Using Vintage Flower Cabochons: DIY Embellished Sun (flower) glasses

 

We've been long enamored of Dolce & Gabbana's Autumn/Winter 2012-13 collection. Big accessories with even bigger jewelry makes this collection remarkable.  

With spring vacation just around the corner, and the promise of warm sandy beaches in the near future, we got to thinking about some pairs of stand out sunglasses.

Inspired by Dolce & Gabanna and this and this, we whipped up a couple pairs of our own beflowered sunnies.

 

We pulled out a large box of flower cabochons and used glue dots to temporarily adhere the cabs to the glasses to plan out a design. 

All of the vintage Japanese and vintage West Geman flower cabochons used are available at Bumbershoot Supplies.

 

 

When we were pleased with the arrangement of flowers, we used E6000 glue to permanently adhere the cabochons to the glasses. (Our pointers for working with E6000 glue here!)

Definitely wait a while for each piece to become firm before gluing the next piece on. 

With these bright sunnies everyone at the pool will know that you're no shrinking violet! 

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, Wild Roses

wild roses, near the beach at Carkeek Park, Seattle

Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.

~Walter De La Mare

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week, Grains of Sand

...beach at Seaside,Oregon...

In every outthrust headland, in every curving beach, in every grain of sand

there is the story of the earth. 

~Rachel Carson

New at Bumbershoot Designs. Designs Featuring Vintage Freshwater Pearl Flowers

I recently discovered some vintage freshwater pearls that have been woven by hand into tiny flowers. I had to have them! I absolutely adore vintage glass pearls, and I work with them a lot. This was a wonderful opportunity to work with genuine vintage pearls. Today I share two new designs, just listed at Bumbershoot Designs featuring these lovely pearls.

This necklace features a brass clam shell pendant dating to the 1940's. It is rich and aged in appearance due to the gorgeous natural patina that has occurred on the brass over the last 60+ years. The chain on this necklace is long, 36 inches, so you can wrap it around your neck twice, for a layered look.

These pearl flowers also lend themselves to beautiful stud earrings, and I was excited to to find vintage posts to pair with the pearls.

The Pearl Shell Vintage Charm Necklace and the Pearl Flower Stud Earrings are available at Bumbershoot Designs, or just contact me.

Wishing you a great weekend!

Three Muses. Maps.

"Maps" is the challenge this week at the Three Muses challenge blog - Incorporate maps into your piece.  Here is a book I have made - the base of the book cover is a map of one of our favorite vacation destinations, Seaside Oregon. Over the map I have collaged bits of paper and hand dyed thin papers and metallic threads, so the base map peeks through the layers. 

Then I stitched, stamped and embellished in an ocean theme, with starfish stamps and vintage beads that remind me of iridescent bubbles. 

 Inside this book is an eclectic collection of my handmade papers and paper experiments. I've sewn a seam down the center of the book to hold all the pages together.

Monday in Seattle. Picture and Quote for the Week.

(tidepooling, minus tide, Carkeek Park)

...it's always ourselves we find in the sea.

~ee cummings

Picture of the Week

(Waterfront view, Alki beach.)

Natural

I find the natural world very inspiring.

I like to keep shells and stones from the beach in my studio.

Inspiration at the beach

I took these photos at Carkeek Park, Seattle, at a recent minus tide in June.

Eric loves to see the tiny crabs.


There is all kinds of wild life under the rocks. It's like visiting another planet.

The colors are typical of what you see in Seattle in June. Still lots of grey, but beginning to lighten.

Except sometimes you get a lovely surprise jolt of color, like this wild rose...

...which looks just like these flowers at Bumbershoot Supplies. Amazing...

Bumbershoot Supplies update: lots of flowers

So, what will I do with the time liberated from caring for our foster kittens? 2 blog posts in one day! This one is an update on some new supplies that have arrived for Bumbershoot Supplies, and I'm pretty excited about them.

First are the vintage 1940's to 1950's glass Japanese flower cabochons. These are such a lovely piece of history just to have and hold, and also of course for use in your mixed media, paper and jewelry arts. All of them are simply gorgeous, with lovely detail and beautiful colors.

The painted ones you see above were originally hand painted (just stop and imagine that for a moment...), but over time have lost varying amounts of their color, for an authentic shabby chic feel. Below are some really unique glass wreaths, and wonderfully, these came with their original tags.

We've also received some new hand painted Japanese plastic flower cabochons, also 1940s-1950's vintage. The ones I'm showing below are vibrant hot pink.

I wasn't sure there was any such color in nature, but then I saw this wild rose on the beach at Carkeek Park in Seattle...

There are many more flowers available at Bumbershoot Supplies - head on over and check it out!

Alki By and By

Last week we went to Alki Beach to see the place where the first white settlers landed in Seattle, intending to establish their community. It was 1851, November, in the middle of a torrential downpour when the party came ashore, only to find one building with 4 walls and no roof for the two dozen men, women and children. Mary Ann Denny sat down on a log with her two young daughers and infant son and cried.

"Alki" is a Chinook trading jargon word meaning "by and by" or "eventually". The settlers called this place "New York Alki", capturing their dreams in the name of their new community.

You can see from this photo that the central core of Seattle is not at Alki Beach. If you look closely, you will see the Space Needle peeking out from behind Duwamish Head, the land that is curving out on the right side of the photo. It turns out that the original party spent only 4 months living at Alki Beach before they decided to move across the bay to the area we now know as Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle.

Driving down the road a couple of miles to Duwamish Head, you get these sorts of views (see the Space Needle on the far left of the first photo):

We had a beautiful day for our visit, dramatically different from what the original Seattle pioneers experienced. Warm and cosy in the Alki Bakery, eating raspberry coconut muffins and drinking tea, gazing out on sunny Alki Beach, we read first hand accounts of the original settlement, and reflected on the spirit of Seattle's founders and just how much the city has grown and changed since then.