Dried flowers & Vivien Leigh

Well, it Saturday night and I'm here in the woods. We had rain and strong wind last night. So when we went to the shore this morning, we found that the wire to the cottage had blown down, and there was no electricity. A call to the electric company went in, someone sat on hold for quite a while and was finally told they would get someone out as soon as possible to fix the wire, but they were very busy with alot of calls and it may be a day or more before they get to us. The wire was hanging down right in front of the door, so I couldn't even go inside.

Being here, instead of being at the shore gave me time to get some work done this morning (editing photos of a few suits, jackets, dresses and hats) Plus it gives me time to do another post here. This will be a crafty post.
I had mentioned in a previous post how pretty my hydrangeas were at the beginning of the Summer. So I cut a few heads and set them out to dry. Last year I did a few, but they faded to grey and were very fragile. This year, after they were dried just enough, I sprayed them with some polyurethane to seal them, and they've held their colors a little better. Not as vibrant as fresh flowers, but still very pretty shades of pale blues and greens. I just have them tucked in a pretty bowl on the bottom shelf of my planter for now, I'll think of something to do with them later.

I also pulled some of the individual flowers off of the hydrangea heads and pressed those in a book along with some wildflowers that I also picked. Every Spring, I see those bags or boxes of seed mixes that promise you an easy garden filled with thousand of wildflowers, and I'm a sucker to buy them every year. I didn't get thousands growing out there, but I did get some pretty dainty little flowers that made me want to pick them and press them. I ended up with a bunch of the individual hydrangea flowers because there are so many on a head. To the left is a sample of some of the flowers. I have them stored within sheets of paper inside of a box, waiting for a crafty idea to use them comes along.




The vintage clothing themed altered book project that I am part of is still chugging along. We are just halfway through now, 6 done, 6 more to go, finishing in February. The book that I worked on this month had a theme of 'Silver Screen Goddesses' So I chose Vivien Leigh. I had always loved that photo of her standing under the flowers and thought how cool it would look to glue dimensional flowers onto it. So that's just what I did on one page, using silk flowers though, not dried ones. On the other page I chose a thoughtful photo of her and another were she has a slight smile. I also cut out 2 quotes about beauty, which happened to be in this book. Both pages were topped with a soft green tulle.



Have a Happy & Safe & Dry Labor Day weekend!
Bye for now, Carol