Flower Box

"Too many flowers" is the only thing on my mind now.

Recently, I purchased Flowers A to Z with Donna Dewberry by Donna Dewberry on clearance and wanted to try my hand painting flowers. Flipping through the book, I remembered a jewelry box that I long ago had intentions of painting... What started out as a few canvases to try flower painting on (sketches below), has now blossomed into too many surfaces.

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This is a picture of the blank box.

Listed below are the sides I remembered to make sketches for...

Top: Included are sakuras (represented by the circles), peonies (shows as ovals), and delphinium buds on stems. The sakura and peonies are my sister's favorite flowers. The delphinium was used for it's linearity. Easily missed may be the sakura petals floating around, used as filler. Not sure if I will have sakura blossoms floating around too; that may be too much. As a side note, corner flowers will not be included. They are there my own for reference.

Front: This is my favorite side. I'm excited to see how the distinct separate sections will turn out! I will be sure to use different background colors so each section pops. Same flowers used as the ones used in the top section. Top to bottom: sakuras, peony, and open delphiniums. The leaves at the bottom are only shown for reference.

Back: This has to be my second favorite side, a hibiscus so big that it doesn't even fit. ;). Not much else to say besides they are a very pretty flower. (This is the only drawing that is a trace and isn't my work.)

Sides: Which is left and which is going to be the right side, I haven't picked yet. I haven't even picked which way is up for the morning glories. I will decide after I paint the other sides since I'll paint them based which side they look better on. And the bottom right corner of the fuchsias seem to be lacking something...

Sides not included? Plenty. I realized there's at least four more potential spaces to paint: three drawer insides and the bottom. The bottom I can easily decide not to paint and the drawer insides I may decide to cover in velvet (and maybe add dividers).

Finally, there will be a black trim going around the box's top and bottom edge.

Deadline? One to two months. My sister and mother are going to China for the summer and won't be back until August. I envision this taking that long... and think I'll aim for a side a week and will decide how I want the insides to be.

Mother's Tank Top5

Update on last week's entry.

Finished. Mom approved.

Added the sequins between the flowers and a carefully placed sequin hid the hole the removed lily left.

Lessons learned: The fabric that I used did not play well with wide ribbon (main example is the left out lily). Even small ribbon had trouble being pulled through it (example including the peach roses). For future projects, flowers created first and then stitched or a wider holed fabric work better.

Next infatuation: painted flowers.

Mother's Tank Top4

Update on last week's entry.

 "Leaves" added. There's two types. The first is a folded triangle, with two variations. The others are a cross between straight stitch and bullion knots (since it's a straight stitch with some twists in it).

Mother's Tank Top3

Update on last week's entry.

 

Flowers have been more or less finalized.

The peach roses are simple straight stitches that I let the ribbon twist when I was stitching to give them more dimension. The red rose tops are the common folded rose. Just about any search for ribbon rose brings up a tutorial. As for the buds, they are just a simple wrap. I'm questioning if I want the lily at the top because the ribbon is too wide to easily go through the fabric and I'm having trouble creating lily-like petals. Maybe call it a tulip?... ;P.

Mother's Tank Top2

Update on last week's entry.

Similar to the order I drew the sketch, I started with the big flowers:

The red ruffles are going to be the base of two roses (though I haven't decided how to design the top section), the pink rose is just a gather-stitched rose (take a length of ribbon, gather stitch, and pull tight) and the peach ones are spider web roses (five thread lines radiating from a center with a ribbon woven around it).

Mother's Tank Top

Mother's day is just around the corner and instead of flowers that will droop in a few days and die, I decided to make some flowers bloom on one of my mom's tank tops with ribbons (something which I'm still learning how-to do). Ribbon embroidery, also referred to as ribbonry, uses ribbons to create pictures, usually flowers and leaves, but can also create decorative stitches. Something similar is shaping 3D flowers out of ribbon, similar to silk flowers used in flower arrangements. From there, one could also dabble in ribbonpoint (cross-stitching using ribbons, Basic Ribbonpoint Technique by Patricia Mabry) or a step further, silk paper (Take Silk: A Guide to Silk Paper for the Creative Fibre Artist by Judith Pinnell). [Both books found at my library.]

I wanted a diagonal line that opened as it went up. Using various roses, I drew the big ones first. From there, to fill in, I added the medium and smaller roses. The lily in the upper-left started as a rose but liking something a bit more "open," I decided on a lily. We'll see about that because that does take away from the theme of roses...

Concept sketch:




From there, I wanted to see what colors to use and sketched this:

Well, that's the easy part… Stay tuned for more details as I work on it. And since I won't be going home until my sister graduates (Sat, June 5), I have a bit of extra time. ;). See you next week!

Hey~ ^^

I love crafting. I've loved it for a long time. My first memory of crafting is from a book of simple craft projects for children. I couldn't understand the steps since they were in Chinese, but using the pictures, I'd imagine the instructions. Thus without trying, the project would gain my personal flair. I created a simple pinwheel that flutters with a breeze, the origami fortune teller, paper animals, and other simple kiddie projects. From there, I moved to a variety of crafts, including jewelry making, scrapbooking, ribbonwork, quilling and much more.

Here, I hope to share what I'm currently working on and possibly the crafting knowledge I've gained in weekly posts. I'm currently intrigued by ribbon and flower arrangement and may incorporate that into a craft project. So stick around to see what surprises I create next!

If you have suggestions, comments, questions about crafting, or anything else, feel free to email me. craftedbypika (at) gmail (dot) com.

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