Happy Halloween!

We've been away visiting friends for the holiday weekend, but I'll be back with a full post tomorrow!  

Happy Halloween!

Thanksgiving Supplies Treasury

I made a treasury of yummy and pretty things to get me in the mood for Thanksgiving.  Sometimes Thanksgiving gets a little lost in the shuffle between summer and Christmas, especially for those of us in gift producing businesses!  

Click here to go to the treasury live to get a closer look at individual items!

Photo Staging Practice

So, good morning everyone!

  I've been trying to work on my photography and my product staging for my Etsy shop.  So I painted a corner of my studio a nice clean white, and I've been trying to figure out how to shoot various types of my work, like my collages, cards, hollow book jewelry boxes, and also some new paper garlands.  So I'm thinking I need to be able to both hang things on the wall, and well as maybe have a shelf to sit things on with a nice clean background.  So I just went upstairs and looked at the haphazard stack of things I put together for some test shots and I thought it was so funny I had to share.

And here are a few of the test shots I took yesterday.  I still have a ways to go, but I think I'm making progress.

Luckily I have a photographer friend who is going to come help me soon!  I Can't wait!

  

Our Kitchen is up on Design*Sponge!

We are so thrilled that our kitchen renovation is included in today's Before and After feature on Design*Sponge!  Hooray!  Here's a quick screenshot of the feature.  Click on the image to see the whole post.

  They said such nice things, and they even noticed and appreciated TH's subtle and much agonized over choice of two complementary whites for the walls.  Thanks DS!

Thanks Etsy Finds!

All but one of my repurposed Hollow Book Jewelry Boxes are shipping out today to their new happy homes thanks to a lovely feature in yesterday's Etsy Finds.  Thanks Etsy!

To see my one remaining Hollow Book Jewelry Box made from the wonderfully kitschy young adult novel "Vigilantes, Ride!" click here.  And to read about the possibility of a custom Hollow Book Jewelry Box click here.

Isabelle Abramson Ceramics

I want, I want, I want!

To learn more about Isabelle and to see more of her work click here.

Paper Projects in Progress

Over the last few days I have taken a few much needed breaks from holiday jewelry production to work on  some holiday pieces headed for Fiddleheads For Fiona.  Here are a few snaps of work in progress.

New product in development, custom initial or monogram collages

Chevron Stripe Notecards

Snowman Garland

Christmas Bells Garland


This work is all still in development, but to see what's available for purchase on Fiddleheads click here.

Cripes! A Coyote!

Dear Coyote, you are cute, but please get out of my yard.

The Thing I Like About Winter

Pretty much the only thing that I like about winter so far is that the view from our kitchen window gets better once all the leaves have fallen off the trees.  See that mountain back there?  It's pretty.  And warm fires are pretty nice too.

There must be other nice things about winter that I am not remembering right now.  But right now I already miss summer.  Sigh.  And next summer is a very long way away!  Maybe I will have lots of extra time for indoor things, like fun crafting projects.  That will be nice!

Vintage Stamps for Wedding Invitations

My very stylish friend Holly just sent out her wedding invitations with the most gorgeous vintage stamps.  I think they really add a sense of romantic timelessness and distinction to her presentation.  Who'd have thought a stamp could do that? 

 In case you'd like to get some for yourself, Holly found these beauties at Champion Stamps in New York, NY.  Their website isn't much to look at, but apparently their store is a treasure trove of awesomeness.  Her lovely and clean letterpress invitations were designed and made by her sister Wendy's recently launched stationary company Dear Hancock.  Her website isn't quite up yet, but I've seen a little preview of their products and I'll be posting about it as soon as it is!  

Living Room Before & After

Having our living room up right now on Apartment Therapy in their "Room for Color" contest has motivated me to finally put up the before and after's of our living room reno!  If you'd like to check out our entry on Apartment Therapy click here.

Here is a look at what we did to our living room when we moved into the barn.  Actually, the living room required the least amount of work of all the rooms.  Mostly it was mostly just painting.  But just bump up the hours we worked on it we decided to paint it three times to get exactly the right color blue.  That's right, I said three times.  I would never have taken the time, but TH has a touch of the OCD, and I'm glad now that he does, because I think it came out great.  

Here is what we started with:

 We were lucky that the room already had the nice built-ins at the end, and the nice new wood floors.  The antique farm table and hitchcock chairs were the first purchase we made for our new home.  After living in our tiny Brooklyn apartment we were so excited to actually have room for an actual dining room table!  It's amazing what you consider a luxury in New York! 

And here's The O enjoying the wide open spaces.

   

And here's the finished product:

The only major renovation we did in this room was installing the Jotul wood stove, which was a fairly big project, but completely worth it.  I love feeling cozy in the winter, and this allows us to have at least one room in the freezing north that easily hovers at around 80 degrees.  Also, just looking at the fire makes me feel warm!

The couch is from Room & Board, the rug is from Crate and Barrel, and the little poofs are from Ikea. The prints in the detail photo next to the wood stove are Gocco prints on vintage book pages from Wondercabinet.  Everything else we found in vintage shops or was scavenged from family.

More installments of our house makover to follow soon!

We're in Apartment Therapy's "Room for Color" Contest!

I just found out that our living room has been selected to be a part of Apartment Therapy's Room for color contest!  We are so excited!  

I hope if you can find a free minute you will please go vote for us!  Click on the screenshot to link directly to our page in the contest! 

Variations on a Theme - Leaf Earrings

Today is a travel day for us, we are on our way home from Chicago.  But here's another quick peak at some more new work.  I'm exploring more variations on pieces inspired by elements of nature, like leaves and branches and petals.  Here are two new leaf inspired pieces.

Emmett's Nursery Before and After

I've had trouble putting up before and after pictures of the renovations of our house because I never feel like we are actually done!  But I'm going to consider these to be "after" at least a good chunk of renovations!  Please don't hold me to keeping it all this way!

I'm going to start with our baby Emmett's room, because it is 99% completed.  Of course there are still things I'd like to change, overall I'm very happy with the way it came out.  Especially when I look again at the before pictures!  

Here are some before shots:

The major design challenges in this space were; 1) the darkness, both in color and in lack of light.  2) The floor, covered with very old (and ugly) commercial carpeting.  3) The very strange vestibule/cupola thing in the ceiling.  There are little transom windows, which would have been lovely if they looked outside, but instead they look at insulation in the attic.  Not good. 4) Storage, because there was none.  For furniture we tried to make a mix of vintage and homemade details and some new pieces to fit the more utilitarian and practical needs. 

So here's what we did:

So first off we pulled up the yucky carpet and painted everything white to brighten it all up.  It's fantastic how much change you can make with just a couple of coats of paint!  I'm always amazed by that.  Since the floors underneath were wood, but not in great shape TH painted lovely yellow stripes on the floor.

 

Here's what we did with the ceiling situation.  I made and block printed some fabric panels to cover the insulation windows, and we hung a giant white paper lantern in place of the 70's era brass fixture that was there before.   

And above are the storage solutions we came up with.  We found a great vintage armoire (which was luckily already yellow!) and a bookcase from Land of Nod, to which we added the complementary bins to hide the clutter of diaper storage and the like.  

And for seating we got a lovely upholstered rocking chair from Pottery Barn, which has already been used for hundreds of cozy hours of nursing and stories.   Other details came from Dwell Studio for Target, lighting from Ikea, and many many home made details, like the roman shade and the ceramic mobile.  Nesting is a great motivator for getting crafty!  In fact, the process of shopping for all of the great wall art I bought from Etsy inspired me to start Fiddleheads For Fiona!

Thanks for checking out our nursery renovation!  More sneak peaks of other rooms to follow soon!  Happy Monday everyone!

New Work

We are in Chicago right now visiting family. . .

but. . . 

Here's a sneak peak of some new work from this past week in the studio.  

Rock Pile Ring

Tiny Spruce Earrings

Planting Spring Bulbs

My Mom and Emmett and I planted some Spring bulbs yesterday.  We planted some tulips, irises, and some small wildflower style allium.  Here are some pictures of the process.

The little white specs above are the bulbs.

Here's a close up.

Quality control department.

Like so many things with nature, there's no instant satisfaction with bulb planting.  But if you stay tuned to campestral, (and we did it right!) hopefully we can put up some beautiful pictures of the blooms this spring!

Frosty Morning

Emmett's Pick of the Week - Duplos!!

Here is Emmett's current favorite baby product:

Even though he is only 1 Emmett LOVES to play with his Lego Duplos.  He can't put them together yet, but he loves to pull them apart.  He tries to make them stick together just by placing them on each other, which just kills me, because of course they just fall right apart.  But he doesn't seem to mind.  He'll get there eventually.  It takes a lot of patience to be a baby!

Jewelry Making Before and After - Orbit Bracelet

This is the first post in a new blog segment I'm calling "Jewelry Making Before and After."  Basically it consists of a picture or two taken in my studio during the process of making a piece, and one to show the finished product.  This post features the making of a bangle bracelet I'm calling "Orbit," which is headed for the Meredith Gallery of the League of NH Craftsmen.

Here's the before:

Here is the Orbit Bracelet waiting to be soldered together.  The black lines are Sharpie marks that I made as guidelines for where to place the solder. 

And here's the finished product!

Have a good day everyone!