CHRISTMAS HAS ARRIVED AT ANTHROPOLOGIE

I have been a very bad blogger.  It's been 10 days since my last post.  I've been spending a lot of time drawing these days.  

You can get lost in drawing.  

Time slips away and your days just disappear. 

Then, there's no time left to blog.  

So.

Today I DO have some great pictures from this morning's visit to Anthropologie.  Inspiration is everywhere!  They are all decked out for Christmas and there were some great ideas for "making".

 A painted canvas clutch.

 Here's that felted cotton tree I liked in an earlier post.  Not as great in real life.  However, I think I could make it "better" than this, so we'll see.

 I know someone who would LOVE this kitchen towel!

 Very cool little tree made out of squares of sheet music.

 Wow!

 Soooo easy, but soooo expensive!

 I love this packaging -

 A beautiful handmade blank book.

 Wouldn't this be a fun piece to have in a craft room?

 :-)

 A tree made of lightbulbs?  I don't know about this one.

 I KNOW I could make about 10 of these for that price!

Someone must have a ton of fun designing displays for this place!

FALL NEST PILLOW

I just finished making another felted wool nest pillow for my "ring bearer pillow" customer from here.   It's going to be a birthday gift for her mom and is reserved for her in my etsy shop, Gillyflower Cottage.  These colors are completely different from any I've done in the past - so pretty!

Brown for the pillow itself, burnt orange for the flowers, green for the leaves, and green wool roving that will be needle-felted onto the pillow for the branches.

 I cut a variety of sizes for the flowers.  Larger circles make nice full flowers and the smaller circles look like little buds.

 Just cut the circles into spirals.

These are the same size circles - just cut differently.  I only circled around about three times on the left circle, and about 6 times on the right circle.  Fewer times around gives you a much looser flower.

 Here's the flower from the left cut circle.

 And, here's the flower from the right.

To finish off the flowers, put a little pile of hot glue on the bottom of the flower.

Then put the bottom of the flower onto the glue and let it dry.

 Then I took the green roving, my needle-felting tool, and the background fabric.  I felted in some random "branches".

 You might want to try several arrangements with the flowers and some leaves - remembering to leave room for the nest and bird somewhere in the design.

 Love the texture in these pillows!

 For the nest, I used some 2" strips of burlap.  I ironed the edges in, then folded them to the inside and ironed it one more time.  

 Then wind it up loosely so there's room for the eggs.

The eggs are made by rolling a little roving into a ball and needle-felting it into a nice little egg shape.  Just keep punching away and eventually it will be a solid egg!

Tomorrow . . . I'll finish it up and take more pictures!

ANGEL STATUES AT FOREST HOME CEMETERY

It was a beautifully warm, late fall day yesterday.  We spent part of the day in Forest Home Cemetery searching for angel statues to photograph.  Forest Home has been in existence for 161 years and many of Milwaukee's most famous residents have been buried here, including its founders and beer barons.  You can find the graves of Jacob Best, August Uihlein, Joseph Schlitz, Valentin Blatz, and Frederick Pabst, all right here in Forest Home Cemetery.  Here are some of the photos I took to put in my inspiration file - these would make beautiful drawings!