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An L? Shhhh!!! Riiiight.
There would be more craft play-by-play here if I weren’t working on a secret project at the moment. You know how secret projects can be…you don’t want to talk about them too much because after many months, your friends and family grow weary of the seemingly unfinishable pet project. Like that brilliant novel my friend Stacey is finishing up. (Proceeding to punch myself in the arm on behalf of Stacey.)
So I’m working on something that encompasses a couple hundred letter L’s. I’ll talk about it more as it becomes more concrete.
This post brought to you by the letter L.
Continuing to be inspired by beautiful vintage French stamps, I decoupaged this wood box as a gift for my sister. I chose red stamps since red’s “her color.” One larger brown stamp is used because it’s from Caen, the town where she studied abroad.
The inside is decoupaged with origami papers, and there’s a little to/from sticker with our respective nicknames.
Just wrapped up a couple of bespoke acorn orders. Above is a necklace made for Anne in New York from a twin acorn she provided. They are strung from a brown leather cord and finished with silver-toned findings.
Kathy in Pennsylvania ordered a dozen velvet acorns in cream, below, to go with her antiques.
Glad to know I’m not the only one enchanted by acorns year-round.
Here’s what happened to the stamp houses: They each got a wintery perch. In this instance, pinecones stand in as a pine tree and bush; a tiny fence encloses the backyard.
The base is an off-white felt mound dusted with snow-like glitter, nesting on chartreuse reindeer moss and a birch base.
The base is 3″ wide, and the entire piece is roughly 6″ tall, base to smoke plume. A few are now available in-store at Parcel; another few are available on my etsy shop.
These little houses are decoupaged with vintage French stamps, most of which appear to be 50+ years old, based on the cancel stampings. They even have stamp chimneys, and if they had windows, maybe you could see stamp fireplaces with stamp roaring fires. These are part of a larger project that I plan to finish by this weekend.
Update for 4/15/08:
A few sets of similar stamp houses are now available in my etsy shop.
I’m in a different time zone, climate, and possibly planet for a long weekend visiting inlaws. In this land, Michael’s craft stores have faux cactus and leatherworking kits. I didn’t bring any craft projects with me, both because I don’t fully trust that my gear would make it through airport security and also to make time to update my website, heatherdonohue.com. Well, the part of this faraway place, Arizona, where I find myself is where you open your laptop to find there are no wifi connections to be made. I’m back on the grid for a spell here thanks to a local coffee shop that closes at 5 PM. (In further New York snarkiness, the bag of bagels in the deli case here is clearly straight from the freezer.)
Last night I was bonding with my mother-in-law over crafts. She invited me to help myself to yarn and needles, so that is my craft fix for now. In this land where Wranglers are worn without irony, one knits and crochets with acrylics without apology. I was scared by the color of red and green yarns, but decided the black was okay. I’m knitting a black pumpkin (knit 3, purl 1 and repeat) that might be cute. The needles are each over a foot long, which is new to me. Feels like I’m knitting with antennae.
I’ll be back at my craftquarters soon, and will reveal my first crafts of 2008 shortly.
