Last Day of School

"Hotness"

"Pink Fluffy Unicorns"

"Spanish Lace"

  Good-bye to these wonderful flowers!  They are no longer listed in our shop, but they have gone to good homes as parting gifts for three wonderful ladies: my kids' teachers.  It was our first year with a school experience, and these three ladies have made it a wonderful year, for the kids and also for our family.  It was rough at times, but we all worked together to pull through with flying colors. 

Now the kids are excited for their first summer vacation ever, while keeping their eyes looking forward to next school year.  Davey will be in first grade (despite my dream--nightmare?--of him failing kindergarten at the last minute); and Alaina will be in kindergarten (the AM class, which will be nice).  I'm also looking forward to next school year, especially since I now have some experience as a mother of school-age children.  It's quite a lot of work (well, can be) to help them through school: helping with homework, making sure they practice different things, plus the regular duties of a housewife (laundry is chief among those duties, which often is behind).

Well, that's enough for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful summer vacation!!!  :-)

Here's the news!

News for this week (as of 5/17/12):

Knockout!

 

There is a new listing in our shop for you to come see (https://www.etsy.com/listing/100038008/knockout-flower-hair-clip-black-and).  This is one of Alaina's favorites (she's 5, and has very good taste), which was also made for her.  She wears it as often as she can, and it works with most of her outfits since it's so versatile.  I was thinking of different names for this flower, but one can only use one's child's name so many times...so Elisa suggested a variation on that, but that didn't seem to fit either.  That's when I stumbled upon the name "Knockout," which makes me think of the landscape rose by the same name, but also evokes a strong mental picture of classic beauty, which this flower has in abundance.  :-)



In other news, I've just snapped some pictures in the fading light yesterday evening, of only three flowers (well, one is a pair--so 4).  I'm excited though, because we already have a name for one of them, and that makes work down the road a lot easier when I'm not trying to wrack my brain for names (something I don't think I'm very good at). Remember when I said we've been following the show "Once Upon A Time"?  Here's another flower with a name and theme inspired by that show.  Keep in mind that these are raw pictures and have not been cleaned up yet, so it's a bit rough around the edges, so to speak; but the colors are a really deep, rich eggplant or aubergine purple with accents of pewter gray and a cool clock button.

Storybrook

The other flowers are, as yet, unnamed.  But they'll be listed soon, with really interesting names, no doubt. 

Black with pale green centers on bobby pins

Our first all-feather flower, with handcut lace and pearl

In other news, we are in the process of creating some new flowers.  Elisa is working on another in her series (Young Women's Values), which is green and will be entitled "Knowledge".  I'm working on another featuring our handstamped petals, with hand curled peacock feathers.  There are also some others...but I'll share more about those later.

We have this goal that helps with our creative process, of each creating 1-2 flowers per week.  So far it's working out really well, and we're able to schedule some time to work together each week to reach our goal.  Since there are two of us, that makes a reasonable workload of flowers to photograph, edit, and list each week--not to mention, keeping things new and interesting for our customers.

Be sure to stop by our shop and check out our creations!

Mad Hatter and Mary Margaret

I was slacking a bit yesterday, so I didn't write the traditional blurb about the new listing from yesterday; but today, I will write about two flowers.


Here we have the most awesome of all flowers (that we have created, anyway): Mad Hatter Style!

Mad Hatter Style

This was a seriously fun flower to create, though it did go really fast since it came together so well.  I love the extra detail of the checkerboard felt on the back.  The satin petals add the fashion boost for your more formal occasions, as would be approved by our favorite hatter and his tea party buddies.

Now, Elisa and I have been very involved with watching and following the hit TV show, "Once Upon A Time", so of course several of our pieces are influenced by one of our favorite shows.  The cute little flowers here would be right at home with one of the characters from that show, Mary Margaret (Snow White).  So dainty and delicate, with a tremendous style, these flowers are attached to bobby pins, making them very easy to add to almost any hair style.  

Mary Margaret

https://www.etsy.com/listing/99981663/mary-margaret-feather-flower-bobby-pins

Opening Day!

This flower is extremely popular with my 5-year-old daughter...
After I photograph the items to be listed in the shop I put them neatly on my desk, then as they're listed I put them away on my wall boards--so when Alaina comes home from school or when she's randomly walking by my desk, she'll just put this flower in her hair saying, "Look, I got a flower!"

Opening Day

She's very comical, but I have to say it really does suit her style.  She's rather a dramatic girl ;-)  She'll be surprised that I finally took the time to list it, and it will no longer be within her reach.  Hopefully she'll be fine with that, and we'll avoid the dramatic moment.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/99792083/opening-day-feather-flower-hair-clip

Does anyone read these posts?

Well, I'm here to report the listing of another new item in our shop: "Shooting Star".  This flower is really cool because it is so versatile: I can see this lovely flower pinned to a sash, worn in the hair, or pinned on as a corsage.  The pictures turned out great with it on the black velvet that I didn't feel I needed to shoot it against the other backgrounds, and they hardly needed any cleanup before posting.  Makes my job a lot easier to get it out to our customers! 

Elisa had a great time making this beautiful flower, as well, figuring out the delicate shaping of the tulle layers, and playing with the pearl bead strands.  It came together so well, and looks so wonderful! 
Take a look at these three views of the flower, with different orientations:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/99549406/shooting-star-flower-hair-clip-bridal-or

By the way, we really do welcome comments!  We'd love to know if anyone reads our posts :-)