Karla's Cottage

Valentine Fairies and more

Thank you so much to everyone who purchased fairies from me for their Christmas tree!

I loved making each and every one.

But just  because Christmas season has passed, that doesn't have to mean that fairy season is over.

These sprites are lovely for Valentines Day too.

Especially this gal.

She wants to be your Galentine.

I have given many of them  hand drawn roses or hearts on their clothes.

While they look extra cute in pink for the holiday, they aren't necessarily just for Valentines.

Although they would make nice gifts for someone you love.

And the fairies, with or without a book are sweet as candy year round.

I love any excuse to make one.

There are more to come too.  I have more to get pics of.

It is much more fun to make them than it is to photograph them, edit the pictures and list them in the Boutique. 

I adore making books, and making fairies, so I figured I would combine my loves and put them together.  Maybe I will make some sweet banners also since I love those too...

The books are 100% handmade, cover to cover.  I used acrylic pour paint canvases, cut up to cover chipboard to hand craft them.  Cut and tied the pages in, lined the covers with vintage wallpaper, created ties to hold the books closed, then decorated them.

If you would like one, you can find them here in my Boutique.

 

 

More sewing?? Yep, another shirt!

Some long time friends, and Birdsong Peeps, suggested that we do a "boho" clothing workshop.

I am NOT a sewer, but was ready to tackle the shirt project that Lorrie Scott had featured in the Gilded Journey

But, it turns out, I didn't have to. Sweet Nora loves to sew, and happily did about 90% of the job for me.  What a nice surprise!!

I had cut up two of my husband's old shirts and was going to sew them together as the directions layed out, but Nora went a step further and custom fitted the pieces to me so that the duster was exactly my size.

I made some pockets and had vintage lace ready to add.

But she did all of the hard parts.

Tami had brought some sewing to do too, she was adding doilies to a runner.

A lot of the day was spent in me looking for the pile of mother of pearl buttons that I had set aside to add to the shirt. I swear, sometimes my studio is a black hole. I set something down and -poof!- gone.

Finally, I gave up and dug out more buttons to use instead.  I added them to the duster and felt like I had made a major accomplishment, since I am not a thread and needle person. Thanks to Nora, I only did the minor jobs on the piece, she whipped it up and made it wonderful!

What a nice day.

If you'd like to turn two, old shirts into one amazing duster, you can find the instructions in this beautiful book. Oh, and by the way? I have a chapter in the book too.  My story is about crafting a travel journal. The book is just lovely, and I hope to make many more of the projects inside.

More books? Why yes!

While I was on a roll with book making... I just kept on a going.

I have soft, Easter colors like pink...

Ocean and mermaid tones....

And soft grays (with more pink!).

But these are not all, I still have a stack on my desk.  I think I will transform one into a travel journal for myself.

Paint pour tag books

Remember my months long obsession with acrylic paint pouring? I still LOVE it, but put the supplies aside for the winter, because I needed to reclaim the garage I'd been working in.  During my dream state of making one canvas after another, I also painted on some tags.  These were used to make a couple of books.

And since I love playing with wallpaper too, I covered the interior of one of them.

These are going to be on my vendor table at Once Upon an Easter.  I am bringing SO MUCH STUFF, that I know I will never sell it all, so I should be listing some stuff to sell in my Boutique when I get home and settled.

 

A Lovebird's Song book for Beth

I've been busy as can be, putting kits together for not one but two classes, here at the cottage on Jan. 26 and in Florida at Karen's on Feb. 16th.

Actually, it ends up being 4 classes, two on each day.  And I wanted to switch up this "Pages Through Time" autograph book a little bit for the workshop at my home.  So, I've made an example of it with the slight changes.  The pictured one is just a little thicker than the actual pattern will be, since this book goes to my BFF, Beth. She is going to help out that day and is going to work on the premade book, creating examples of interior pages for the other attendees.  

I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with. I always learn good tricks from her!

 

 

A Book Club Christmas party

I couldn't remember if it was  my 4th or 5th annual holiday book club party, so I looked back at my blog (which is my journal, and the only way I ever know when I did what) and saw that I'd started hosting these in 2011! 

Here are some past parties:

2011

2013

2014

2015

2016

This year, I was inspired by a pot of glittered, blue poinsettias to tend toward being a little more colorful than the typical gold and white color scheme of past parties.  Our white tree has multiple settings for color choices. On a daily basis, I set it on white and twinkling. But the minute Sugarwings walks in the door, she resets it to rainbow. I thought I'd use her favorite setting for this night too.

Aren't the flowers wonderful?  I always buy a pot of poinsettias, and try to purchase  the one with the most blooms, and normally choose ones with just white.  This year, I saw a glittered, ocean blue plant, and had to go for it.  Especially since it had over a dozen flowers on it. (or to be correct, I think you are supposed to say "brackets" for these plants, not flowers, right?)

I always cut the blooms off and put them in vases, instead of leaving the plant as is. They last quite a long time and I can spread them around the house, using them in many spots.

And lately, I"ve been finding crystal wine glasses on sale for pretty cheap and they have been multicolored too. So, heck why not go with it?  It ended up being a change that I really enjoyed.

I even added some pink and blue shiny brites to the gold and silver ones on the chandelier for the night and like it so much, I've leaving them for the season.  They look nice with Sugarwings' favorite light setting on the tree, too.

Since the party was for the book club, I added some vintage books to the tablescape.

Dinner was a rainbow spiral pie (that suited the colorful room, didn't it?), baked parmesan chicken,  greenbeans with potatoes and mushrooms.

And two kinds of homemade bread.

I had such a lovely time with these bright and interesting ladies.

After dinner, we draw names for gift wrapped, used books that everyone brings to swap.  

 I ended the night, looking around the room, and enjoying how clean and festive the house looked.  I adore the holiday decorations and seeing all of the lights, but our cottage isn't always as tidy as it should be.

While decking the halls, I do a deep cleaning and at first everything looks sparkly and spiffy. Since I do the decorating early, messes have a chance to encroach December passes and having a party midway through the month is a great excuse to get a fresh start and bring back that sparkling feeling.  It isn't often that the whole place is all cleaned up and shiny at the same time.  We have 5 dogs, heat with wood, and have a craftaholic kid who creates clouds of paper flying around her like she is Edward Scisssorhands.

As I said goodnight to my husband, I commented on how happy I was to have had such a pleasant evening and to have clean, pretty surroundings.   

Then, I woke up about 1am to a dog crying hysterically to go out. And then to be let right back in.  And again a couple of times that night.  I drug myself out of bed each time, half awake, not realizing that she had such a tummy ache that she'd made a mess, and paced around, walking through it.  

Not so clean anymore..... I didn't even get a full 24 hours of spotlessness.

Mopping and sanitizing after a sick dog isn't nearly as much fun as cleaning and spiffing to get ready for a party.  

 

 

 

A mermaid book for Dewdrop's mama

I got to spend some time with Dewdrop's mother in North Carolina on our trip to pick up our snuggle fairy for Thanksgiving.

We went out for a lunch in Asheville and took our time, chatting and catching up.

Before leaving home, I made this book for her.

The covers are an acrylic paint pour. This is the back.

And this is one inside cover.

And this is the other.

Christmas tag books in the Boutique and a sweet wedding, at the BEST weekend

I'm still enjoying the bounty of paint pours from my creative binge this summer and am now using the pieces to make holiday tag books.

You can purchase them HERE, in the Boutique.

I seriously adore the technique and the look of the swirled paints.  Acrylic flow painting is the BEST!

I'd gone with Beth to attend the wedding of The Other Karla's son in St Paul and brought crafty goods (including these painted tags) with me to play with in the hotel room, then found a bounty of beauties at a flea market on the way there. 

Once I got started on making these, I couldn't stop. I was a bad friend and sent Beth out on her own to have lunch with her Minnesota nieces while I stayed in my jammies and made book after book after book that day, till it was time to get ready for the wedding.

Because- WOW- look at this paper I'd found!!!!!  How could I leave it uncut, when I had all of these pretty, painted tags to make things with????

I'd also bought 1928-29 women's magazines from December with lots of helpful Christmas tips, along with an old book of hymms that included Christmas carols.

And stacks of holiday ephemera.

And did I mention that it was 13 degrees outside? And I'd driven through mini blizzards to get there.  Yes, I was content to do hotel crafting in my jim jams and had a beautiful, wonderful, magical day.

It was the BEST.

Not only did I have a fab night with friends, then a day at a flea market on the way to the wedding, I had an entire day with the most magical of vintage supplies, topped off with a night of dancing and laughing til my sides hurt at the wedding.

Or did my sides hurt because I was way to old to dance that hard and that long?

Either way, it was a perfect weekend.  Laughter, road trips, making things, attending a lovely wedding.  Yep, the BEST.

I had never met Karla's son, but soon realized he was a catch.  His wife won my heart quickly too, when she told us about the family tradition of using this vintage cake topper.

Karla made ribbon wands that were waved in the air when the couple entered the reception, and soon we were all dancing and waving them around out on the floor.  Not only were they pretty to see flying about, but they had magical properties.

When we twirled them about, we were FANTASTIC  dancers. We were the BEST.

And personally, I can't dance and have less rhythm than, well, I can't actually think of anything or anyone with less skill on the dance floor than I have.

Between the laughing and the ribbon wands, my dancing skills suddenly became amazing.  Everyone's did. 

Yep, it was the BEST.

 

 

From inside my travel journal

Our sister trip to Florida included lots of craft time.  I pack my portable printer and we slap photos  into the books I made for us along with doodles, scraps, and other memorabilia of the day.

This is a drawing I did for Bobbie's pages, with highlights of her Disney time.  She is a big fan of Pirates of the Caribbean, so I drew a Capt. Jack for her, and he is holding her cell phone with its Hocus Pocus cover to take a selfie with a giraffe (in honor of taking animal pictures from our balcony at Animal Kingdom), Timon (who has heart pupils because I teased her about flirting with the character at the park), and a flamingo wearing MIckey ears, because she loves those birds.

And here are the three of us as Sandersons stating, "We will put a spell on you if we remember what we were planning to do"

It references lots of fun moments from the week, including our names for the week, Bibbity (Sis) Bobbity (Bobbie, of course), and Boo, (me).  My face is painted witchy pink, from our night at the guncles'.

Sis is wearing her Gundren clothes, Bobbie's hair is meant to be both from Hocus Pocus and an ice cream cone shape.

We posed for mermaid shadow selfies on the beach, and I found a shell that I thought was a heart at first, then realized that it was really a tail fin.  So, I glued it to my shadow.

Here is Sissy at the Beast's restaurant.  

I used paper from Michaels and words cut from the Disney Springs map on this page.

And made a broom for this picture of us in front of the castle after watching the Hocus Pocus show.\

This rug was part of the carpet in our room, I cut out Bobbie on it, and glued it over a napkin that looked like a starry sky.

(Her name is Valentine, so I thought the cut  out phrase was appropriate.)

At the Bippity Boppity Boo salon, we were frosted with fairy dust. For my book, I added glitter over the sprinkles.  

I used a trading pin, and pictures from the map for this picture of Sissy dancing at Animal Kingdom.  Then, I cut out names of the places we visited there and glued them onto the page.

For our photo in front of the stain glass window at the Beast's castle, I layered rose papers and added a charm that looks like the enchanted mirror from the story.

This animal paper from Michaels was ideal for Animal Kingdom!! It is two layers, one as a background, then I cut out the animals that got covered up and glued them over the photo too.

As much as I love vintage papers, for scrap books, it is nice to use some actual scrap book paper, because you can always find something to fit the them.  I also like using maps and brochures from places I visit.

On this Halloween crafting page, I cut out a label from a pack of supplies that says, "Halloween Crafts".  So, sometimes, it is worth it to use the trash too.

Sparkle papers and textures are great too.  I've glued shells and a vintage stir stick (found on one of our shopping days) to this one.

This one is a fave, it is a photo of our grandma, her mom and sister that I doctored up. 

 

Oh, and here are a couple pics of the cover too!

 

 

 

 

 

Guncle Randy's Paint Pour Book

S

When Guncle Randy was here in August,  We had a paint pour day and he did a "swipe" technique on this cover.   I finished assembling the book to mail to him later.

And of course, I couldn't help myself.... I had to add some vintage papers to the book for him to use as a background for his own work.  He plans on using it for a Halloween/Autumn journal, so I kept with a darker or fall theme.  Including this great horoscope book cover from the 1800s!!!

(I'd been saving it for something really special.)

Grey flowers seemed to be ideal for Halloween.

As were these black and white pages.

The red might be a little bright for the season, but I guess he could consider it gorey... I made a pocket from some paint poured paper, and filled it with tidbits to use in his own work.

The Dream Book page is a scan and copy, but suits the mood.

As well as the Gispy Fortune Teller page.

This lovely lady was cut from an old fairy tale book, and I added green marker to her face to make her witchy.

This boy is scanned from an old photo and printed onto a transparency for a ghostly look.  

Typically, I chose text for shape and style, but sometimes I find some that fits the mood of the page too. While this is simply about Tom Thumb and is a cute fairy tale, I thought the first sentence seemed a little creepy and went well with a Halloween book.

The inside of the back cover gets a paint poured note card to open and fill up, and a cute (but slightly vampire-ish) boy and his dog.  I added a sparkly, rhinestone poodle too, since the guncles have two cute poods of their own.

Have fun filling your book up, Randy! I love you and loved getting this ready for you!!

 I will be away from my desk, enjoying Sister Time in Florida til the 22nd.  All orders from the Boutique will ship on the 24th. Thanks!