off to silver bella

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It's Silver Bella time again, so I'm finishing up swaps and gathering supplies and packing up my red slippers for Omaha. There's just time to slip in a couple peeks at some of my swap offerings.




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autumn banner tutorial

Lovely requests for a supply list or project instructions for my Autumn Banner have prompted me to share a quick tutorial here. There's still plenty of time to make this project while the leaves fall, right? Originally, I made this seasonal banner to hang from Halloween through Thanksgiving, so the pennant colors include black, white, orange and gold. You can substitute more autumn colors to suit your taste. Add photos of your ghoulish ancestors or your cute kids to the glittered frames and hang it above your Thanksgiving buffet.



First, here's my supply list. A few items are custom or vintage, but you can easily replace them from your own stash.

• 12x12" paper Graphic 45 Renaissance Faire Collection "Masterpiece" (double-sided)
• 12x12" paper My Mind's Eye The Spider's Web "Haunted Parlor" (double-sided)
• Jenni Bowlin Scalloped Banner Set Large 6" (4 pennants)
• Jenni Bowlin Border Stickers Black
• Jenni Bowlin Chipboard Buttons Old Time Photos
• 7Gypsies Metal Page Edge, Lace, Antique Silver
• Maya Road Velvet Puff Flowers, Orange and Cream
• May Arts Ribbon, 1+1/2" wide black/cream stripe
• Martha Stewart deep orange glitter (I mixed mine from 3 shades of her glitter) and glue
• Martha Stewart glow-in-the-dark glitter
• Baker's twine, black/white (for small spool, Layer Cake Shop)

• Mini cupcake liners, black/white striped (Layer Cake Shop)
plus:
• Chipboard pennants (3) cut with Stampin' Up Pennant Die (or substitute Jenni Bowlin Banner Set Small)
• Chipboard frames and hearts (3 each) cut with Stampin' Up Pennant Die
• Upholstery fabric chrysanthemums cut with Sizzix die (Joann's fabric)
• Thread and needle to gather ribbon flower
• Vintage rust seam binding
• Vintage charcoal grey seam binding
• Acorns and dried statice
• Black/white photos, small


With your supplies gathered, the first step is to trace and cover the 4 larger pennants with Graphic 45 patterned paper, alternating both sides of the paper. Add Jenni Bowlin border stickers, including at paper seams, using the striped sticker background, too, if you like. Ink edges of pennants as desired. Glue an orange velvet blossom to the bottom of each scalloped pennant. Use a crop-a-dile to punch 2 holes in the upper corners.

Tie vintage rust seam binding through 4 large JB chipboard buttons. Through 2 small chipboard buttons, tie vintage grey seam binding. Tie one or two small chipboard button with black/white twine. Ink edges of buttons.




















For the two scalloped end pennants, make a ribbon medallion: Sew a basting stitch along one long 15” edge of striped ribbon, gather tightly into a circle, overlap and stitch the ends together. Glue a large tied chipboard button to a fabric chrysanthemum, then glue the flower to a striped ribbon medallion. Glue the ribbon medallions to the center of each end pennant.

For the other two scalloped pennants, staple a small dried flower sprig to the center of each pennant where buttons will cover the staples. Using single and double layers of foam adhesive, arrange the tied chipboard buttons over the flower stems. If you wish, add a Dresden gold foil cobweb to one pennant, or substitute another button with twine. You can also recycle fun "found" items, like the small “B is for Boo" flap that is an inspection sticker from a garment.





















(By the way, these photos taken back in September show the Halloween elements, like the dried black heather, black cat, etc. Since then, I've replaced them with more autumn colors. Sorry I didn't have time to edit the photos for better color quality . . . please click on them to enlarge for detail. )

Next cover the 3 smaller chipboard pennants with MME black paper. Glitter the 3 chipboard hearts and 3 oval frames. Fold the mini cupcake liners in half. Glue cream velvet blossoms to the folded cupcake liners, then to the glittered hearts. Glue the orange glittered heart tassels to two smaller pennants. Glue the glow-in-the-dark glittered heart tassel to the middle pennant.





















Carefully cut a 7Gypsies metal border in half. Remove the inner protective layer and adhere each half to the top of the orange-heart pennants; trim to fit. Trace a scalloped pennant edge to cut a Graphic 45 scalloped border for the middle pennant. Use a crop-a-dile to punch 2 holes in the upper corners.

Cover the 3 chipboard ovals with MME reverse pattern paper and/or black/white family photos. Using foam tape, adhere the photo ovals to the black pennants. Then glue the glittered frames to the ovals. Glue acorns above frames.

Finally, string the pennants together using the baker's twine. Tie loops in the ends and hang in the window or over the mantel until Thanksgiving.

Hope you enjoy making this Autumn Banner. If you have joined Kari's Year of Color blog, you can see Candice's smaller but similar Halloween banner there. If you send me a link in the comments section when you're done, we can all drop by to see your version.
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happy haunting

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playing musical chairs

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On Friday, with my friends Amy and Hope, I'll be driving to New York to join Charlotte in her autumn house wren studio session. I'm totally excited to participate in the special day she has planned for her cottage class.





Meanwhile, in order to make the trip following my back injury, I've been paying careful attention to the flexibility exercises my chiropractor has advised me to do, wearing my back brace as needed, and using the cold pack often to minimize the disk inflammation. Sitting is still a problem (MRI re-scheduled at the end of October), and it's much more comfortable for me to walk around than to stay stationary. Painting at my new lightweight easel is therefore easier than sitting down to do small-scale handwork, like stitching on my tardy Silver Bella swaps. Walking outside in the beautiful fall weather today was even better.








It's been interesting to evaluate the chairs in my house from my temporary weight-shifting perspective. How much attention do you normally give to the angle or depth of the seat, the curve of the back, or how firm is the front edge of the seat when you choose to sit? My chairs all seemed comfortable to me before. Right now, ironically, the least comfortable are my Eames chairs (not pictured), whose relaxed span is just too difficult to maneuver.











So I'm hoping that my being a model patient will pay off this Friday, when sitting in the car for about 6 hours will be my first big test. Thankfully, my car does have comfortable seats. But I predict more pit stops than usual, if only long enough to stand up and amble around the car before sitting down again.












By the way, in case you've noticed, I've had a medical excuse not to vacuum or dust for almost two months. How cool is that!!
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black and gold for autumn

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One reason I love the change in seasons is this warm color combination

pairing black and gold with the tang of orange.

Are you in the mood for autumn decorating?





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just sharing . . .

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Today my mailbox offered me some happy mail instead of the usual

junk mail that gets wadded up in there.

I wish I could somehow pay to prevent junk mail from arriving, especially the stuff from every insurance company and medicare provider (all of whom know exactly when I turn 65 -- don't think your privacy is in any way protected from those who can make money by knowing your data), investment company, politician (it's soon November again), and so on. Do you have any clue how many commercial ventures have you programmed in their data bases?

Trash cans full.

With no redeeming scrapbooking graphics.

But today is a happy mail day.

So I thought I would share the hand-applied greetings on these delightful envelopes that arrived from two real people.

Hi, Brin and Judy -- you made my day! :)

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heather's art journaling class update

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Last week I signed up online for Heather's "A Beautiful Life" art journaling class. It's taken me a while to find some bits of time to pull together just the cover. Thank heavens Heather is leaving up her class for the whole month of October (and is still taking sign-ups), so I can catch up on the pages.

Besides all the beautiful vintage images that Heather is providing to download, this project appealed to me because I still consider myself a vintage newbie. It isn't often that I manage thrift shopping, and it's never thrifty when I do. Not yet for me those huge gorgeous salivating piles of vintage wallpaper, soft faded pearls, endless lace trims, timeworn millinery flowers, and so on. My meager stash did not come as bargains. So I thought it would be a fun challenge to see what I could come up with -- without.

First issue to contend with was finding the book to alter. In true urban style, I stopped by the book-sale corner of my local library to see what surprise might be hiding among all the well-thumbed recent best-sellers for resale. Luckily, off to the side as though nobody knew where to shelve it, was an old book of organ music. It's a little larger than Heather's suggested size, but it came with all those pages of music (even though organ music is a little strange on the page).

Next challenge was turning the deep green cloth book cover into something a little milder. Lacking the desirable wallpaper stash, I decided to use some of my Carolyne Roehm embossed wrapping paper in this delicious buttermilk color. One advantage: since it isn't crackly old wallpaper, it wraps easily around the edges and corners to give a nice finished look. And I love that deep textural feel, although much of the paper surface is eventually covered. Adding to Heather's blog discussion about which glues to try, my glue of choice for this large scale was Golden's Gel Medium, slathered evenly all over the book cover, followed by smoothing on the paper with a brayer. I used this same gel/brayer process for all the papers.

Since my cover was rather large (10" x 14"), I felt it needed more embellishment than Heather's smaller example. So I attached a row of creamy pompoms and lace trim down the side, using red line tape. Then I collaged my papers, including Heather's terrific cover download and some organ music pages, with gel medium. A little distress inking softened the torn edges.


With no big gorgeous floppy vintage millinery flowers, I tried to match the scale by assembling a bouquet of newly-made ones to arrange across the top of the cover. The layered flowers use cream Prima paper flowers and white felt flowers cut on my Sizzix machine. In the center of the two silk flowers from Michael's, I inserted some pale blue flower stamens left over from my recent layout class. All the flowers were spritzed with Glimmer Mist in gold and topaz to add some "aged" color and just a little shimmer.


Then I stacked up a "real" vintage collar and folded doily to drape as a base for the flowers, attaching each layer with red line tape. To help with dimension, I slid some chipboard in between the lace layers. Heather's "A Beautiful Life" title banner is sewn onto a printed stack of old tags. In the leftover tag space, I wrote the word "creating" to augment the title. The banner edges are highlighted with Stickles.


At the bottom of the cover, I added more buttons, part of another white felt flower and, channeling Rebecca Sower, a gathered ribbon with pink pearls. Except that my white twill ribbon is from the wrapping of my Williams-Sonoma napkins and the pearls are fake. Actually, I split one pearl in half trying to thread it on my tapestry needle, so I glued it up on the title banner.

Although I was pinch-hitting most of the way, it sure was fun using Heather's guidelines to assemble this vintage-style cover. Now I hope to start on the pages before Christmas. :)
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putting my back to it

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Returning from a recent trip, I tried unsuccessfully to hoist a filled-to-capacity suitcase with my soon-to-be-65-year-old back muscles. Years of military-wife practice at packing, including boxing up the entire house some 26 or 27 times, have made me a pro at getting all 50 pounds into that suitcase with no wasted space, no sweat. Ask Carol, my hotel roomie on another trip not too long ago. (By the way, Carol is having a super giveaway on her blog right now. Go see.) It should have been the usual quickly-done chore, fulfilled easily on so many other trips.

Instead, something went crotchety. You know, went stubbornly in the wrong direction, regardless of clear intent, a perfectly good plan and practiced execution. After several days of lower back pain, accompanied by sitting bolt upright on the slimmest edge of chairs, or pacing endlessly while thinking deep philosophical thoughts because walking was infinitely more comfortable than propping myself here and there like a grouchy orangutan, I gave in to my husband's plea. We went to the local chiropractor.

In case you detect some hesitancy on my part, you should know that my grandfather, who lived with us back while I was in school, called all doctors "quacks" and would go only to the chiropractor -- for any and all ailments. Now I have two sons studying to be doctors. One goes to the chiropractor. So off I went.

Among the things I learned from the chiropractor (after 3 visits in 3 days):

1) The average life expectancy of white women in the US is now 96 years, so I better get used to preventing as many creaks as possible with 30+ years to continue my trips.

2) Artistic types like me may be good at sublimating or working their pain into their art (any kind, read any famous artist's biography). But the fix for my back problem would have been quicker and easier if I hadn't waited so long. (Yes, he said ALL that. He also called me a "tough old bird", by which he did not mean all sinew and no fat.)

3) The reason my butt has felt like a ton of bricks that takes an agonizing forever to slide in or out of bed is thanks to the inflammation around the pivotal compressed discs in my lower back. It's interfering with muscle control, bladder control, and general self control. Coughing is not the least painful among the excruciating responses to that loss of muscle control. Did you know so many brain messages went through that part of the lower back? Inflammation around a compressed disc interferes with it all.

The good news: My husband has to do the vacuuming for the near future. And I'm much improved after 3 visits.

The surprise: I should seriously consider getting back into my tennis duds as soon as I'm recovered. It's important to keep the synovial lubricant moving fluidly over all your joints. Walking is good, but not really enough.

So I'm wishing you an actively-enjoyed weekend!
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i think i'll labor in the garden this weekend

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Have you been making plans for your extended Labor Day weekend? Will you attend a traditional parade, or maybe gather family and friends for a fine-weather barbecue before the end of summer?

With all the talk in the news right now about our high unemployment rate, I've been thinking about why we celebrate Labor Day in the first place.  Did you know this observance started in Canada following labor disputes there, then was transported to New York City by American labor leaders in 1882, and was proposed as a national holiday by President Cleveland following the widespread railroad Pullman Strike (started in Pullman, Illinois) in 1894?  During high school, I spent a school holiday laboring intensely over a term paper on labor unions, labor strikes, and Eugene Debs, first a Democrat and then a Socialist who, after being imprisoned for his part in the Pullman Strike, was ultimately nominated 5 times for President.

Our labor laws have come a long way since.  It's interesting, too, to see how we've adjusted our social attitudes about labor in this country as our population and the size of our federal government have grown.  Regardless of our uncertain economy today, we seem now to take it for granted that everyone should have access to a paying job -- or to federal subsidies like unemployment and welfare paid for by those who do work. Even in the best of times, job guarantees obviously can't be the case.  In a week-long series of articles back in the booming mid-1990s, The Washington Post quoted a Pennsylvania trucker, saying "I've never met a poor man yet who could offer me a job."  While working for someone else is nothing new or even always desirable, when did it morph into an American right?  Happily, this country does seek to allow us to work how and where we please, including for ourselves.  Surely that's what our holiday parades should celebrate.

If you have any spare time this long weekend, perhaps you'll enjoy visiting Brin's blog, My Messy, Thrilling Life.  Please read it from the beginning, back when she started in 2005.  It's a well-written story that will capture your emotions as you follow her labors to build her dream at Freeman House.  Be prepared.  As she quotes, life is not always tied up with a bow, but it is a gift nonetheless.

Wishing you a leisurely weekend!
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jenni bowlin at town square

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Although I'm in no hurry to see summer go, the cool weather this week has been whetting my taste for autumn. With night temperatures dropping low already, maybe we'll have a beautiful range of foliage colors this fall to make up for all the leaf-raking that inevitably follows. So this seems a good time to welcome the cozy days of autumn with Jenni Bowlin’s new “Town Square” line of papers. A little bit outdoor country fair, a little bit indoor cozy pattern, this double-page layout makes the season’s transition by adding pleats, bows, flowers and vintage-style stickers, plus a little distress inking, if you choose. Come join me in class at the end of September at Scrapbooks Plus.



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