look of them on the white shelves, along with canning jars of button, bowls of threads and laces, and whatever else I have stashed there at the moment.

Since moving my collage area into my home office, I've rearranged the stuff on the shelves about 20 times, trying to fit it all in, keep the most used stuff closest, etc. Here are some pics of the current incarnation.

The bottom right box is a drawer from an old sewing table. I have a few of those on the shelves, as well. The lace is a doily I found on a thrift shop run with my friend Julie. On top of the upper box is a little glasses case I made from an old quilt and to the left of that are some old leather curlers with a piece of metal inside. I can't even imagine using them to curl your hair. Seems like the leather would smell when wet. or maybe they aren't curlers, but I can't think what else they might be.










I'm the horse and my cousin is about to shoot me in the head. I haven't written about the pink flower pin yet, but it's soemthing I made in a class I took at Nostalgic Needle Arts several years ago.







This is an old cigar box that my mother had all her life. Inside are small tin figures of animals and objects. Tons of them. I thing they were a giveaway in boxes of tobacco or something when she was a child. I need to figure that out cause they might actually be worth something and I certainly don't need them all.






The top box on the right is one of my favorites. Clear, strong designs in relief against a burned background. These old boxes almost always smell good inside - musty and old, but good.










I paid 25 cents for this old restaurant bowl because I loved the green stripes. That's my shade of green. I wound some old crochet cotton around some old spools and put them in there with some vintage crochet hooks and other sewing doodads.