More Neutral Beauty - Old Letters and Cabinet Card

It's Week 3 of the Simply Neutrals Tuesday party, and I have been thoroughly enjoying taking part. Everyone's images images have been so exciting and different.  It's funny how a set theme with limits can give you more freedom than a blank piece of paper! I don't think I'll ever get sick of neutrals!


Thanks, Wen for featuring some of my pictures on your blog, too.

Here's a cabinet card I bought off ebay a while ago. I like to keep the originals and use a print of them in my artworks. 

These letters are a special find at Kiama Markets. I haven't opened them, I just love them as they are, another person's private thoughts... The snippet on cardboard isn't finished yet.

This huge moth flew into our window and I took some photos before letting it go again. It's a giant bogong moth, considered a good food source by indigenous people. I'm not tempted!

Here's a view of our nearby coast just after sunrise.

I spotted this old cottage from the road as I drove down the coast to visit Suzy when we were working on her video. I stopped on the way back to take some pics.

This is a simple fairy child I made. They look so sweet around my craft room...

If you'd like to join in or see some more gorgeous neutrals, pop across to AppleApricot 

Simply Neutrals Tuesday #3 linky party time

What neutral coloured beauty did you find or make or buy or receive?

Post anything in neutral colours,

be it cream, white, grey, beige, silver and/or brown.

A creation you made or received, home decoration, a statue or architecture, or anything out there that you were allowed to take a photo of.

You have till Monday 28th noon CET to link up.

Simply Neutrals Party #2 Vintage Wedding

Welcome fellow lovers of vintage style decor, pretty stuff, old lace and neutral shades! 
Today I'm joining Wen Sylvestre's Simply neutrals Party at

www.appleapricot.blogspot.com 

First up, a photo of Lillian Pearce the lady whose wedding dress I featured in my last 'Simply Neutrals' post. I've been volunteering to take photos at my local museum in Moruya, Australia. You can see the Moruya Museum here on Facebook 

https://www.facebook.com/MoruyaHistoricalSociety

Lillian Pearce married William Hunt in Newtown, Sydney in 1913. She is wearing a cape over the dress, so it looks different here. You can see it peeping through at the bottom.

Some vintage lace and a rose up close...

Next, a collage of neutral objects and vintage lace. The vintage scales are an op shop find - sadly they don't work.

Some vintage doylies and a cotton reel....

A little glimpse of my craft room with the vintage scales....

I love this image of a pattern in the sand as the waves retreated from a rock half buried 

on the beach...

Finally, I had a play in Photoshop with a beautiful frame from 

http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/p/coffeeshop-storyboards-and-frames.html

I love to sing traditional Irish, Scottish and English ballads and folksongs, and I hope I might pick up a few singing hints from this old book. If you'd like to hear me, I have just one recent recording of a simple folk song called 'Laddie Lie Near Me'. You can hear it here:

https://soundcloud.com/ballyhooley/laddie-lie-near-me 

Our band, Ballyhooley, are playing at the Turning Wave Irish Music Festival at Yass (NSW Australia) this weekend.  Ballyhooley's Facebook page is here:

https://www.facebook.com/Ballyhooley-NSW-South-Coast-Folk-Band-437627379646953/timeline/

Thanks Wen for hosting this Simply Neutrals Linky Party. Have a wonderful week, everyone. (smile) Spring is here - hooray! 

You can check out Wen's blog AppleApricot

The theme is neutral coloured beauty, found, made
or bought this week. You can post anything in cream, white, beige,grey, silver and brown. 


Until next time,
hugs,
Jesse

The Surprising Colour of Avocado Dye

Exploring the Internet one day I stumbled on how to dye with avocado. Since the colour was so improbable, I thought I'd give it a go. It was around the end of last Summer ( February, I think), when the roses were blooming beautifully.

First I sorted through some fabrics and doylies and sorted them into baskets - one for coffee, one for tea and one for avocado.

I'd been saving every avocado seed and skin as we ate them - I put them in the freezer in a ziplock bag. I'm not sure if that changed the result, but it worked, anyway!

So I boiled them up for about 30 minutes in a large saucepan, until the water turned a pinky brown. I strained out the avocado mess and put it the pink water back into the pot. Then I threw in a few pieces and pushed them under the water.
Here's a peek into the pot...

Instantly they turned a gorgeous shade of antique pink, which dried slightly lighter. I hung them to dry naturally on an airer in the bath - this meant they looked aged - speckly, with darker patches where the water ran. So I did some more, and dried them in the clothes drier. These were more uniform in colour.

Drip-drying avocado dyed laces

It's not a strong dye, so the original colour of the fabric still shows to influence the new shade. It mellows and ages strong colours, depending on the fabrics. The cottons took well, but the synthetics were not affected as much.

The colour lightens as it dries.

I love the natural antique look it gives - very subtle. I even tried dying some white fake daisies -you cans ee it on the edges of the petals.

The pinker doylies were white to start with, and the slightly browner shade were cream or beige before dyeing

The perfect match - a rose from my garden.

They look great with this antique hat box lid and my David Austen rose.

I just happened to have a vase full of another favourite rose - a gorgeous pale apricot, so I had a play with my camera...

Here's a little wall hanging I made using some of the laces.

Vintage lace wall hanging

 The colour looks different indoors... I tried to adjust it a bit below.

Vintage lace wall hanging

So, start eating those avocadoes... guacamole (mashed avocado, lemon juice and crushed garlic) is great with corn chips!

Thanks for visiting.
Jesse

Gorgeous Neutrals Linky Party # 1 Vintage Wedding Dress

Wen Sylvestre of 

www.appleapricot.blogspot.com 

               is having a linky party...

I'm joining in with some of my cherished neutral bits and pieces I've been collecting for years, some natural objects and some photos I've taken recently at our local museum.

I've been volunteering to take photos at my local museum in Moruya, Australia. My first few pictures are of a gorgeous wedding dress called 'Lillian'. It was worn by Lillian Pearce at her wedding to William Hunt in Newtown, Sydney in 1913.

Next, some beautiful sticks I found while walking on the beach...

I'm not sure if a black background is 'neutral'?

These scales don't work, but they are so beautiful...

I love this picture in its silvery frame.

A couple of special old books...

The theme is neutral coloured beauty, found, made or bought this week. You can post anything in cream, white, beige,grey, silver and brown. So pop over to wen's blog to see more at   www.appleapricot.blogspot.com http://appleapricot.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/simply-neutrals-tuesday-1.html

Thanks Wen for giving us this opportunity to share our beautiful neutrals!

Take care,

Jesse

A 50th wedding anniversary wall hanging

My dear friends Bob and Mary recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Here they are as beautiful children...

Beautiful children

Bob and Mary were my neighbours for a few years, and we miss them heaps! Over the years I've made them some cards for their birthdays. These were inspired by their gorgeous childhood pictures:

For their 50th Wedding Anniversary I made them a collaged wall hanging in a vintage theme, on an old worn book cover. I love those cheap old books with hard covers tattered and stained! The feature image is a vintage bride

Spring is almost here. It's been a balmy day for gardening. I've been pruning my roses this week.  I'm very late - they are starting to shoot new leaves. Here's a photo I call 'Rose Essence'. It's called 'Julia's Rose', and Bob and Mary gave it to me when they lived here.

Thanks for dropping by to look.

Jesse

More Lace Book Pages

I'm very proud to announce that Suzy of Suziqusthreadworks has her first online class coming up in September, which I videoed and edited for her. It was a huge project for both of us, with a steep learning curve, and I'm so pleased it's turned out so well. It's being offered by Gail on her Creative Workshops blog. Suzy's fabric lace book/journal that she made to teach this class is to die for! You can see it here.

Suzy has really inspired me so much. I have been admiring her artworks on Pinterest and on her blog for a couple of years now, thinking how I'd love to try that kind of artwork but I didn't know how to start. She was so friendly and welcoming.

I'm now getting the hang of making these pages after spending time watching Suzy and doing a workshop with her. What a talent she is. She is a great teacher and has been really supportive. 

Here's my finished book from Suzy 's workshop. What a lovely pattern of cabbage roses I have on my old sofa. I almost feel like  using it for...ooops, put those scissors away! This was one of the backgrounds I used to photograph my lace book against, as the colours just worked together. Half the fun of making something is photographing it! 

I just had to show you the back cover, as I forgot to put it in my last post.

Now I have another couple of pages ready for another lace book - a middle spread. I'm still using the same theme - antique photos of babies - because my printer has died and life's so busy I haven't had time to research the best printer yet. Luckily I had printed quite a few pictures.

I love the old cabinet cards of babies and children - the monotone in muted browns, and the old lace dresses make me sigh. This photo was taken outdoors on a cloudy day. 

The following photo was taken inside on a sunny afternoon. The tones are much more golden, but the top one is more true to colour.

Here's a closeup of the cabinet card which I have printed onto cloth using freezer paper ironed on behind the cloth to keep it straight. It worked better than I expected. I was inspired by the blue-grey lace from an old dress, and used trimmings and lace to complement it.

This bunch of roses is from just two weeks ago - in mid-Winter! The bush is tatty, but still produces a few blooms. The petals last longer in the cool weather. I think this rose is called 'Mother's Love'. It is the palest mushroom colour when it unfurls.

Wouldn't you know it, cats always find the warmest cosiest spot to sleep! Gypsy loves to curl up in my top drawer, right next to me as I work on my computer. She purs whenever I pat her - I keep her engine restarting when she stops. I love that sound, it's so peaceful.

Since it took a while to set up my photo background to photograph my lace book pages, I decided to have a play with some pretty things to make some vignettes. The rose book was my $8 bargain at a garage sale last week.

I've been collecting doileys for years now. They fascinate me - all that hard work put into something to make life more beautiful. I've chosen to spell doiley this way, but I found an article about the various spellings of this word in a blog called The Dreamstress here.

Well, I'm determined to try to make some time each week for making crafty things, for playing.

 “Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good”

                                    Lucia Capocchione

Hope you find some time to play, too.