Birds and Birdhouses.

 I bought some tiny Dollar Store birdhouses, but before I could take pictures of all of them, I sold some. The two that were left were are the only ones I could share with you. You'll notice one has a large paper rose on the back, that's one of my hand made paper roses, you'll find the tutorial here. Now you can imagine the other birdhouses were just as pretty, sparkly and sweet. Thanks for looking.

The birdies were also sold long before I managed to take a picture of them, this is the only one left. I will make a few more because I love them. Notice the rosette? Tim Holtz is a genius, and I hear he is coming up with a mini one, how lovely! So this is it for my Shabby Sunday Share, enjoy!

Cheers and happy Sunday,
Viviana

Paper Roses with an old and still useful punch! -With Awesome Tutorial!

I was looking on you tube at a few tutorials for making paper roses, and almost all require you to cut your paper with a Cricut/Expensive machine, or even a Big Shot/Die cutter (I have one and the dies I could use), however I wanted to do a tutorial to show that even if all you have a is a punch, you can still make them and they turn out just as beautiful!

I Started with an EK success paper shaper I've had for years! The blossoms it punches out are about 2.5 inches in width, perfect for my projects. I don't want my roses too big, but any smaller might be harder to work with.

I then cut out 4, where most tutorials did three, I like my roses a little fuller and 4 gives me the right amount of layers for these roses.

The next step is to cut each one up, as you can see you get the layers that go from one to 5 petals.  Each one fits right onto the next when we get to the gluing process.

I then use a skewer (you can also use a little paint brush end or a pencil, to curl my pieces, you can see some are curled lengthwise, the other just curled under, the paper pattern gives them dimension (I used some old K and Co paper I had on hand) and I love the vintage look too.

Once this was done, I went and used the hot glue gun because it's fast and super easy, just don't burn yourself.

I did one layer at a time carefully adding just a tiny dab of glue, since it's easier to add more where needed rather than try to remove a big glob of it.

I don't worry too much about the threads of glue just yet, I generally clean up my stuff with tweezers after. Once you have layers all glued and folded and curl how you want them, you can trim the back end, and use a glue dot to adhere to your project.

I used stickles on mine, since they will go one some of my Christmas and Victorian looking ornaments.

You can see in the picture that a rose made with 3 punches doesn't look as pretty as the next one (darker one) made with 4 punches. I am gonna go punch out a few more and cut and get them ready, great to do while watching TV!

Cheers, have fun crafting!
Viviana

My First Postcard Friday

I've acquired a very small collection of simple postcards, some have been mailed, some have been written on and some were never used, all are lovely in their own way. This is the first of them, it is stamped March 9, 1907 and it is addressed to a Miss Bessie Roue, Marshallton, Del.
This is the first time I join in on postcard Friday, yay! I will try to have a new one for you every Friday.

Cheers and have a great night!

Some Valentine Freebies

Isn't he a dream?? Oh that picture sure made me laugh out loud, so much so that my son came upstairs to see what was so funny....



These all came from Heidi at Shabby Chic Papirskatter Looking through her archives makes me happy!!

Due to Lack of Interest....

I am cancelling this giveaway and donating the handmade Heart wall decoration to Hearts For Haiti, which will sell it with 100% of proceeds going to Helping the Victims of the Haiti Earthquake.
I think this is better and it goes to a great cause, so if you are interested , it will be available for sale on ETSY.
Cheers,
Viviana

Listing Valentine's Finally!!

Without a fast computer, it all takes me forever to do, but slowly I am getting some cards and valentines listed in my Etsy store, Yay! What do you think?

Roses, my favourite flower

For a long time, I used to say sunflowers or violets were my favourite flower, maybe for fear of sounding too cliche, but after so many years of admiration, I decided that a rose is my flower of choice, it always had been. I got my first bouquet of roses from my good friend Renay many years ago, she thought it fitting for my birthday, which happens to be on Valentines day. Since then, it's not been often I've received a rose, but I love them, and actually, feel so sad once they start to wilt, that I am happy to not any at all rather than suffer the pain of watching my beloved rose die and dry up. With all the amazing vintage images and postcards out there for me to find, they fulfill my needs when it comes to the beautiful rose.

I came across this great website, called Vintage Holliday Crafts, She has a very sweet collection of images, and I loved some of the roses, which I will share with you here today.




Please read her terms of use too, for if you are grabbing them to use for your crafts. Remember to click on the image so that it shows you the actual full size, before right clicking to save it.



THE HISTORY OF ROSES"
(I came across this bit of history, it is quite concise in illustrating how the rose came about to be so loved)

Roses have a long and colorful history. They have been symbols of love, beauty, war, and politics. The rose is, according to fossil evidence, 35 million years old. In nature, the genus Rosa has some 150 species spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere, from Alaska to Mexico and including northern Africa. Garden cultivation of roses began some 5,000 years ago, probably in China. During the Roman period, roses were grown extensively in the Middle East. They were used as confetti at celebrations, for medicinal purposes, and as a source of perfume. Roman nobility established large public rose gardens in the south of Rome. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the popularity of roses seemed to rise and fall depending on gardening trends of the time.
White Rose of York

During the fifteenth century, the rose was used as a symbol for the factions fighting to control England. The white rose symbolized York, and the red rose symbolized Lancaster, as a result, the conflict became known as the "War of the Roses."

Roses were in such high demand during the seventeenth century that royalty considered roses or rose water as legal tender, and they were often used as barter and for payments. Napoleon's wife Josephine established an extensive collection of roses at Chateau de Malmaison, an estate seven miles west of Paris in the 1800s. This garden became the setting for Pierre Joseph Redoute's work as a botanical illustrator. In 1824, he completed his watercolor collection "Les Rose," which is still considered one of the finest records of botanical illustration.

It wasn't until the late eighteenth century that cultivated roses were introduced into Europe from China. Most modern-day roses can be traced back to this ancestry. These introductions were repeat bloomers, making them unusual and of great interest to hybridizers, setting the stage for breeding work with native roses to select for hardiness and a long bloom season. Many of these early efforts by plant breeders are of great interest to today's gardeners.



Enjoy,
Viviana