Craft Club #5: Floral Arrangements

Goodness, I almost forgot to post a recap of Craft Club #5!!!! WHAT IN THE HELL WAS I THINKING?! *Slaps self on the wrist*..... *Immediately thinks of slap bracelets*.... *giggs*

First of all, yes - I'm back from my trip to Panama, and YES - it was AMAZEBALLS. I've still been getting back into "non-vacation mode" brain, which means I haven't even bothered blogging about any of it yet or editing pictures. I'll get to it, obviously. And when I do - I suspect you'll know about it.

Anyway, back to Craft Club. In late March, my friend Kim hosted our monthly craft seshhhh, and this time we were learning some basics about floral arrangements! Fun bonus fact: Kim was super preggers at the time, but she has since given birth to a bouncing baby boy named Benjamin. I haven't officially met him yet, but I assume he's the best.

Joined at Kim's house by Abby, Jenna, and Anna, we spent a late weekend morning/early afternoon munching on brunch foods, gabbing, and arranging beautiful flowers into glass vases.

Kim had prepped for the day by purchasing a ton of flowers -  blue and white hydrangeas, cream, yellow and pink roses, green and white mums, and hypericums for accents. She also happened to have about a million spare glass vases around her home, thanks to her wedding last summer! #Recycle.

Admittedly, we spent most of the time chatting and eating. The food spread for the day was spot-on: fruit salad, 2 different types of homemade quiche, donuts, Waldorf salad... mmm!

A couple of the tricks/tips that Kim taught us...

1. Arranging flowers in 3's (triangles) makes the overall look balanced, rather than rigidly symmetrical. For example, the pink roses in the below pic are forming a triangle (even though the one in the upper right is hiding a bit!):

2. Don't be afraid to wind/weave the stems of flowers into each other. You don't need them each to stand up beside each other like soldiers. LET THEM MINGLE!

Here are all of the finished arrangements from the day.... though I can't for the life of me remember whose is whose! Mine is the only one I know for sure - it's the top-center in this picture:

Another successful Craft Club with good food, good friends, good conversation, and good creativity! I believe the next one will involve drawing/coloring/picnicking out by the Charles River in Cambridge, and I am very much looking forward to it!

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A Collage from Leftover Scraps

So not to make a really left-field reference to something that happened months ago, but.... anyone remember that "just because" collage I made back in January? No? That's ok, I won't hold a grudge. It's right here, if you'd like a quick refresher. G'wan then. Take a look - it's relevant to this blog post.

K, now that you've definitely gone and looked, here's why it's relevant:  Using the scraps of magazine cutouts that were leftover from that collage, I made another collage altogether. Heyooo! #Recycle.

Here's a casual step-by-step via photos:

And the mandatory close-ups of the details:

Here are the two pieces together:

The cool thing about recycling scraps from one collage to make a new one is that you can create multiple pieces of art that have a similar feel, but each with its own unique look. It kind of reminds me of a fashion show - where everything that comes down the runway looks like it belongs together, even though each piece is different. Here's another example of a similar kind of project I made for my grandmother several years ago:

I hope to do more crafty things soon - whether it be painting or making more collages or drawing. I feel happy and purposeful when creating things, so it makes sense to make an effort to do it more often.

On that note, I'll have a recap soon of Craft Club #5, I promise!

So what artistic projects are YOU working on?
Do you have a favorite Pin board for color palettes? They make for great collage inspiration!

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Craft Club #4: Creating Collages

I've attempted to write this blog at least five times, but it just keeps getting knocked off the table, so to speak. How's about we do this thing now, hmm? LEGGO!

On the last Sunday in January, it was my turn to host Craft Club! For our fourth meeting of the crafty minds, we spent a few hours making collages and nibbling on apps and pizza.

Before Stephanie, Kate, Kim, Lauren and Abby arrived, I set up a table in my living room and covered it with the craft supplies for the day's collaging:

• magazines
• rulers
• cutting boards
• x-acto knives
• scissors
• glue sticks
• rubber cement

Around the perimeter of the living room, I also set out several framed collages that I've made over the years. These were for both inspiration and decoration, since my place was pretty bare at the time.

Once everyone arrived, I gave the girls a rundown on the techniques that I typically use when making my own collages. Then we all just dug in and began poking through all of our magazines, pulling out pages and figuring out what kind of collage each of us wanted to make.

As usual, it was awesome to see how differently everyone's projects turned out.

Here's Kim's - her collage has some ornate gilded age details to it:

.  kim's  .

I loved Lauren's woodsy, animal- and nature-inspired collage:

.  lauren's  .

Steph's was filled with just the right amount of crafty angst:

.  steph's  .

Abby's was pretty and peaceful and seemed to fit her personality perfectly:

.  abigail's  .

Mine was just nowhere near finished by the time my guests left, because I apparently take days longer to make collages than anyone else does! Here's what I was playing around with on my canvas... and hopefully it will be completed someday.

And apparently I didn't get a picture of Kate's because it's nowhere to be found. OOPS! Sorry Kate, I'm sure yours was beautiful.

Of course, Craft Club would be a sad affair if there was no food involved, so for munchies we had:

• vanilla frosted mini-cupcakes
• carrots/cherry tomatoes/hummus
• crackers
• pizza
• soda

Kim has offered to host our next one, when she's going to show us some of her favorite tips for putting together floral arrangements. That's going to be a fantastically useful craft to learn, for sure. Can't wait to share that with you!

What sorts of crafty projects have you been getting into lately?

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Homemade Art: A Collage Just Because

So here's something I haven't mentioned yet on my blog because the situation has been just too insane for me to bring up "in public":  My roommate moved out at the end of December while I was in Washington, DC. I still don't intend to go into the details of the entire situation (sawry), but suffice to say that I came home from my trip to an empty apartment, and my immediate reaction was, "Whoa..." followed almost instantly by "HELL. YES."

The lease is still partially in her name until the end of January, so I now have until February to find a new roomie. In the meantime, however, I am absolutely DRINKING IN the fact that this entire enormous apartment is all mine right now. With all of this newfound space to spread out, I've been cleaning, singing (so much singing), making hot chocolates, and doing art projects to my heart's delight.

I began this collage just before leaving for DC, and finished it shortly after coming home (riding the high of my apartment freedom). The model featured in this collage was pretty much the inspiration for the entire thing - I love the soft, natural jade greens of the field grass she's surrounded by, so I started with that and added tiffany blue, teal, orchid, natural wood and crisp whites to the palette.

.  click for larger view  .

Here's how it was all laid out before everything was glued down...

After arranging the pieces the way I like them, I then take close-up pictures of each part of the collage. Then I remove all of the pieces and glue them back down in the correct order:

 The finished product:

I love the color scheme and the way that parts of the collage extend past the ends of the canvas. That does mean that it can't fit into a frame, but I think it's a small price to pay for the unique detail!

When I finish a collage, I'm often left with lots of scraps of magazine clippings from the project. In this case, there are enough scraps that I'm actually making another collage from them. That means the next collage will be in a similar color scheme, but will have its own feel. I can't wait to finish that one and show you!

It feels good to be making some little crafty projects like this - and I'm reminded that it's not that hard to find the time to be creative here and there.  It's particularly enjoyable if you happen to have an entire apartment to yourself to turn into your own personal crafting station.

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My Lace and Burlap Inspired Gift Wrapping

Hellllllo and a very Merry post-Christmas to you all! This past week I have been in Pittsfield visiting with my family, and today I am off to a wedding in Connecticut for my friends Luke and Dani. Finding myself with a bit of free time, I thought I'd check in quickly to show off you how I ended up wrapping all of my Christmas gifts this year.

As evidenced in my Holiday Gift Wrapping Ideas post, I was really digging the idea of using lace, string, or burlap embellishments on plain white and brown wrapping papers. And, by golly, I did just that.

Materials used:

• brown wrapping paper
• white wrapping paper
• 2 different types of lace ribbon
• 2 different types of burlap ribbon
• small plastic pearl garland
• hemp twine
• hot glue gun
• tape
• scissors

After wrapping up all of the presents in either brown paper or white paper (or in some cases, both!), I went to town embellishing each differently with all of my accessories. No two are alike... check them out!

I am pretty thrilled with the way these all turned out, considering how often things can go terribly wrong when one is using Pinterest for inspiration. As my friend Derek pointed out, this was all more of an arts and crafts project than a "gift wrap" really haha. As such, I knew that the presents - all paper sealed with tape and all "accessories" secured with hot glue - would not be easy to get into. A small price to pay for all of their aesthetically pleasing outer qualities. I just made sure to pass out scissors to my family so that they could cut through all the lace/ribbon/pearls/burlap and actually get to their presents.

Did you wrap your presents in anything special this year?
What did Santa bring you?

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