vintage prize ribbons...

Isn't she a beauty?  I just fell in love with the pose this girl took for the camera, she looks shy, demure and has a graceful whimsy about her.  So ofcourse she must become part of a trophy ribbon...

(sold)

I still have a few of these ribbons left and after I cleaned my workroom this week, (YAY) I came across them and decided to get busy with them again.  I just love adding old seam binding, music paper and other ribbons and bits to them to turn them into something special.  Don't you just love going through all of your stash and bits and pieces to play with?  It's one of my favorite things to do!

(sold)

Here she hangs on a favorite mirror of mine, and would look equally at home on a favorite mirror of yours  ;0

I have 3 wonderful sisters of my own and 3 fabulous sister-in-laws and I know many of you have that same sister/friend relationship that I do with mine and well, this picture of this family of sisters I think says it all...  They look like they have a fun loving time together!

We have our sisters that we hold so dear from our family and we have our sister/girlfriends

that we can always call and play with and shop with and such and then we have our sister/bloggirlfriends...

This one is for all of us sisters of the blogworld... this may sound silly, but as I was making this one I was thinking of all of the blog~sisterhood relationships I have formed here in blogland.  I have met so many wonderful people here and cherish all of the comments, and feedback and comaraderie and inspiration and...

you get the idea right?

I love you guys!!!

awww I know, sometimes I'm such a sap.

I found the definition for sister, which of course included sisterhood and well it just had to be added as a ribbon, I added some glass glitter for the sparkle effect ~ that was a must for me today...

yes, those are my 'advent' candles, I have to rename them because they are NOT getting put away any time soon, I love them in the rustic old toolbox.

See even your dressform would love one of these, just ask her!

So this is what I spent part of my day on today, and I have to tell you I enjoyed every minute of it!

Thank you again for all of you support, and encouragement and inspiration you have bestowed on me!

Theresa xoxo

I'm linking up with Debra over at Common Ground for Vintage Inspiration Friday

and Gina over at The Shabby Chic Cottage for Transformation Thursday

and Cindy over at My Romantic Home for Show and Tell Friday

I hope you'll join the parties! xoxo

thank you...

Melinda!

I woke up this morning to find out I was featured at Melinda's newest venture

The Vintage Inspired Home

What a great way to wake up!

The blog  is full of the loveliness we have come to expect of Melinda. 

Her first home feature was of Debra of Capers of the Vintage Vixens home and oh my gosh, I have never wanted to live in a barn so badly!  It is absolutely beautiful, if you haven't seen the feature, you do not want to miss it!

She is also doing regular features of all of the wonderful inspiration we find here in blogland.

It is an honor to be included in her "inspiration files" for this week.

Thank you again Melinda!

I hope you'll all go check out The Vintage Inspired Home... you will be happy that you did!

Theresa xoxo

how does your garden grow...

I have been making some new flowers and thought I'd show you a few of them, the flower bug has hit hard over here and so as I am making the etsy orders I am thinking of how I can mix it up a bit...

This one has a stiff linen type of fabric for the bottom petals and then some lace that a friend from work gave to me and a ribbon rosette and glass bead in the center. 

I have to address the lace fabric,  I am able to work on my flowers while I am at work during the quiet time (yup it's a really stressful job...not) and whenever she comes in, her standard question is "so what are you making now?" and she has started bringing me in things to check out and some to share.  I love it!  She is 78 years old and I love that crafts and junk bring us together, our common bond so to speak.

This one has more of her lace and some chiffon added with a gorgeous old beaded earring in the center.

I know this one doesn't qualify for WW but I am in love with this lavender fabric, it is just so delicate in both color and weight so I made it into a pom flower.

Can you pass up polka dots?  Nope, me either!

A lavender dahlia.  Help me out, lavender or lilac?  It's just the palest purple ever.

This was a special order of my ivory ones, the order was for 4 flowers that were 3"  instead of 6" so she can have her bridesmaids wear them!  I get so excited when someone uses something of mine for such a special occasion!

Yup, it's like a fabric gardening center over here @ 612... So unlike the planting, watering, and waiting like a  true gardener, think Carole or June,   instead  I sew, glue and fluff!

You can find all of these in my etsy,  The Old White House. 

It's Wednesday, so you know what that means, I'm linking up to White Wednesday over at Faded Charm, Wow Us Wednesdays @ Savvy Southern Style  and Link Love with Tea Rose Home.

Thanks for the parties girls, I always come away with so much inspiration!

Thanks for stopping by,

Theresa xoxo

easy peasy charms to make...

So, there I am in Hobby Lobby minding my own business, getting a few supplies in the jewelry findings section for the flowers and such and what do I see?  Fabulous silver bezels that require no soldering!  Oh I still love me some soldering, and will show you in just a bit more of what I have been up to, but these are the perfect charm to share without the cost or fear of the molten lava hot soldering iron!

They require few supplies, the most important being your imagination and free spirit!

After said bezel has been located you will then need to purchase some diamond glaze. There are other products out there that are similar, it is a dimensional glaze that will dry like a resin without the mixing part.

The product I used is called Scrabble and Glass Glaze by Sun and Moon craft kits, I found it on etsy and I know you can find diamond glaze on there too. I have used both and they both work great.  Mod Podge also makes a dimensional glue now that I think works the same way, but I could not find my bottle of that and so haven't tried it yet.

note to self... clean out the workroom!

O.k. this is very important, find a sweet picture... and then it must be LASER copied!  You will not be able to copy these on your inkjet printer, for some reason when the ink and glaze are mixed, the ink will turn different colors and run.

You can also take a picture right out of a vintage book like I did here.  These two are Mary had a little lamb and little Jack Horner from a vintage nursery rhyme book.

  I used the pattern on the bezel package to measure how big the picture could be and then just traced that on top of the picture in the book.  seriously easy peasy.

I love how stinkin sweet these are, those little books always catch my heart with a bit of nostalgia.

This one is a snippet of an original photo, you can use those too if you dare to!  I was on a roll and tried not to think of how bummed I might be when I can't go back and use the photo again. But sometimes a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do! 

We don't have a print shop in this one horse town I live in. 

For this one I measured the bezel pattern on to a piece of scrapbook paper and then cut the little girl out of the picture and glued her on.   I then cut out the word precious from an old book and added some detail with markers. 

So this one was a bit of collage fun too!

So you cut out the picture, and then embellish if you like, I added glitter to the one that says precious by putting a very thin bead of glue around the background paper and then sprinking on the glass glitter (also found on etsy).

Then you squeeze enough glaze onto the collage/picture, enough to fill the bezel to the top and leave it alone!

This is always hard for me to do, cuz I'm a bit impatient. shhhhhh.

O.k. before you run out the door to buy you some bezels... here are two important tips... DO NOT shake the glaze bottle!  It will cause bubbles in your glaze and you do not want bubbles on your charm but if you do get bubbles then just take a pin or toothpick and pop them.  Spoken from experience, I promise.

Because I am a thrifty kind of girl, I bought the bezels when they were 50% off, which HL does quite often so they cost maybe 1.00 a piece for the big one and I think 1.50 for the set of two. 

So there you have it, cheap and easy!

Something I never wanted to reveal about myself!  LOL

This was your tip from Theresa for Tuesday...

Thanks for stopping by!

Theresa xoxo

this just in... I'm linking up to Hope Studios for Tutorial Tuesday. and Tip Me Tuesday over at Tip Junkie and the Glitter Party over at Running with Glitter!  I'm headed over now to see what I can learn today!

very vintage inspired...

There once was a girl who thought she needed to prove to herself and those who loved her most that she could take care of herself.   To show herself that she was strong, and self reliant and maybe a bit of a hippie child. 

So she moved to one of the most beautiful area in MI. and rented one of the most affordable places she could find.  You see, there would be no borrowing money, no needing to ask for help.  Not that those who loved her wouldn't offer, but she had something to prove.

So in this land of wine country and hotels and golf resorts, what could she afford?  A piece of Waldens Pond.  She settled in the first day 'nesting', setting up her sweet little cabin and laying out the few art supplies she brought with her and taking stock of her literature. She would need those things,  you see, what she found was this little log cabin set on a tree farm.  One that was full of history but lacking most everything else she took for granted.  No electricity, no running water, no bathroom. What it offered was an unusable outhouse that had a snakes nest in it, and a wonderful little pond which fed her soul and a beautiful blue heron daily. 

I learned alot about myself in the months that I lived in this sweet place.  It doesn't look exactly like I remember it.  It has recently had a fire and so is boarded up.  It seems much smaller than I remember and the outhouse is gone. (too bad) :) 

 I did read a great deal, and I thought I was so cool when I lit my gas lamps to read by at night.  I played with different art supplies and became a bit more confident in my abilities.  But where I gained the most confidence was in myself.  I worked two jobs that summer and I did not have a car so I rode the 10 miles or so into town on my bike, downhill to work and up some crazy hills after a long day of waiting tables.  I was the strong woman I was searching for.

I have never regretted living on Jack Frost's Tree Farm ( yes, that was really the name of it!)  I am so glad the girls wanted to go see it, it made me a bit melancholy but I sincerely loved it.  We took pictures with our phones because we were pretty sure that after the fire it will probably be gone before I am able to visit again. 

It looks like the inhabitants after me had electricity, and there was a t.v. antenna out back... they don't know what they missed out on.

Thank you for going down memory lane with me.

Love,

Theresa xoxo

I am linking up to Vintage Inspiration Friday over at Debras

and Take a Risk Day over @ Nesting Place

p.s.  I reread this and thought just in case you got the idea I was a big brave girl, I was NOT!  I was scared out of my wits at night quite a bit, but I got through it.  I have used that lesson throughout my life, and it has served me well!

spring and silver, a great combination...

A while back I made this metal cone/ tussie mussie out of an old screen, I liked it a bunch but there was just something about it that I thought needed a bit of tweeking. So I pulled the ribbon off of it that I had used to cover the raw edges and the construction bits and as soon as I did I knew that was the problem... less is more!

Oh and I took off the ribbon that I had used as a hanger and added this silver chain instead.  I dusted it with a bit of glitter and when the glue dried and the glitter stuck it looked a bit like sparkling white paint. 

 and now it hangs in the kitchen on the china cabinet with a little primrose giving all who see it a sign and hope of spring and I just needed to share it with you!  I just adore it and will definitely be making more, I just needed to work out the kinks :) 

I have also been soldering again, and I had my brother Wil over to play last week, these are almost finished, I just need to add the jumprings.

These are the backs, I made my MIL a bookmark out of one for her birthday and I plan on doing the same with these.  I will show you again when I have them finished ~  consider yourself warned!

I made another one with a bit of crochet trim enclosed inside, they are a bit trickier but I do love the results.

Have I ever told you I have a thing for older men?  I do!  I can't help myself, I see these old pictures of a man in a suit and his lil hat and I just NEED to create something with him!  I have put a piece of a dictionary page behind him from the letter O... original, just because you just know he was one!

And last but not least, just in case you thought my sewing machine was sitting idle, Danielle was going on a whirlwind trip to TX. for a comedy festival ( which is why she was missing from the b-day trip pics) and she asked me to make her a small tote to have with her at the festival.  You know I can't hardly say no to my kids, so there I was as she was packing to leave,  sewing and ruffling her new bag :)  She found the graphics and I ironed them on.  This one was really quick and simple, even the handle is made of drop cloth, we skipped the rosette,  and no snap (only because she already had one foot in the car!)

So there you have it... I wanted to assure you that I haven't been sitting on my duff watching the world go by!  

O.k. o.k.... I've been doing a bit of that too :)

I am linking up to White Wednesday, Wow Us Wednesdays, and Link Love... 

what can I say, I'm a creature of habit!

Thanks for stopping by!

Theresa xoxo

I was kidnapped, and had the best time ever...

Sooooooo, you know how it was my birthday a couple of weeks ago?  Well, my sister Molly's birthday was just last week and we made plans to go to lunch on friday for her birthday... or so I thought!  Little did I know that these fabulous girls had other plans for me...

that is Helena and Candice, my nieces, Kathy, my SIL, Molly, my sister, me and Annie, my SIL.... they are my kidnappers! (I look like I'm being tortured don't I?)  Here we are at the beautiful winery we went to for my first ever wine tasting, so much fun!

they called for ransom but were denied so they had to keep me for the whole weekend! Lucky me!

~ cuz they took me to one of my all time favorite places, Traverse City!  It is surely one of the best places in all of MI.  This was our view out the window of Annie's parents lakeside home,  I could look at this every day...

(maybe they would adopt me)

here it is at night, breathtaking isn't it.  Yup that's ice and snow out there but that didn't stop us from doing this...

searching for shells and petosky stones~

Molly found one, lucky girl!

We laughed, we cried, we solved world problems,(you can thank us later) and we laughed some more.  My cheeks and stomach ached from so much laughing!  Seriously one of the best weekends I have had in forever...

Thanks girls!  I love you with all my heart. xoxo

Thanks for stopping by,

see you tomorrow with the usual craftiness!

Theresa xoxo

send in the clowns...

Today is  going to be a creating day for me!!  I haven't gotten out the paper and glue in quite a while, not that I haven't been creating, mind you just not collage.  I have been making flowers like crazy and am thankful that people seem to like them!  You know me though, I like to dabble in many types of art forms and collage is one of my favorites.  I'm even breaking out the soldering iron again so maybe I will have something to share!  For now I'm sharing a piece I did a while back...

I got the image from Karen over at The Graphics Fairy  and I put her in an old rusty clock, I also haven't made over a clock in a while... maybe I should remedy that too!

I love these little guys on the top of the clock, ususally clowns are kinda creepy ( I have unfortunately passed that thought on to my kids and none of them like clowns much so we have never had a clown at a birthday party... well except me :)

I think these two are an exception though!  I put the ticket under glass and then stamped on the fun scrapbook paper.

This is a bit out of the box for me too, using such colorful  paper but the clowns inspired me to step out of the box!

I'm linking up to Karen's party!   I gotta run, time to wake up Max for school, have a great day!

Happy Monday!

Theresa xoxo

linked in? I'm sorry...

this is going to be short but sweet... if you have received a request from (ME) to connect with me through linked in, PLEASE IGNORE IT!  I did not send it, my hubby did by mistake.  The mistake being that he really did not know what he was doing!

Really, I have told a few of you this little geriatric-computer challenged story but I'm going to share it once more. 

 Duane and I were in the living room on seperate couches him on his computer and me on Cams... when as I am checking my e-mails I see not one but two from him asking for me to connect with him on Link In. I looked over at him with a puzzled look on my face.  "Why did you send me this linked-in request?"  his reply was just what I would have expected "Oh did that go to you?" ugh. He had no idea it was going to the entire contact list.

Sooooo please ignore the request and please know that I understand!  As I explained to Duane, but we ARE linked! :)

Thanks for your understanding...

Theresa xoxo. 

p.s. I'm not linking this to any parties! LOL

Why I love my chalkboard...

This is what Duane and I woke up to on Saturday morning... Hannah stayed up later than we did (go figure) and wrote this on the dining room chalkboard for us to see when we woke up!

See why I love my Little Boo?

This is the funny part, and yes we did go to the movies!  :)

and this is a bit of what I have been up to... how cute is that little dachshund with the crown?

(sold)

a close up of the ruffle and rosette made from black and tan homespun.

It's listed as of this morning, I have been working like a crazy person to get  The Old White House filled up, and today I am making more flowers and really am resisting the urge to start on a new project, like Mom always said...one thing at a time, one day at a time.

Thanks for stopping by, I thought you'd get a warm fuzzy from Hannah's msg.

Theresa xoxo

I am linking up to White Wednesday, Link Love and Wow Us Wednesdays