magpie

I have a confession to make.  I have to say it quietly, because I'm still having a little trouble dealing with the truth.  My seven year-old self never would have believed it, and my nineteen year-old self would have probably just curled her lip a tiny bit in disgust.  Even so, here it is:  I like pretty things.

Now, when I say "pretty," I don't mean wildflowers or rainbows.  I like those things, too, but this is more along the lines of pearl necklaces.  Diamond earrings.  I'm talking Tiffany & Co.  Or Louis freaking Cartier.

I don't know what happened.  I certainly wasn't born this way.  (You can ask my folks; I think they'd vouch for me...)  It's really just been in the past few years that I've started to be distracted by glittery things.  Maybe it's all those wedding magazines I've leafed through.  Maybe I've just spent too much time on muddy construction sites or in dusty warehouses to not spend my weekends being drawn to things that are, um, kind of girly.

Please don't misunderstand.  I'm certainly not buying all this ridiculous stuff.  The pretty little rock on my left hand is more than I'd ever dreamed of wearing.  (I'm not exaggerating...)  It's just that I can't help noticing the glammy things in the magazines or in the shops.

My fascination of the week is Violet Magpie.  The designer, Jen Carrigan, sells her work in a few places in Seattle, including Velouria, which is too close to our house for me to not go visiting at least once a week.  You'll see it in the photos, but there's just an incredibly decadent mix of vintage rhinestones, pert little feathers, and big silky flowers.

And is it so wrong of me to adore those things?  Or to love something like this:

If you like what you see,  you should check out LoBoheme's Etsy shop.  In fact, maybe you should just go to Etsy and search "rhinestone."  It will keep you occupied for hours.

Being the diy girl that I am, I thought it would be fun and easy to just wander through a few thrift stores, pick up some vintage costume jewelry, and get to work on some fancy headgear of my own.  The truth is, though, that finding those little brooches and clip-on earrings that used to be everywhere is actually kind of hard to do.  I don't know why.  Maybe all those awesome jewelry designers are just getting to the Goodwill before I do.  It's been a few weeks, though, and I still haven't come up with anything, so I'm thinking I'll have to work with what I have.

Which is a whole lot of this.  Just before Christmas last year, I bought a bag of miscellaneous chandelier crystals.  I thought I was going to make some kind of jewelry for holiday gifts, but then, I never got around to it.

Now, though, I think it might be time.  I don't know that I can manage hairpieces, really.  But maybe a necklace.  Or a bracelet.  You can do a lot with a few sparkly pieces of glass.  And along with the crystal drops, I've also got a few feet of beaded chain that was probably draped between the arms of an old chandelier.

For starters, it all needs to be cleaned.  That part sounds a little daunting.  After that, though, I think this project could be doable.  I've never really done any jewelry-making, but when has anything like that stopped me?  I'll let you know what I come up with...

weekend reading

The good news is that there's a new fabric store in my neighborhood.  The bad news?  Um, there's a new fabric store in my neighborhood.  I've only recently overcome the tendency to be magnetically drawn to the yarn shop every time I leave my house.  Now there's a beautiful new trap to fall into.  Never mind the fact that I can't sew at all.  Fabric is just really hard for me to resist.

I managed alright today, though.  I didn't buy any fabric at all.  Instead, I bought a book.  I just couldn't resist it, and if you ever come across a copy, I think you'll understand why.  The title is Carefree Clothes for Girls.  It's by Junko Okawa, and it's actually a Japanese craft book that's been reissued in English.  The photography is ridiculously gorgeous, and the patterns are great, too, in a timeless kind of way.  Of course, there is the little matter of my inability to sew.  And the fact that, even if I could, I don't really have any little girls to sew for anyway.  But still...

Another book that's really tempted me is Material Obsession, a book about quilting by Sarah Fielke and Kathy Doughty, two crafty ladies that co-own a quilt shop in Sydney, Australia.  I've never tried quilting, but if that's what it takes to get one of the fun, functional quilts featured in this book, I'm willing to give it a try.  If you're curious, you can also check out the shop website at www.materialobsession.com.

And for those of us who probably shouldn't be left alone with a sewing machine, there's Lena Corwin's Printing by Hand.  There's a little bit of everything in here: stamping, stenciling, even screenprinting.  The instructions are straight-forward, the projects are clever, and there are lots of photos.  My copy from the library is two days overdue, so I think I'm going to have to postpone some of these projects for later.  Maybe when I'm not, you know, planning a wedding.

Happy weekending, everyone!  I'll see you on Monday...

almost

Usually, when I'm writing about fun stuff that comes through the shop, I like to show you pictures of what I found, and then more pictures of what I ended up doing with it.  Today, though, all I can show you is the "before."  This time, there isn't any "after."  Just when I was trying to decide what awesome new thing I could make with all these bits and pieces of metal, a really nice lady came along and bought them all.

So now all I can do is daydream.  They could have been centerpieces or candelabras.  

Or bouquets.

Or pictures frames.

But no.  I hesitated a moment too long, and now they're gone.  It's probably just as well.  I didn't really need another dozen projects anyway.  Still, it's tempting to think of what might have been...

giving

Wedding favors are a funny business.  It seems like the cool kids are all over the map on the subject.  Some people are doing really neat, crafty things.  Other people are making donations to favorite non-profits in honor of their guests.  And still other people are just skipping the whole thing altogether.

At first, it seemed we might end up in the third category.  We thought it was silly to spend money on dumb little pieces of monogrammed junk that our friends and family would just throw away after the wedding.  I've seen my fair share of "Jack+Jill 2003" ashtrays and coffee mugs at the Goodwill, and I really don't want to unload something like that on our loved ones.

As time went on, though, I started seeing really sweet, thoughtful wedding favors out there in the world, and I decided to get in on the action.   For a little awhile, I was trying to talk my partner-in-crime into these little things.  (This was back when I wanted to have a bird-themed wedding, an idea that never really gained much traction, unfortunately...)

We've been scheming a bit since then, and it turns out we are going to have favors at our wedding.  Not the birdseed hearts.  Something better, I assure you.

I'm not going to say what they are.  You know that I can't.  I have decided, though, to show you all what we're hoping to give to our littlest wedding guests in June.

I've been collecting crayons for awhile now, from garage sales and thrift stores.  A few years ago, I saw a magazine article about melting down broken and stubby little left-over crayons into fun, exciting new ones.  I don't know where that article is now.  Last night, I mostly just did things that sort of made sense.

First, I peeled a bunch of crayons.  If that doesn't sound time-consuming, then I'm not saying it right.  It was okay, though.  Sort of Zen.

Then I sorted the crayons into colors.  Of course, there are a dozen different shades of each color, which makes everything more fun, I think.

I chopped the crayons into small pieces--about  an eighth or a quarter of an inch and put the pieces into a silicon muffin pan that I found at the Goodwill last weekend for ninety-nine cents.

And then things got a little interesting.  A few different sources on on the Internet suggested putting the pan in the oven for twenty or thirty minutes at 150 degrees.  Instead, it ended up taking about four times as long, and I cranked the oven up to 180 or 185.

When everything looked all melted and soupy, I took the pan out and let it cool overnight.  In the morning, I had six little heart-shaped crayons.

It was a good time and pretty darn easy.  I'm going to do it all again, too, a few more times before this summer.  In the meantime, don't tell the little ones, okay?  You know how much I love a surprise.

quick hello

I'm working on a (temporarily) top-secret project today.  If it turns out well, I'll have something fun to share with you tomorrow.

In the meantime, take a look at yesterday's post from Souris Mariage.  If you're struggling a little bit with all of the silliness that the wedding industry is tossing around, Mouse's refreshing little list will resonate like a cleansing mantra.  I promise.

oh yes

My man has a suit.  It came in the mail a few days ago, and it looks like this:

I know.  I'm a tease.  But look, I can't show you the groom in his wedding suit.  It would be like giving you peeks at the invites before they went out in the mail.  It would ruin a beautiful surprise.  Besides, I think it might be bad luck or something.

I guess I could show you someone else wearing a very, very similar suit.

This is not my groom-to-be.   It's just a nice fellow from J. Crew.  If you want to, you can see more of the suit--and, oh, of that handsome young man--by clicking here.

Suits are kind of a big deal.  It turns out that buying a suit is expensive.  And kind of complicated.  In the end, getting fancy duds for my partner-in-crime might turn out to be more of an ordeal than me landing a dress.

I didn't realize it would be that way.  And honestly, I don't care.  It's totally worth it to see my man all dressed up for a party.  He's only gotten fancied up a handful of times since I've known him--and now that I think about it, one of those times was actually when he was just dressing up as John Wilkes Booth for a costume party.  I don't think that one counts.

Some people have asked me whether the men in our wedding party were going to wear tuxes.  My response--and my man's--has consistently been, "of course not."  A little part of me does wonder whether we're missing out on something by skipping the tux, but I'm pretty confident that making decisions that really reflect us, instead of what other people are doing, will keep us on track.  Yes, I'm mostly talking about the wedding here.  But not just the wedding...

But, gosh, there's this suit.  I'm excited about it.  I'm sure you can tell.  I'll be really honest, though, and pay attention, because I do mean this.  My partner-in-crime can wear whatever he wants.  A tuxedo t-shirt.  Tie-dyed board shorts.  It doesn't matter to me.  Just as long as, at the end of the day, we're married.

Oh, but I, on the other hand, absolutely must wear my fancy, fancy dress.

on fire

I was wandering around on 100 Layer Cake the other day, and a post from this week's guest blogger there caught my eye.  First, it had my attention because it was written by Lanie, the owner of NYC's new bridal boutique Lovely.  Lovely is carrying the work of my favorite dress designer, Elizabeth Dye.  So there's that.

The other thing that got me, though, was that Lanie's post is a how-to for DIY fabric flowers, something I've been thinking about dabbling with for awhile now.  The best part is that her step-by-step involves polyester fabric and open flames.  My pyromaniac inner child couldn't say no.

I'm not going to re-hash the how-to.  You can read Lanie's original post for that.  Mostly, I just wanted to tell you that I think deliberately melting plastic in a poorly-ventilated apartment might not be a great idea.  Oh, and I wanted to show off what I managed in spite of the fact that my brain cells were probably expiring, one by one.

I made a flower in turquoise first.

 I backed it with a little circle of felt and added some glass beads to the center, just for fun.

And after I finished the blue one, I really, really wanted a yellow one, too.  I don't know why.  It was probably the fumes.

I like the color of the yellow better, but I'm not sure lighter fabrics work well for this project.  If you squint a little, you can see the little burn marks along the edges of the yellow petals.  They don't show up nearly as much on the blue one.

These are fun to make, and they go fast.  I'm going to have to give some thought, though, as to whether or not I'd feel safe making thirty or forty of them.  Along with the burning plastic concern, there's also the matter of the cat, who has no understanding of personal space.  Or of the dangers of an open flame.

If you'd like to see more of Lanie and her work, you can see photos from her recent wedding featured on Style Me Pretty.

Happy weekend, everyone!  I'll be back on Monday with more action and excitement to share.