resurrection fern

Making Birch Bark Vases : a Simple Tutorial

It is no surprise that I love everything with a woodsy, forest theme. I wanted to have some small simple vases for some flowers I picked so I decided to dress up a few mason jars in my kitchen cupboard. All you need for this very quick craft is glass jars of any size of shape, scissors, a glue gun and some large strips of birch bark. Please never remove bark from a living tree . You can often found some fallen on the ground in the woods or you could strip a small piece off a fallen tree as long as no little creatures have already taken lodge there. If you don't have birch trees where you live I have a photograph of birch park that you can download , print and use for your faux birch vase.
All you need to do is cut your birch bark or tear it to size making sure to leave about a one inch overlap. With your glue gun firmly attach the bark rectangle to the jar. Okay so that took about 20 seconds and look your done already.

Now you can use this as a little container for treasures you have collected from your nature walks or you can fill it with water and place a few well chosen wild or not so wild flowers. The most important thing is to have fun creating your own little nature arrangements. Here are a few pictures of a few of mine.

Look who came out last night to spend some time on the day lilies.

How are you spending the lazy, hazy days of summer?

Is Lavender Blue Dilly Dilly?

In my garden mid july brings the fragrant scent of lavender to mind. As I was sitting in my favorite garden chair one day, enveloped in this scent I thought about that 17th century english folk song.. I grew up with the Burl Ives version on a record my parents owned. I got to thinking why isn't it lavender purple not blue because I definitely think of the lavender in my garden as a shades of purple. I decided to conduct a little experiment to find the answer to my question.

I gathered up some flower heads from the two bushes in the garden. I think I have both french and english lavender represented. I added a few ounces of vodka, only ethanol I could find that was colorless in my laboratory.

Sorry about the bad picture quality but sometimes experiments go well into the night. Now I had to heat the lavender infused vodka up a little to extract the pigments , then I filtered the solution into a clear jar with a lid and placed in it a strip of watercolor paper ( no chromatography paper in the kitchen :( ) and placed the lid on the jar. It took all night for the liquid to reach the top of the paper which was about 4 inches tall. I let the paper dry and observed it. What was definitely a light mauve colored liquid in the jar separated into 4 different pigments on the paper. Now I think you might need to take my word for it since photographing this was very difficult and it wouldn't be recognized by the scanner. The bottom was dark green, next a lighter shade of green, then BLUE, and the top layer was yellow. If there is a next time I will have to concentrate the extract first before the separation.

Every science experiment needs a little craft break while your chromatography is progressing . I made a little crochet sleeve with a loop for hanging for a test tube. Makes a great little vessel for a single flower and you can hang it just about anywhere, I might even put one in the car for natural air freshening.

So yes , lavender is blue. and I used to think dilly was someone's name like billy not an adjective . I guess that's why I am not an english major. The last picture of this post is the last item in my knitting with paper experiments and it just so happens to have the color lavender in it. Coincidence???

Curtains of Rain on a Saturday Afternoon

The purpose of this post was to show you the items I bought at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition on friday. I could have spent thousands of dollars on some incredible art but still have a few children to put through university and hope to have a few family trips in the next year so I had to put my cheque book under lock and key. Here is the vintage book purse I told you about made by the very talented Noelle Hamlyn and her sister helped with the sewing of the lining and zipper.

Because she doesn't waste any parts of the books she also sells these great pins with vintage illustrations and print. They were a steal at 2 for 5 dollars . She even through in a few freebies for my daughter.

I am smitten with this egg vessel I purchased from Courtney Chapman. It wasn't even for sale , she was holding her business cards in it but ask and you shall receive. She said it was from a series of eggs she did for her thesis in fine art at the Ontario College of Fine Art and Design. Thanks courtney and doesn't it look fantastic with some of my nature treasures tucked inside.

Finally a little ink and watercolor drawing of a british naval ship by Dan Rocco, an art student.

Some of you wondered how all this art eye candy would inspire me from the comments on yesterday's post . Well it didn't take long for me to be so inspired by Suzanne Carlsen's incredible embroidery that was so small and detailed to attempt to sketch my little friend with a needle and single thread.

It was tough going because my underpaid model kept wandering off exploring.

I did manage to finish my little snail embroidery. The fabric is from lara cameron.

I also worked on a few colorful mushrooms.

The rain was coming down so hard I had to move the table into the middle of the porch and edgar thought he was a mermaid cat again.

I did manage a short walk to the library to pick up a few books for planning our vacation and I found some beautiful nuts that had fallen off the tree with the rain.

I passed this sign and thought it the perfect end for this post. Have a peaceful day.

Meet Amygdala, the driftwood bunny

I want to introduce you to my newest little friend, Amygdala but first I want to share with you a little about the day he was created. I have had a very emotional weekend away when my mom became very ill and required emergency medical treatment. Yesterday I was feeling kind of tired and was having a hard time getting motivated to do anything. It was a beautiful day, just as the first day of july should be , warm and full of sunshine. I started out working in the garden and right of time the mid summer flowers , the day lilies were in bloom.
So I picked some for the porch table .

I hung the laundry on the line in the back yard.

Edgar cheered me up with his antics. He was trying all morning to catch butterflies but never managed to get one. He needed a good scratch on his belly. I love this mercat pose he does.

Feeling a little better, I pulled out my supplies.

I made a little crochet covered disc of wood my husband kindly cut from a branch that fell off the magnolia tree in the winter. I first stained the wood yellow with a water based stain.

I took photographs along the making way for this so I might write a tutorial later in the week if anyone is interested. Next I made a very delicate necklace. I found these really beautiful maple keys last month one morning.

Here it is hanging with the maple tree reflection in the mirror and then on the neck of my daughter. Don't you love her black apple t shirt. That emily is a very talented girl.

After a great chicken curry dinner ( After seeing michelle's nan on flickr I couldn't help myself) I was feeling relaxed and decided to make a new creation out of a piece of driftwood I found at my sister's cottage on the weekend. That is how Amygdala, the driftwood bunny was created. Amygdala - an almond-shaped neural structure in the anterior part of the temporal lobe of the cerebrum; intimately connected with the hypothalamus and the hippocampus and the cingulate gyrus; as part of the limbic system it plays an important role in motivation and emotional behavior. He made friends with us instantly and made us smile . He asked if he could wear one of the acorn necklaces because he wants to live a very long life . I managed to take some photographs of him just before the sun went down. His sweet little facial features are all natural and the wood has not been altered in any way. He is really pleased to meet you all !!!.

effeuiller la marguerite

The title of this post is the game of french origin that you all know as " he loves me, he loves me not" played by pulling the petals off a daisy, usually a field daisy, one by one until one petal remains and the answer to your question of affection. I was pondering the daisy today as I was driving along the country roads to work this morning and then again as I was watching my youngest daughter play soccer this evening near a meadow. The daisies are everywhere seeking my attention.
The paradox of this little game and field daisies is that they usually have 34 petals. The number of petals follows the fibonacci sequence 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34..... Thus an even number which means that he/she will always love you not. If you want a more favorable response you will need to find a shasta daisy because they have 13 petals usually.

Daisies make an excellent backdrop for insect photography.

I did a little embroidery using the lazy daisy stitch to make exactly 34 petals on my daisy. I wanted it to be botanically correct.

The last two pictures were added using the better light of a slightly overcast morning. Have a great friday!!

A Little Lesson From the June bug

Sometimes we can learn the biggest lessons from the smallest living things. I have been spending tons of time in the garden this past weekend and I have had some lovely encounters with insects, spiders and snails. I planted a few annuals in some large clay pots that sit on the front garden path when I saw a june bug land on one of the blooms.

I have been listening to the june bugs scratching at the screen in the kitchen for about , nine evenings now, They must have little alarms in the ground that go off when it is the first of june because they were right on schedule this year. Did you know that they belong to a family of insects called phyllophaga that means leaf eater . This group includes the famous scarab beetles that my forensic scientist daughter informs me can find a dead body in 5 minutes .

Thank goodness there are no dead bodies in my garden so this one managed to get itself stuck in the beautiful yellow flower.

One would think the simplest thing would be to back up when stuck in a difficult place but the june bug didn't think so. He started wiggling and wiggling .

And pushing and pushing in a very determined way until he managed to create his own way out of the situation.

Then he continued on the path he had created and enjoyed the remainder of the day in the garden.

Let this be a lesson for us all. When stuck in a difficult place in life , keep pushing forward, be determined, make your own way out and keep moving forward.
I could fill the remainder of this post with more garden bug pictures but instead I will show you a few of the things I was working on this weekend on the porch.

How was your weekend? We had record breaking warm weather and then last night we were under a tornado warning and our guests plane was grounded in another city so they won't be arriving until today. I hope you all have a great start to your week.

Lilacs and Abandoned Homesteads

The end of May means two things to me LILACS and my nephew Nick's birthday. Happy Birthday Nick !!!! The air in and outside of home is filled with the wonderful , gentle scent of lilac with a little honeysuckle thrown in. Lilac were brought over to north america hundreds of years ago on ships with the pioneers . They are a very hardy breed. One thing I love to do is find lilac bushes growing in the middle of no where . They draw me in like a little gentle hook, to have look around and sometimes I find the foundation or other evidence of an abandoned homestead or farm. I find the " wild lilacs" have the strongest scent. In the last week I followed the lilac scent to find a very special secret ( I like to think) place down a path I had never noticed before in one of the forests I love to walk in. Follow me , I walk slowly so you won't have any trouble keeping up.

I tried to imagine living in this very special location with the forest in my front yard . It was so peaceful an magical and there were no signs of electricity so it must have been abandoned some time ago. I loved the galvanized tubs and buckets with grass growing in and around them. The color palette found here was very inspiring and I may try to use it in some future project. Follow the scent of the lilac and you may find love ( the traditional idea) or the remains of days gone by and a gentler era. Yesterday I collected some lilacs on my way home from work. Five different shades of purple lilac and one white .

Mr Bumblebee and I will be away for the weekend. We are heading to the Eastern Township area of Quebec. See you on monday.

Thimbles as vases

Last week I remembered an old issue of MSL where they made delicate tiny bouquets in thimbles. I gathered up my small collection of vintage thimbles and some of the smallest blossoms I could find in the garden and I wanted to show you the results. The hardest thing was to get them to stand upright because most of the very worn ones I have are very convex . I placed a small ball of sticky tack on the base and squished it down onto the surface of the linen covered table. It worked well enough to snap a few shots before one of the cats decided to get in the picture and destroyed the set. Note to self when working with finicky setups lock the cats out of the kitchen.

I hope you enjoyed the tiny little bouquets containing some of my favorite flowers in my garden : forget me not, lily of the valley, mayflower, purple and white violets and some foliage. They may be small but they still smell amazing or at least that's what Mr Bumblebee told me.

My Saturday Morning

Here is my saturday so far. I woke up at 6 am , had coffee and a hard boiled egg and worked a little on my jacket. Went to our annual community plant sale/trade. Went to the local farmers market and my favorite local wool store ( UNWIND) . Dropped my 35 year old guitar off at the music store to be restrung . Stopped at starbucks on the way home to bring my sleepy daughter a skinny vanilla late. Put the produce away, checked by email ( hi elsita!!) and contemplated doing some housework:( There you have it and it is only noon here in Ontario. Here are some pictures I took to document my morning. Have a wonderful day everyone.

What Do You See?

At this time of year although I absolutely adore the majestic views of the sky when I look up and the layers of green and yellow when I look across the farmers fields and meadows. One of my favorite places to look is down, way down. You already know how I love the forest floor but what about my garden and the paths and surfaces around my home. What do you see?

Do you see garbage, plant waste, potential compost ??? Well I see material to gather up and be inspired by.

I see large complex flowers made out of plant matter.

While I was outside gathering magnolia leaves one of our cats, edgar started climbing the tree. I thought he was really sweet hanging out in the lower branches so I took some pictures but then he kept going higher and higher and then realized he couldn't get down . I had to climb the tree to rescue him . Sorry there was no one around to take a picture of edgar and me in the magnolia tree.

Thanks so much for all the response to yesterday's call to trade or swap for vintage fabric. It isn't too late to respond. I will be going over comments over the next few days and getting some bundles of fabric and trim together on the weekend. I want to give you a link to a fantastic website , the human flower project . Have a great day and don't forget to look down!!