The Sweetest Things

Hello there, Sweets!

Hope you are having a great day. I sure am...I heard from my customer and new friend, Rosanna, that the book I made for her daughter arrived safely and that she loves it! Yay! So now I get to show YOU, too!

I had heard OF Rosanna before this job but had never worked with her myself. I saw her INCREDIBLE kitchen, full of so many art pieces by so many artists that I admire, on Jenny Heid's blog back before I even started blogging. Rosanna is a collector, as well as a patroness to the arts, and has made a name for herself both here in the U.S., as well as in her home, Italy. So when I heard she was interested in my making a fabric heirloom book for her, I was THRILLED, to say the least!

What a treat it has been working with Rosanna! She and I have very similar tastes so it was so easy for us to work together in making this book exactly the way she wanted it. She picked out most of the fabric and gave me some very loose guidelines (cupcakes, yummy, pink, aqua, ballet) and from there, I got to run with it. So much fun.

This book is my second in the new style that I am now addicted to: using both fabric AND paper pages in one book. It makes for a really practical book...Rosanna can put photos on the paper pages, tuck sweet things into the fabric pockets and when Rosanna's daughter opens it, she may do some journaling of her own.

So here it is!

"The Sweetest Things"

The first page is one of my favorite pages. I used an incredible drawing by my talented artist friend, Donna Gotlib, to make this embroidery pattern. I love how everything "pops" when it is 3-D and I tried to make as many elements as possible have as much dimension as I could. The bullion knot curls were incredibly tedious but so worth it! This is one of the drawings that Donna and I are basing one of the embroidery patterns we'll be creating and selling on. It's called "Dreaming on a Cupcake." Here is her giclee print of this drawing....so cute! You really MUST check out all Donna's drawings in her shoppe HERE, as well as her charming blog HERE. You will love her, too!

The next spread is a "cupcake princess" theme...probably the most eclectic of the pages. "Princess" is spelled out in rhinestones, there are child-size full-length gloves in the pocket and the "My Little Cupcake" fabric was one of Rosanna's favorite prints.

The sweet and very pretty little birthday girl herself!

This page is in the yummy cupcake print that I can't get enough of. The tiny organza bag of crocheted cupcakes is sewn on, though I can't claim to have crocheted the little sweeties! I bought them on etsy from pukashell. Aren't they delicious? The cupcake charm is vintage.

First paper page with room for photos.

Yummy cupcake picks from Sugar Sugar.
Another fun page with library pockets (from Sugar Sugar) filled with blank tags for writing memories, gifts she recieved or even fixing photos to.
This is a super-sweet page, don't you think?? :)

Appliqued cupcakes on a long pocket.

Another yummy page! The little three-dimensional cake is actually a hair clip I clipped to the pocket. I bought the hair clip from a charming etsy seller, goldilocksbarrettes. .

Rosanna's daughter loves Aurora... Another paper spread for journaling and fixing photos... Another paper page with a sweet saying and two vintage paper doll dresses.A whimsical "Doll" page. The two tags (from fleamarketstudio on etsy) are sewn to the page. I'm a little bit addicted to her tags. The page is in a sweet nostalgic paper-doll print that I am selling on my website.


The dear little graphics on this spread are from my good friend, Pat, who is summersdarling on eBay and they were originally a charming little children's book.
Another fabric page with a pocket. I machine-stitched an actual paper doll dress to the fabric pocket...my first time trying this. I really like the effect.
Starting with this page, the next section is ballet-themed since Rosanna's daughter is an accomplished little ballet dancer. A paper spread..."happy" flashcard from onehundredwishes, ballerina from a vintage birthday card I cut up and a vintage crown broach.

This spread is my very favorite. Hence all the photos of it! ;) and when I found this vintage embroidery pattern in my stash, I knew it was perfect. The skirt in lace was one of Rosanna's suggestions before she knew/saw this page. The 3-D effect is so much fun and this page was my daughter's favorite.

The last "spread" features a yummy floral print I am in love with (and I have it for sale on my website), a vintage embroidery pattern that I accomplished in matching colors and a charming doll dress that I sewed right to the page.

And this is the last page. The lace is a pocket and there is a tiny snap hidden under the ribbon and rhinestones.
And that's it!

My seven-year-old daughter and my four-year-old daughter have started asking me for a fabric book of their own, which I thought was a good sign that Rosanna's daughter will enjoy it. :) I plan to take some time off after the holidays and actually work on some books for my own girlies.

Hope you have a lovely day!

Cheryl

Remember Me???

Hello, Sweets! It's me, Cheryl, the not-very-faithful blogger!

It has been WAAAAAAY too long since I have popped in here and though I am still buried under work, I thought I'd poke my head out and say hello!

I think I mentioned that I am going to be a vendor at Silver Bella and we are now in the "less than a month" stage of preparation. I am so very excited to meet, hang out with, hug and even room with girls I've grown to love but never "seen" or been in the same room with. So I'm nervously excited about that. I'm also nervously excited about my tables on vendor night. I've got the vintage prom dress and I've got tons of yummy stuff ready but the amount of work it will involve to get me and my stuff ready and safely there is a bit overwhelming.

But I am going to follow my husband's great-grandmother Esther's advice:

DO THE NEXT THING.

Simple but oh so true, right? It has helped me get through many a panicky deadline and even emotionally difficult periods. So I'm doing the next thing until I find myself standing behind my vendor table, dressed in my vintage prom dress (wait till you SEEEEEE!), with my tables all set up.

So there's messes galore! But I am trying to just focus on where I want to end up!

Last week I finally finished another fabric heirloom book for a delightful customer (and now, friend). She is gifting this book to her soon-to-be seven-year-old and I am very excited to hear what she thinks about it! This book represents more handwork than I have ever done in one project. It is reallllly different from the one for Kimla's daughter that I showed in my previous post....this one is more sweet and whimsical. Think cupcakes, ballet and sweet treats! I can not wait to share photos of it but I have to wait to hear that it has safely arrived before I do so. But in the meantime, I can't help myself...here's a few "peeks"!




O.k. that's almost it. I also want to share this incredible piece of art that I purchased from a local antique store. I have seriously been "eyeing" this lovely for nearly a year. Maybe more. I sort of willed it to get sold every time I visited that particular shope, so I wouldn't have to wrestle with whether or not to buy it!

Well I broke down. And now I'm so glad I did! It is the most incredible piece of art that I own and I love that it is fabric art.

Isn't the intricacy absolutely incredible? Before I purchased it, I had only seen it through a glass cabinet, stooping down since it was on the lowest shelf in a shadowy corner of the store. So when I got it out into real light and looked at it closely, I was almost teary. What a treasure.

Similar to the "paper doll" pieces you can find on eBay where the dresses, etc. have been embellished with fabric, lace, etc. But this is a "ho nubbuh lebuh" (if you watch Mad TV you know what that means!).

I don't know much about the age but the paper that the girls' dresses are "built" on is from the late 1800's and seems to be, from the little research I did, from a French magazine called "La Mode." You can still find pages from some of these incredible magazines that people are selling but they are dear...something I didn't know before I bought this. But I can not find anything like this. I'd love to hear if you know more information about it or have seen something similar.

Well, it's time to hit the sewing machine again! Cupcakes to make....literally!