Pink Buddies

One of the great pleasures of early summer is finding that peonies are available again in June. Last year, I got kind of busy and somehow missed the season and was very sad (I won't use the hyperbole of "devastated"). I did find a few brownish little buds at a florist, but they didn't flourish into the pink puffs that I'm used to.

So imagine my delight when I walked in to Whole Foods a few weeks ago to find a few bunches of healthy-looking pink peonies looking out at me from their thin black plastic flower containers. They were calling, "buy us, buy us!" So I did.

With the dining table still crowded with craft items, I wanted to put together a low arrangement that could go on my coffee tables.

I've seen quite a few arrangements lately that leverage the small bud vase as a way to arrange flowers, so I wanted to try it for myself.

I used three small (identical) glass vases and put my peonies and some greens in them.

I basically like how this turned out, but I think I made a mistake by not having any variation in either the flowers or the vases. Next time, I would try to use vases of varying heights or try to mix the flower color.

Lovely Leftover Leather

I received a Kindle for Christmas 2010. What does that have to do with crafting? Well, it turns out that the leather cover I purchased had a defect that interfered with the Kindle's circuits. Amazon was kind enough to send me a new cover, but I felt bad that the cover was going to go to waste. As someone who strives to be more green, I decided to keep the cover and make a bracelet out of the leftover leather.

And then the cover sat in my nightstand drawer for two years.

But now that I've had some time off, I decided to take action!

I found this DIY leather bracelet on Pinterest and decided that it would be perfect candidate for the leftover leather from the Kindle.

So, I had to strip the leather from the Kindle, which turned out to be the most excruciating part. Instead of just ripping apart the seaming, I had to cut off the sewn edges (like a clamshell plastic package) and then had to use both hands and feet to pry the pink leather off of the plastic reinforcement on the interior because it was glued on so well.. (Place both feet on the binding, step on it, get a corner of leather loose, and then PULL!)

After all that, I ended up with some surprisingly supple leather and started cutting.

Here are the detailed instructions from Oh The Lovely Things on how to do this yourself with any leftover leather or new leather you decide to purchase. I made a few adjustments for length of the bracelet (since I have a small wrist) and width of the leather (to match the proportion of my small wrist), but I otherwise mostly followed her instructions. I happened to have some big snaps that I had used for a project long ago. The only thing I had to actually purchase was some thread to match the leather where I sewed the snaps. I just cut a few ovals and strips, sewed the leather to secure the bow placement, put on the snaps, and voila!

One tip: instead of just gluing the small leather strip in place like Oh the lovely things suggests, I also sewed the overlapping leather together for a more secure placement. The leather is actually quite absorbent, so I was afraid that the glue wouldn't hold long term.

I have a navy blue cover, too, so I think I may make a few more and give them away as stocking stuffers for the holidays! But, they're so cute that I may just hoard them for myself.

The Power of Flowers

When I lived in San Francisco, I used to buy a bouquet flowers from the little florist in my office building every Friday. It was usually a sad little bunch, on sale because it was the end of the week, and it was better to sell it for 50% off instead of letting it die in the store. The blooms usually only lasted for a few days, but I loved having fresh flowers around our apartment.

After we moved to Chicago, I didn't have a real florist in such close proximity. (Well, maybe I did, but I just wasn't looking for one.) Plus, that 50% discount in San Francisco had been very motivating, and living on a student budget made purchasing flowers at full price less appealing. Even after I started working again, I had just gotten out of the habit of having flowers around.

But recently, I ran across this great article about flower arranging from the NY Times magazine and decided that I needed to start having flowers around again. All the prearranged bouquets I had ever purchased always looked a little sad. This article addressed what you can do with a cheap bunch of flowers with just a little trimming and arranging. I pulled out the article and put it in a little heap with some magazines, thinking that it would come in handy at some point.

A few weeks after reading this article, I was strolling through Whole Foods' floral section one day and saw a some gorgeous hydrangeas and peonies. I decided to give flower arranging a shot with these luscious looking buds. So, I bought the flowers and a few greens to get started.

I took everything home and started trimming wildly. Whenever I would bring home flowers before, I would hack all the stems off at one point on the stem and stuff them into the nearest vase. It was very efficient, but produced somewhat iffy results. Plus, I noticed that almost all the vases I have are meant for tall, traditional arrangements, but I like tighter, denser bouquets that sit a lower to the table. So this time, I tried to have a nice little bunch of flowers grouped low to the vase. I have to say that I like the results.

It was definitely a lot of fun trying to arrange the stems, and turned what was normally a five-minute activity into a half-hour long adventure. (The last 10 minutes of that half-hour were cleanup from the insane number of stems and leaves littering my counter, but it was part of the whole experience, I suppose.)

I ended up replicating this arrangement a few times because I liked it so much, and then peonies went out of season. (A very sad time in my summer.) I tried a different arrangement again a few weeks later with some spider mums and these weird purply prickly things.

I haven't gotten as many flowers recently because of a project that has eaten up my whole dining room table, but I plan on trying again soon. I'm pretty sure I won't have another gap like the one I had before after my SF-Chi move. That's too long to wait for something this pretty to show up on my dining table again.

Cheater, cheater, Chrysanthemum Eater

I've spent the last few months buried up to my neck in... the New York Times Sunday Crossword! I'm obviously terrible, because I work on it for a while on Sunday and then gradually throughout the week. I'm almost about to break through, though - I've only got one little chunk left to solve from this past Sunday's puzzle. Hooray! Only one week later.


So, creative endeavors have taken a backseat lately. But a few weeks ago, I saw the front cover of the Paper Source catalog and decided that I HAD to have the chrysanthemum wreath featured on it.







So pretty, right?


Paper Source sells these kits that you can assemble yourself. The make it really easy to be creative. Actually, it's so easy, that it feels like cheating. All you have to do is punch the petals out of the pre-cut paper that they provide, curl the petals, and then stick everything together with the tape that they provide. Really, the only decisions you have to make are where to put the flowers and leaves when they are assembled.


That got me to thinking: so much of my creative activities are really just following directions that the real creative people give me? Most of us pull inspiration from elsewhere, but there comes a certain point where it crosses over from "drawing from" to "copying." Where is that line? I'm pretty sure this project is pretty deep into copying territory, but I loved the process (and the result) just the same.

Materials used in this project:

• Paper Source Chrysanthemum kit
• Bone folder