Collections and Other Stuff I Like

Sometimes, when I get a gift, I know exactly where it’s going to go. Sometimes, it takes a while to figure it out. And sometimes I know where in general but not exactly where. When one of my gifts from my daughter was a papercut Day of the Dead mermaid card from Two Hermanas I knew I wanted it to be near the Two Hermanas Loteria papercut card my Birmingham niece had given me. We tried it in a few places on the gallery wall and realized it looked best behind the Day of the Dead mermaids.

At first I thought the nativity my Birmingham niece brought back from Oaxaca would be displayed with all the other nativities at Christmas. But when I put it with them it didn’t look right and I knew it belonged on the gallery wall shelves where we’d get to see it all year.

It was my husband who figured out that it needed those little birds on either side.

I knew exactly where the mermaid we got from my Pennsylvania in laws would go. There was a space in the mermaid display that had been bugging me ever since I hung the mermaid plate there this summer. I think this mermaid may be a bookmark but I think she looks perfect here.

My husband gave me a framed collage “Believe” and he was so glad that I figured out a place for it. “I loved it, but I had no idea where it was going to go,” he said. There was the perfect space for it in the workroom.

There are a few more gifts that need to be incorporated when the Christmas decorations are put away, and there is one that I need to figure out how to display, so there will be another incorporation post soon.

For the most part the Christmas decorations landed in the same places this year – snowpeople and Santas on top of the speakers, gnomes on the white book shelves, Christmas villages on the small bookshelf, and nativity scenes on top of the china cabinet. The deer moved about a bit, though. The plaid deer found a new home on top of the new bookcase.

I found the one in the front at the end of the season last year I think at a drug store but I’m not quite sure. I made the little wooden guy inspired by one at Four Sided. Theirs had wire antlers and I had tried to make that work but couldn’t and had given up. But when I was making something else with pipe cleaners this year I got the idea to try them and I like the result. I just made this one though.

I got two new wooden trees this year so 8 had four foe each side of the “wooden” deer on top of the small CD bookcase.

We purchased the one in the front with some bark on it at The Found Cottage on our Michigan vacation. The one behind it came from a World Market.

We went to Columbia, Missouri for Thanksgiving and did a little shopping the next day. We found another cute alpine house (the one in the middle on the second shelf)

We also found this little metal pitcher for the kitchen ornament collection. It reminds me of the child sized pitchers at Nonotuck.

Our first purchase for this year was way back in the Spring at a TJ Maxx. As soon as I saw this Dala horse I knew we had to get him.

And my last one was The Grinch. When I saw him at Walgreens on my last last minute shopping trip I knew he belonged on my children’s book and movie characters tree.

I got a late start on this year’s window decorations since I was still working on my Stitchtober piece in November (it’s still not done…). I had seen some stars created by The House That Lars Built using a Cricut but since I don’t have or want one, I didn’t want to buy the template which meant I had to figure it out myself. I ended up with 12 pointed stars which is less than the originals but they worked and I liked the way they looked. I had a progressive size hole puncher so I decided to make a line of holes on each point starting larger and getting smaller at the center. Each star has two sides and I started out making holes on both sides. The hole puncher broke before I finished the last star but luckily I hadn’t put the penultimate one together so the last two have plain backs which is actually fine since they get the same amount of light shining through and you can’t see the holes from the street anyway.

The kitchen “window” decorations were also inspired by The House That Lars Built. This year’s Instagram #larscraftalong Heirloom Ornaments involved printing photos on fabric and then embellishing them with embroidery and stuffing them. It also involved ornaments made by famous people who do a live crafting session on Instagram. Mary Engelbreit was one of the crafters this year and rather than embroidering on a photo she was embroidering a drawing she had made of a snow person which gave me the idea of using gnomes. So I googled gnome drawings, found some cute ones, and figured out a way to save and print them. I embroidered them with red thread and then backed them with red fabric.

I also made some Heirloom Ornaments of my grandchildren and and one set of grandnibblings.

I was also inspired by another #larscraftalong participant, Robert Mahar who embroiders vintage photos. I made packets of two photos of the Baby Group Moms for a Zoom crafting session.

I made an Instagram post and Robert Mahar liked and commented on my post and shared Cheryl’s in progress piece.

And I think this is just the beginning…

Remembering Julie and Mr. Burns today.

We started our Fall decorating with some dried pods we got in Saugatuck. We saw them in the window of a closed small wellness store while we were waiting for a restaurant table one night and I have no idea what plant they’re from but I loved them so I went back the next day to buy them.

Then we began adding some tried and true elements – the pillow I made from a quilt block my sister sewed on the bench, the grapevine branches with the Fall ornaments in the living room, and the black Halloween trees in the dining room area. I also hung up the grapevine wreath with the Day of the Dead ornaments that I made last year. And we have a new piece of furniture this year so we had a new space to decorate!

Our neighbor moved to California for a year and rented her apartment unfurnished so we inherited a tall bookcase that seemed like it was made for our apartment. At first I thought it would go between the china cabinet and the bench and it fit but was overpowering so we moved the small bookcase there permanently (instead of just for Christmas) and put the large bookcase next to the sideboard. I filled it with the large bowl my sister gave me for Christmas last year, the Alexander Girard book my husband gave me for Christmas many years ago, a few art books and a bowl a friend gave me for Christmas one year on top of a little wooden stand from India that I bought at Marshalls as well as our Christmas memory books and a good chunk of our other memory books. I thought this new bookcase would be a good place to put the velvet pumpkins this year. There are some on the top shelf, some on the middle shelf in the bowl and on the stack of art books, and two on the Christmas book shelf below. On the top shelf I also put the wooden mushrooms I bought last year along with a new one I bought at an art fair this summer from Donzell Gordon.

I put a spooky barber shop I bought at an end of the season sale at World Market last year on the small bookcase. It needed something to camouflage the wooden bottom and the spooky graveyard skeletons we bought at that store that was going out of business a few years ago was perfect.

I was taken with a cute gnome on Instagram holding a lantern so I made two (and another little gnome holding a pumpkin when I came across the pumpkin buttons I got at the recycle table at the dump in Northampton several years ago) When my grandchildren came over I invited them to make some peg people too. They were spending the night and we watched Over The Garden Wall and I kept thinking the main character would make a cute peg person so I made him the next day.

And finally I searched for a vintage Halloween card to make my trick or treats this year and since they featured a pumpkin headed witch ghost I paired them with pumpkin candies.

Have artist painted bike racks:

And utility boxes:

And plant related sculptures:

I’ve become aware lately of varied pieces of mermaid art in Starbucks. Or Siren art according to Starbucks. Their website says: “The siren is like a super mermaid. A mermaid with one tail is just a plain ol’ mermaid. (Sorry, Ariel.) But a siren is often depicted with two tails.” This is all they have to say about Sirens – they don’t address the mythology of sirens and their voices that lure sailors to their death nor do they give examples of any sirens with two tails (other than the label on their source picture)

According to the Mermaids of Earth website: “Twin tailed mermaid are not uncommon in history at all, dating back at least to the 7th century…When depicted with a crown, old mermaid illustrations almost certainly refer to the story of Melusine, who according to legend was transformed into a mermaid every Saturday. She married Prince Raymondin of Poitou – without mentioning her little transformation problem – and with him founded the royal House of Lusignan and bore him 10 or 11 children. The house of Lusignan ruled much of Europe from the 12th through the 15th centuries so Melusine would clearly have been entitled to wear a crown.”

Be that as it may, as my mother would say, whether you call them mermaids, sirens, or Melusine you can find a lot of different renderings of them at different Starbucks.

I can’t wait to find more!

Several years ago a friend gave me some old embroidery supplies that I think belonged to her mother. I started using them when I began doing hoop embroidery last year and in the middle of embroidering my Stitchtober fairy tale piece the inner part of the vintage embroidery hoop broke. I would have just thrown it out except that it had a vintage label on it from F.W. Woolworth’s that included the price – two for a dollar – and the country of origin – Taiwan.

It just hung around broken for awhile and then I realized what to do with it. I could use it to frame a vintage image. And maybe because I had been to three Henry Darger exhibits at the Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art over the last year, I thought of searching for an old coloring book page to use as an image.

I found this little girl and with Henry Darger in mind, I thought she would be perfect. I had some challenges transferring the image to my fabric. This time I just traced directly onto the fabric but since I don’t have a light table I have to use the window and it is challenging. Getting her face right was quite difficult but I finally had to accept that I had done the best I could and as long as I don’t compare her to the original I’m pretty happy with it.

I used some of the vintage embroidery thread on her dress and apron and her hair. The label is on the right on the side of the hoop.

I was almost finished with her when I had to stop to take a road trip to go to a wet felting class with Dawn Edwards I had signed up for with my felting friend. We could have taken a weekend long hat felting class but since our first foray into wet felting had been with the master hat felter Beth Beede, we opted for the Friday Flower felting. We were imagining flowers with stems and while Dawn did show us how to do that, the main focus of the class was on flower embellishments. I made most of a poppy at the class and when I got home after I finished the embroidery, I needlefelted a center for the poppy and added some beads for seeds. I think I’m going to attach it to a headband and turn it into a sort of fascinator.

I plan to tackle some flowers with stems next but I’m not sure if I will wet felt or needlefelt them.