MAKING CHINA BLOSSOMS

I made a bunch of China Blossoms the other day, and it hit me that I'd never taken any pictures of the process, so this time I did.

The procedure is this:

Cover whatever large surface is available with as many saucers or other small dishes or glassware as it will hold.
Bring out the votive holders, ashtrays, little dishes, small glasses, little bud vases, etc., that have been gathered over the past weeks or months, and put one, or sometimes two, in the center of each dish.

Change your mind eight times about which center piece goes with which saucer.

Then change it again.

When you've finally got it figured out (whew!) glue the pieces down.



Two tables full


On this day, I worked outside. It was pleasant to be in the yard, and the warmth of the sun made the glue I use set up faster. That's good, because this step also entails coming back to the table every few minutes to see what has slid off-center, and sliding it back into place.

The glue is not secret. I use E6000, which is the best I've found, after many trials, but takes quite a while to set up. You don't have a reliable bond for at least 24 hours, but once you've got it, there doesn't appear to be anything that will separate your glued pieces from each other.




Showing some of them close-up


Even when you think you're done with this part, you might not be. I added to some of the ones shown above, a colorful flat marble here and there, or some other oddment, often completes the flower.




Couple of Favorites



While the China Blossoms were drying, I took myself into my shop and set up my itty bitty chop saw, to cut the copper tubing. It gets cut into lengths, crimped flat on one end, and then I take it to a friend's house, where I do a combination of welding and soldering to complete the back assembly. We're working on getting the spot welder set up at my place, so I don't have to go away from home to do this.





Set up to cut the tubing




A completed back, which holds the China Blossom stem



The last step happens the next day (remember the 24 hour glue set-up time). I turn the China Blossoms on their faces, and glue the backs on. Some of them have to be set on bowls, because they aren't flat on the front. Sometimes the center piece has managed to slide off-center, in spite of my vigilance. Those I hold up and turn until they look like the piece is centered, then place the back accordingly. It's an optical illusion thing. After that, it's just a matter of sliding the stem holders back into place when they slide away from where I've put them. (I have a mechanical engineer friend who says they slide because, basically, a glob of glue constitutes a little hill. Anything set atop that hill is going to slide down it, until either the glue is sticky enough to hold it in place, or the hills has flattened itself out. Knowing that, I now aim for a flatter hill to begin with!)



And that's how you make a China Blossom!

WATER BOTTLE CRAFT

It's not exactly a secret: I hate to throw anything away. I do recycle as much as I can, but see it as just a greener way to discard something. I also have issues with buying water, especially since our water here is so good, but the recent heat, coupled with a two-day long outside show sent me to the store for a case of it. (Hint: Freeze at least half the water you plan to take. It will keep the other bottles cold, and melt as the day goes on, giving you lovely ice water to drink, and/or a cooling bottle to hold against wrists and neck.)

So, there I stood yesterday, with a cluster of empty water bottles on the kitchen counter. What to do? Why, make squids, or dangles, or whatever you want to call them! It's an easy craft for older kids or grown-ups who don't like to make garbage.

You need:


The Materials

• Empty water bottles


• Scissors


• Small things to hang inside the bottle neck


• Wire or string

Begin by making a long, spiral cut the length of the bottle, starting wherever you want. I began my cut just below the bell shape. My water bottle was quite thin and flexible, so to begin the cut, I just kind of squished the side flat. You might have to poke a starter hole in a sturdier bottle.

Here's the path my scissors took:


A Spiral Course

As you can see, the trick is to cut almost all the way around, and then angle your cut down. I pretty much followed the indentations around the bottle itself, including where there was a kind of wave pattern. (I thought it would look cool to "catch the waves", but it didn't actually show, so you can just do a plain spiral.) Go all the way to the bottom of the bottle, but don't cut the bottom off.

When you've finished your spiral, you'll have this:




Do that to three bottles, and nest the neck ends together in a stack, so that the curls hang from three different places.

Now take one of the little items you've gathered--a large bead, a key, a small toy, whatever you like that will fit inside the belled top of the bottle, but not go through the neck. If it has a hole in it, run a string or length of wire through. (I used wire, just because I knew where I had a good stash of different colors. It took about 18" (46 cm).) If there's no hole, just tie it around the piece.

Run the string or wire up through all three bottle necks. Your bright object will add a bit of color, and provide a stopper so you can hang the "squid" up.

When you have the string through the top neck, you can spread it to each side, and screw the top on. It's an option that doesn't affect anything. In fact, without the lid, you have transparency all the way up, which might be even better. But here's what I did:



Up, Through, and Down


Here's are close-ups of my bottles. I used an old Christmas ornament and a big red button.





Take your squid outside and hang it from a tree, or arbor. Or dangle it from something in your room. (I put a single, spiral-cut bottle up for the neighbor's kitten, and she loves it. It's very bouncy. The bottle. Not the kitten. Well, actually, both of them.)

MUFFIN TIN MONDAY

I absolutely loved this idea from Sycamore Stirring's blogspot. I don't have children at home anymore, but with my adorable grandchildren and grandnieces still at the appropriate age, I could hardly wait to share it.

The basic idea is that children eat much better when their food is served in an unusual manner, which I've certainly found to be true. I'm remembering banana flowers, sandwiches cut and decorated to look like faces, and bread snakes. (I'd cut the crusts off the peanut butter sandwiches, and say, "Oooh. Bread snakes! Scary." Worked every time. Sometimes the kids even ate the "snakes" before the sandwich itself!)

So Muffin Tin Monday=Lunch served in a muffin tin. Too cute!

Here's a photo, and the link:



Muffin Tin Monday

NEW FROM THE CHINA BLOSSOM GARDEN

It's amazing to me how many people will walk up to this


China Blossoms

and say, "Oh, look! She makes those little cup and saucer bird feeders." That just kind of leaves me shaking my head, because a: There aren't any cups, and b: These are flowers, held vertically on a stem, and won't hold anything. How is that going to work?

But I also began to think, Well, maybe they're seeing bird feeders because they want bird feeders, and not just because they expect them.

That kind of thinking can be dangerous, because it can lead to new ideas and then you have to act on them, and before you know it you're out in your shop making something you've never made before. Like flowers that can convert to bird feeders:


China Birdfeeders

Now, there are good reasons not to make the little bird feeders. First of all, around here it rains a lot, and these don't have covers, so after a rain shower, the bird seed can be kind of nasty. Second, if you're making a bird feeder, you have to use something in the center of the saucer that will actually hold something, and I like to mix it up, creating flowers of whatever looks good and ignoring functionality. Third, we also get freezing weather here, and any time you have an item made of layers of glass, it's going to hold rainwater, possibly in little crevices between the pieces. When the water freezes, it will expand, and if it's in one of those crevices, your garden art will be a shattered piece of garden junk.

This permutation, I think, takes care of all of that. I'll keep making China Blossoms that aren't anything else, and add these. In the summer, they can be set horizontally and hold water or seed for birds, or a votive candle to make a little fairy light outside. In the winter, when you still want to see something pretty in the garden, but don't want to risk breakage, you can leave them out, but set them on their stems vertically, so they won't hold water.

I'm pretty pleased with myself. And watching my little puppy sniff at the dress that just came from eBay. I'm curious, too: Will it fit? It came just in time for the 94 degree weather we're expecting this weekend, short, sleeveless, and black and white polka dots. Yay!

ENJOYING THE YARD

When we bought this place, the grass was literally knee-high, the flower beds full of weeds, and what should have been thick with lush vegetation was nearly barren, while what should have been spare was overgrown. Still, the yard had potential. What a playground for a plant lover mike myself--half an acre to landscape. DH and I, over time, began to have a vision for our property.

It's been seven years, and I've planted more every year, with some failures, and some remarkable successes. Plants I loved died, like the euphorbia griffithii



Euphorbia Griffithi "Fireglow"

and plants I don't like at all have run rampant, despite my best efforts to dig them up, weed them out, such as the weird one that has leaves shaped like caladium, without the veining, that goes from a leafy ground cover to something that looks like a candlestick made out of orange berries. They are not attractive, and they seem to be everywhere.

But oh, it does look like we're making progress, and this time of year I look outside and sigh for the wonder of it. I took a few pictures today, mostly of the foxgloves, which self-sow so freely, and flourish with no attention at all. Look at this one that found itself growing at the base of a dry (it leaks all the water out) birdbath:




And look at these! The arbor is over my head (I'm 5'6") by quite a bit, and if you look closely, you'll see that one foxglove has grown up through arbor, clematis vine, and is getting ready to bloom above it all.



This is taken from alongside those same foxgloves, looking in the direction of the swing, with its covering of wisteria, which still hasn't bloomed, ever:



And a last shot, of the Canterbury Bells Connie planted last year, and didn't tell me, and so I didn't know they were even there, until they burst into bloom late last week.



I'm beginning to love this yard, even when I have to get out the lawn mower, or maybe especially when I have to get the lawn mower. It gets to e more beautiful every year.

MATERNITY (TO) EMPIRE

It's hard to resist a twenty-five cent t-shirt, at least for me. I didn't resist this one, in spite of the fact that it was a maternity top. I wanted to see how hard it would be to turn it into an empire-waisted top. It was pretty easy, so I'm sharing the process.

Start with:


A Maternity T-shirt


You'll also need a fabric belt. I've used one that loops through chrome rings, but a buckle style would work as well, or even ribbon, tied in a bow.
Split the sides. Don't worry about picking the stitching out to do that. Just cut the seam, but make the cut on the front side of the seam, because the next thing you're going to do is get rid of the extra width in the back of the shirt, which will cut the old seam off at the same time.


Cut away the extra back width

Now measure your own back width, at the point just under your breasts. You want the back of the shirt to be the same width you are, so you'll do a little shaping now. Fold the back of the tee in half lengthwise, and the tape with your own back width in half also, and put the folds together. That will center your back width on the back width of the shirt. Mark where the end of the tape falls, adding some for seam allowance, and cut a gentle curve in to that point.

There's a good reason for shaping the back: When you gather the front of the shirt, it will pull the extra fabric from the back forward, and the side seams, too.


Match center backs of tape and tee, and mark



Cut a curve in to the mark

Next step is to figure out how much belt you need, and whether you want the buckle to fall at center front, or to one side. If you want the buckle at the center, remember that you'll need less length for that end than for the other, because of the part that will loop through the buckle. Play with it. If, when you're done, you don't feel like it's "right" you can change it. I did!




Once you've cut your belt lengths, measure down from the armhole to the point just under your bust. On me, that was five inches. Lay your inside-out tee flat, front up, but lifted out of the way. Pin the ends of the belt to the back edge of the tee, with the top edge of the belt on the mark of the under-bust point. The right side of the buckle end should be face down on the shirt back, but the loop-through end should be face up, because when you thread it through the buckle, it will reverse itself.


Placing the belt

You're almost finished! Sew up the side seams, being careful not to stretch them out of shape.

Note: When you cut the extra fabric away at the back, the side seams became slightly different lengths, but shaping the back will have equalized them somewhat, and any additional difference can be eased as you pin and sew.

I'm a big fan of short cuts. One of those is what to do when you reach the hem. The long cut is to pick out the hem for an inch or so on front and back, sew the side seam, and then re-hem. I don't like to take the time, but I don't want raw edges showing either, so I turn the seam allowance back to the seam itself, in a triangle, and sew right down to the point. It looks like this:


Fold and sew to the point

From the outside, you see this:


No raw edges!

The last step is to tack the buckle of the belt in place, to keep it from drooping.

The neckline of the shirt I used was too high for me, and I had extra belting, so I cut the neck down and added this:


A triangle of trim

Here's the finished shirt!

QUICK CHIP FIX

I do a lot of assemblage art, much of it involving china, ceramics, or pottery. I take pleasure in the hours I spend combing through stacks of dishes and crockery at yard, garage, and estate sales, and thrift stores, but it can be hugely disappointing to get something home and realize I either missed seeing a chip or chipped it on the way home. Pffft! Just like that, a likely suspect for a piece of art becomes useless garbage and money thrown down a rat hole.

Or does it? Not always. Not always.

I've been getting Mega Blossoms put together for shows that are coming up this weekend and next. There are plates, bowls, votives, coasters, and other lovely bits stacked and scattered and layered all over my living room floor. Step one in making a Mega Blossom (well, step two, if you include finding and buying the pieces, or step three if you count unwrapping and washing them all) is to spread out the plates and platters I envision being the largest, back part of the Blossom. Then I start putting color-coordinated other pieces in the center, switching them from one plate to another, changing my mind more often than I change my twisted position--it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the box. What fun!

Well, I got one figured out yesterday and was set to glue it together when I realized the pretty golden oak leaf dish I'd chosen for the top element was chipped. Dang. But it's an "Oh, bother," dang, not an "Alas! Disaster!" dang.

I decided to share my remedy. In truth, there were several chipped items. I just picked them up and headed for my stash of acrylic paints. Most of the time, that's all you need. Paint. If you can match the color where the chip is, you're set. Dab on that bit of color, and the chip disappears.

Now, I'm not convinced you could eat dinner off a thus-repaired plate, put it through the dishwasher, and still have a disappeared chip, but I'm not convinced you couldn't either, because after you've let the paint dry, you're going to paint over it with clear varnish. I like Dura Clear, which I get at Michaels or Joann's. It dries nicely shiny, and that reflective quality disguises tiny differences between the color of your paint and the dish. And it's practically indestructible. I used it on a painted rock about ten years ago, set the rock outside, and it lasted a good seven years out in the weather before the paint even began to chip off.

But what if you can't match the paint on the chipped dish? That was the case with my oak leaf. Here's the Mega Blossom. (No stem holder on it yet, so I can't stand it upright.)



And here's a close-up of the "repaired" oak leaf. Look at the yellow-gold dots. If they're right on the edge, they're hiding a chip. Otherwise, they're just decoration, added to make it look like they're supposed to be there, not dots of paint hiding chips. That's the key: camouflage and deceive! (Well. Guess that just goes to show there are times you can actually take pride in deceptiveness. As my dad would have said, "Who'd of thunk it?!")



Saved by paint. Don't you just love the stuff?