“It’s hard for people to understand that a rug can be art, but maybe that’s changing.” says Alexandra Kehayoglou who crafts beautiful landscapes into rugs! With a long family heritage of carpet making, Alexandra has forged her own unique style of rug making over the last ten years. Surrounded by artisans throughout her childhood, Alexandra clearly garnered an abundance of knowledge whilst growing up amongst the family business. Her studio is based alongside the family carpet factory, El Espartano, where she spends weeks and months hand crafting her 'grassland rugs'. Created entirely from discarded textiles from her family's factory, these sustainable artworks have adorned galleries, fashion shows and luxury department store, Hermès. Nature and its fragility is key to her work. "I feel I have a purpose to weave more greenery as a reaction to the gradual disappearance of our natural world" she explains. "Nature, and how to introduce that into artificial spaces, was always my starting point." These rich tapestries lie between function and art and are so intricately constructed while inviting and cosy. "Being touched, walked on and dirtied, brings the works to life. The work then tells a story ... rather than serving purely as a decorative object." Alexandra states "I love that my rugs become a register of lives lived." >

Wicking Garden: “A wicking bed is a garden bed with a waterproof lining that holds a reservoir of water at the bottom from which water is drawn upwards like a wick to the surface of the bed via natural soil osmosis or through the roots of plants in the bed. Basically it works like large Decor self-watering pot.” A reference diagram to help understand the concepts of a wicking garden The wicking garden is an amazingly effective and simple to build gardening system. To build one, you will need: Western Red Cedar Galvanized Corner Brackets Screws & Washers Weed Barrier

Score + Solder has multi-faceted terrariums that will put yours to shame. Careful; those spheres are quite sensitive, you know. LINK: SCORE + SOLDER

Hello Stitchy Friends! Well - I tried something new with Feeling Stitchy Fridays, but I just don't think it quite worked out, so let's go back to something that works - Friday Instagram Finds! Today we're taking a look at Sam Eldridge whose Instagram feed is a colorful and visually appealing treat for your eyes. Sam's botanicals are intricate and beautiful thread paintings. She also paints and creates embroidered patches. You can also find her on Etsy at SamEldridgeArt and she's competing in the Etsy Small Business Contest. Here are a couple of my favorites from her feed. A post shared by Sam (@smeldridge) on Mar 12, 2017 at 12:03pm PDT A post shared by Sam (@smeldridge) on Mar 28, 2017 at 12:31pm PDT

I started construction on a new smokehouse several weeks ago. Its going slow, never seem to have enough time to work on it. Im making it out of ceder,...

I started construction on a new smokehouse several weeks ago. Its going slow, never seem to have enough time to work on it. Im making it out of ceder,...

Tiny vessels hand stitched and cut to form abstracted memories. Sizes from 3-8 cms. Loop Head stitch pots Worn and Wethered Summer Fields Autumn

Weekly round-up: art+life+musings as shared on Instagram in the past week… New Moon pages. New Year. Renewal. Reset. Dedication.

thebeldam: Irish landscape with wee sheep

I'm crazy over birds. I know they've been popular for a while now, but my love of them goes back to my childhood on the dairy farm when I'd...

Well, I'm not sure why, but Christmas has felt a little hurried for me this year. December is a month that I like to savor and I usually do my best not to get carried away in all the hustle and bustl

Learn how to teach silent e words through explicit phonics instruction. Use orthographic mapping, connecting sound to symbol. Learn about the many jobs of the silent e!

Hermès Perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena pulls back the curtain on the secretive world of fragrance

Good morning there! How was your week? Ours was filled with shakes that make us want to shake it, color block fans, and seriously swoonworthy engagement rings. But you know what it’s time for now? The Britlist, duh! :)

The perfect medium for preserving & cooking all kinds of food is by using a smokehouse. Not only is it extremely practical, but when designed well it can also become a center piece or talking point for your backyard get togethers. And with summer fast approaching, what better DIY project could you want. Outlined below is the build of a very stylish smokehouse from start to finish. You can replicate this for your own project and/or tailor it to meet your own needs. The only tools required for this project were a trowel, an electric drill, a hand saw, a power drill

Examples of inchies, miniature quilts with small decorations, such as buttons, charms, ribbons and more

Stunning lace figures by artist Ágnes Herczeg , created entirely from organic materials such as: yarns, tree branches, roots, shell and cla...

If you love to sew or make quilts, then there is no doubt that you have lots of leftover fabric scraps. If you've ever wondered what to do with them, you

Today – woohoo! – I’m introducing the first of the 2022 Stitch Snippets, a series wherein we explore together some embroidery projects from start to finish. The projects in the Stitch Snippets series will be of varying degrees of smallness. Some will be finished items. Some will be decorative springboards for your own ideas. To ...

Welcome to our birdie paradise. This artisan made house greets you as you walk up to the entrance door. Every year the chickadee's make their home here. Two different clematis vines grow around it I love this birdhouse overlooking the pool. It came from "HomeGoods". This is another "HomeGoods" find. You can find wonderful things there. Little wrens like the birdhouse by the rose arbor. This hand-made church sits at the back of the rose arbor. I got this birdhouse at a craft show we were doing. It is hand-made in the USA and very charming. Now this birdhouse is really special to me. My hubby made it for me many years ago. It was a Christmas present. If you look carefully, you will see two ornamental doves sitting on branches. We purchased this rustic birdhouse from my friend Carole Maynard of "maynardgreenhouse.blogspot.com". It looks lovely when the rose "New Dawn" drapes its flowers over it! We call this one " The skinny Minnie". Wrens love this condo. This is another birdhouse I bought at a craft show, also hand-made in the USA. This birdhouse graces my favorite dogwood tree. Our property has many dogwoods, but this one tree has my heart. I call it "The Snow Queen". It drapes it's branches over our porch. Our climbing hydrangea nearly hides this one. A little hard to take a pictures of, because it is under the eaves at the front of the house. I hope you enjoyed a look at our birdie real estate! God bless, Evi

I've been receiving lots of questions about my ornament edgings, so here's how I do them. Backstitch matching fronts and backs. I always do ...

I started these little pale pink inchies when I was working on the romantic hearts collection. I set them aside for other projects and rediscovered them a few days ago, In another effort to de-clutter my sewing table I enjoyed some inchie time. Pretty peachy pink pastel shells, bugal beads tiny pearly glass seed beads, flowers and dragonflies crystal amethyst, a vintage diamante, a shiny silver star, antique lace ...... french knots, shell button hearts, a romantic ribbon rose. each backed with white cotton and hand stitched edging and if you know of a place that they might feel at home ....Boxoftrix on Etsy

Many people incorrectly assume that growing your own mushrooms is difficult. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you can grow a carrot, or a potato, you can definitely grow your own mushrooms at home (or on the farm). The hardest part of growing mushrooms is in fact the waiting. That's because it does take some time to grow specific varieties (in some cases an entire year before they'll start producing). But the good news is, once you've done the preparation once, you can be producing fresh delicious mushrooms for years to come with further little work required on

'First of all: please excuse, if my English is some kind of funny - I am German. But let's start with how you can weave your own elevated flower bed... or fence. You can easily use this technique for other things too. I'd also like to mention, that this is the first time, that I've woven something like that. This confirms that it is really pretty simple. You should only be aware, that it is more difficult to weave something which is linear, since it is not so solid. So if you like to do a fence, you might want

If you have the letter M on your palm, there is something very special about you… CONTINUE READING

Milk carton ice candles are as simple as they get, but they're so much fun to make! Makes great gifts for all occasions.

I've had several inquiries about making rusty bells and pins...so here you go. There are lots of different techniques out there, but this ...

Milk carton ice candles are as simple as they get, but they're so much fun to make! Makes great gifts for all occasions.

The perfect medium for preserving & cooking all kinds of food is by using a smokehouse. Not only is it extremely practical, but when designed well it can also become a center piece or talking point for your backyard get togethers. And with summer fast approaching, what better DIY project could you want. Outlined below is the build of a very stylish smokehouse from start to finish. You can replicate this for your own project and/or tailor it to meet your own needs. The only tools required for this project were a trowel, an electric drill, a hand saw, a power drill

One thing we’ve learned in this business is that having an incredible photographer on your side is equally important as any other trait a designer can have… lucky for us, the super tale…

I am back!! Thank you everyone for your warm Birthday wishes. Carlos and I had a good time in CA. Came home early this morning and it was a tiring trip. It was really warm in CA and I got myself a good tan. In this hot and humid weather it is nice to have this cool and refreshing agar agar. I actually made this when we were having the heatwaves and finally get to post it now. Ingredients : 1 packet (7 grm) of Swallow Brand white agar agar powder 600 ml of water 1 cup of low fat milk 1/2 cup of sugar (more if you want it sweeter) 2 tbsp of coco powder 1/2 can cream corn (4 oz) 1) In a pot, bring the water, sugar and agar agar powder to a boil over medium heat. Continue to stir until agar agar powder dissolved. Add in milk and bring it up to boil again. 2) Divide mixture to half. One part add in the coco powder and stir until well combined and the other part with corn. Keep the corn part warm over low heat. 3) Strain the coco part into a wet mould and let it set in the refrigerator. Once it's set scratch the surface with a fork and then pour the corn mixture on top. 4) Chill and let it set completely before cutting into it. Serve cold. Note : You can replace the milk with coconut milk.

There have been lots of lovely comments about my snippet rolls - the ones I made for Linda, Margaret, Nathalie and Patty, so I thought I'd share with you how to make your very own. Do you remember these? well you'll need some cotton reels. I soaked these ones in some walnut ink, but you can use coffee or tea to dye them. And you will need some scraps of fabric. Do you remember when I dyed this and rubbed it around the concrete to age it? Measure out how long you want your snippet rolls to be and tear fabric into lengths. I had to cut the lace, but I rubbed the ends to fray them slightly. Start layering the fabrics. When you have 2 or 3 layers, start layering snippets of anything you may have. I used postage stamps, bits of paper, photos, text from books, anything! Then when you have all your snippets in place lay a piece of organza ribbon over top, making sure it hangs just a little longer than your fabric pieces. Then pin all the layers together and take it to the sewing machine and stitch down the length of it. I sewed a vine with leaves. However you choose to sew it, make sure you catch all the snippets under the ribbon. Then I attached the top end of the ribbon to the cotton reel with a furniture tack which is small tack with a pretty head. Almost finished... Just roll it up and thread a ribbon through the cotton reel and tie it up. These would be great to make with a theme, a birthday, Mother's Day, Valentines Day with lots of little love snippets. What different ideas can you think of for snippet rolls? Have fun! Carole :)

The perfect medium for preserving & cooking all kinds of food is by using a smokehouse. Not only is it extremely practical, but when designed well it can also become a center piece or talking point for your backyard get togethers. And with summer fast approaching, what better DIY project could you want. Outlined below is the build of a very stylish smokehouse from start to finish. You can replicate this for your own project and/or tailor it to meet your own needs. The only tools required for this project were a trowel, an electric drill, a hand saw, a power drill

Yes I still have this crazy room filled to the brim but, let me show you my NEW room first! This is an apothecary cabinet that I found in Round Top. It is more than 8 feet long so it had to come in thru the window with the chandelier. I thought my hubby was going to blow a gasket when he saw the cabinet AND the chandi!!! Oh I forget to tell you that when they delivered the chandi it still had the bill of sale taped to the crate.........BUSTED! This was my husbands "man cave" for about 18 years and he never used it, so, snooze you lose! So I am fortunate to have two different studios. On this side I make jewelry, mixed media, and any other projects. I decided to split the sewing room and the craft room. It made me nervous thinking about all that fabric and lace next to a soldering gun or my torch. I'm not known for being the most graceful! It is all still a work in progress. It was amazing how much stuff I had crammed in closets waiting for a home. Most of it is put away but I have one closet left...... I put a cute table and chairs right in front of the windows, The plan is to put birdhouses and feeders out in front. I can't wait to have a little bird tea party right outside my window. These were all the babies that I collected in......a year. It's really not that many...... My husband and friend Charlene Gray just cringe when I buy another one, which makes it even more fun! "Sandy can you hear me?" I have a friend Sandy Navarro that kind find BLING like a blood hound on a hunt! We're all left in the dust! So the next time we go shopping we're going to hobble her to slow her down! I found this printing cabinet in Round Top. It's filled with bling and all kinds of possibilities. And, it's not even full! I also found the two C's in Round Top and covered them in pearls. I moved my Sunday School Attendance board in here so you can really see it. Are you believing what restraint I have had in not over stuffing this room? OOPS didn't crop this photo! This is my first Lisa Loria piece. I love all of her crazy creations. My friend Charlene Gray calls him "Chucky Head" and made me turn him around in our hotel room after I bought him! Poor Chucky! I know, how many mother of pearl buttons can one woman have......oh you have no idea! It's just one of those things I just keep collecting. It makes me smile to find a little bag at estate sales or the occasional sewing basket filled too the brim with goodies. If buttons were only worth their weight in gold! These suitcases made for great storage and a great shrine to my Purple Goat statue that my girlfriends bought for me this past Round Top when I couldn't go! Kecia Deveney's candle chandelier is what's in the center of this big vat of, yes you guessed it, Mother of Pearl Buttons! I wonder if they have MOP anonymous?? "Hi my name is Cindy and I buy every MOP button I find...." A nice shelf for these girls to rest on. SO, you were wondering what was in all those printing drawers? Just stuff like this...... What is it about baby shoes that always reminds me of Dawn Edmondson of The Feathered Nest. I love them both! Every room needs just a little bit of pink. All of my vintage cameras, SMILE! Is it a little on the flashy side?? As you leave this studio you'll find a big cubbie that is packed with lace! It was a cheap piece but was a wonderful way to store bits and bobs of lacy treasures. I know it's one of my favorite things. I tea stained a ton of these just so they would look just right for you! And, yes those are the famous Pink Pens in the corner! Studio Part Deux, "Alice in Wonderland". It all started with a 1950's kitchen table that I bought to be my sewing table, and the rest as they say, is history. I added the two pie safes that are now filled to the brim with fabric, lace, buttons and...... a few doll heads. I had this humungeous book shelf built. It was so big they had to take the ceiling fan off to fit it into the room and it's so heavy it took 5 grown men to fit it into this tiny 12x12 room. It too is filled with all kinds of collections and treasures that I have collected at estate sales, garage sales, and last but not least, Canton and Round Top. I'll be showing you a lot of my collections because there isn't a lot of room for any other kind of storage. I'm already bumping into furniture now! I had the closet converted into big shelves that hold so much lace, fabric, trim, sewing supplies and odds and ends that I'm surprised the shelves aren't giving way with all that weight! I decorated each bin for this event and my plan is to keep it all organized, at least for a week anyway! The bins are really filled to the top with lace, fabrics, binding tape and crochet items. I just love it all. My favorite bin. I keep telling myself to use this special trim and I can't bring myself to use it. It's silly because I have 3 wedding dresses waiting in the wings waiting to be tea stained! This is one of the pie safes that I repainted and piled treasures on top. The square dancing dress was my aunt's. Dorothy was the belle of the square dancing ball! She was also one of the creative influence's in my life. Bingo numbers, plastic phone key chains from the 60's and more ballet dancers that were made for music jewelry boxes are just a few of the items in this chest. Belt buckles, mother of pearl buttons, and what ever else I can fit in here. It's like my own little silly five and dime store! The black and white photo in the jeweled frame is my grandmother, Lilly with her best friends. After finding old photos of her and her friends I found out that my grandmother was very playful and dramatic in her early years. It's funny how we forget to think about them ever being young and what they were like before we knew them. One of my best friends Mary Kathryn gave me one of my first toy singer sewing machines that actually still works! The other ones that I have found just look cute but don't actually work. My husband will never know how much I paid for all this bling. It's going to my grave with me! NO, not the bling, ..... the price of the bling! But how could you pass this up! It has taken quite a few years to collect all of this, it's kind of like a monthly payment plan....I buy a little every month! And pearls, don't ya just love pearls! Mirror. mirror on the wall, who has the most junk of them them all? No Comment! Ahhhh, you knew I'd get the vintage wedding photos in here somewhere didn't ya! Just another collection that I love to hunt for at Round Top and, sometimes late at night when I can't sleep, can you say....Ebay! Cake toppers, check! Now who doesn't have a collection of gum ball machine wedding rings. You don't? Well I think they are just to die for. I don't know why but, it just makes me so sentimental thinking about how wonderful it must have been for this as your prize you when you put your money in the machine. I would thought I had died and gone to heaven it would have been so special. Why is it that only the men can't seem to stand up straight. It actually looks like they're about to jump over the side. These are bits and pieces of vintage cake decorations that I collect too! Boy that collection list is really getting long. How many "collections" can you have before it turns into hoarding????? One of my many finds when I went to the "wedding estate sale" of my dreams. This was the sale where I met Cathy from "Girls Gone Junkin'." We were both crazy women stuffing bridal lace, bridal veils and everything else we could get our hands on into sacks and between the two of us almost wore this one poor estate worker into a "spell." She had to sit down and have a Dr. Pepper to recover! Plus Cathy got the pink ruler. I told her to put me in the will for that darn ruler, she's a fast lil' bugger when she sees a prize! OK, so I'm bidding on Ebay on TWO sets of these ballet dancers. Well I thought it was only two sets. I just kept thinking when I got outbid that I had just re-bid on that item. The long blond story of it was that I ended up with EIGHT sets of them! I put myself in time out for while on that one! Believe it or not, this is not all of them. Yikes! Are they for sale you ask..nope! My latest find at Canton, it was nine thousand degrees in the shade that day so I decided to go into the cover shopping ares and found this. After I found my prize it was time to get out of the heat and have a Dr.Pepper! I know, I know, how many tickets does one person need? Well apparently more than this because there's more behind these. I found the majority of these at Marburger Farm, and boy are they heavy. What am I going to do with them? I have no idea...yet! More doll heads and more buttons! This is my grandmother Lilly again surrounded by lace, of course. These were from my belt buckle making phase. I sold them at the Cowgirl Hall of Fame for awhile but they bought me out! I still make myself a new belt buckle for new events like the Junk Gypsy Prom every year. The prom is an annual event twice a year that the Junk Gypsies put together for a night of dressing up in old prom dresses and acting silly. Too much fun! Then there was the phase of decorating frames. These are photos of my mom, wasn't she a "dish!" Another corner of "stuff". I found this little girl at the Goodwill!! I just couldn't believe some family would give this up. She reminds me of Glenda the Good Witch in her pink gown. This is also the end of my tour, so it's time for you to click your heels and say, "there's no place like home", and click on Karen's link to take you back to the list. Thanks so much you for stopping by. I would love it if you joined my blog. I have several give-aways coming ip and if you join you'll hear about it first! A big thank you to Karen Valentine at My Desert Cottage for working so hard on this party. Just click on her link and it will take you back to her site so you can continue looking through all the wonderful studios out there.

Hidden Treasures Snippets or Clusters Snippets made with book pages, music paper, bits of lace or vintage fabric, cuts of Hidden Treasures paper or cardstock, added bits of vintage style papers or cardstock Sewn with black, neutral, dark red or brown thread using zigzag or aother wandering stitch. Use on pockets, on pages, on tags, as page tabs, add to covers, etc Pair with other Hidden Treasures items. Create your own look Note. Photo shows mostly Hidden Treasures B pages used for these snippets and a neutral snippet I’m currently working on some Hidden Treasures A snippets and will post photos soon. Those can be requested now and will be an option when I have several made. Snippets are usually about 3-4” long and no more than 2-2-1/2” wide but there is no specific size.

I've been receiving lots of questions about my ornament edgings, so here's how I do them. Backstitch matching fronts and backs. I always do these over 2 with two threads. I always start the whipstitching with a loop. And then you just whipstitch through the front and back stitches. Adding beads every other stitch or every third stitch...or however you want the beaded edging to look. I use Piecemaker size 28 needles, the beads fit right over the eye. (The beads also fit over the John James size 28's too.) Edgings like this are just without beads (whipstitched through the backstitching.) When I get to the hanger, I put a small knot in my ribbon or cording, so that the end doesn't accidentally get pulled out. Then, I weave a stitch or two through the backstitches and ribbon. And then continue on with the beading. My last stitch is always stitched through the beginning stitch. And then I thread the needle under the whipstitches and clip the end close. Ta~Da! So simple, but so effective :) The top ornament has beads every other stitch. The bottom ornament has beads every third stitch. Happy Stitching!!!