Lace, glorious lace

Hellooooo dear Taif readers.
it is rhi to the oh here, coming at you with our latest art kick start, none other than my can't live without item... Lace!

Its so pretty. and feminine. and pretty. and versatile. and pretty. please show us what you create using it. a little bit of it, a lot of it, it is up to you!

This go round we are sponsored by the lovely etsy shop craftcake designs.

You can get your little mitts on this handmade eclectic art journal, so remember to link us up to what you create!
Now. I am thrilled and honored to introduce our guest designer, we had her dapper other half a couple of weeks ago, and now we have the one and only ms. jek-a-go-go herself. I have been a follower of her flickr for quite a few years now, and it never fails to bring sunshine and colour to my dull british days.

I will hand over to her to tell us how she came up with her delightful lace filled project.

Salutations! My name is Jessica but the blogging and flickr world knows me as jek. I currently have two blogs out there, one about life, crafting and living creatively and the other about making arts and crafts with your children. Both of which have scrumdilly in their titles. I'm a children's book specialist and a student of Human Development and I'm a little bit manic and a little bit Doris Day. When Kara asked me to be a guest designer for the Lace prompt, I jumped on it! I have a box full of beautiful vintage lace that belonged to my grandmother. It was itching to be played with. In this box is nestled a party of lace. Pale pink, blue, minty green, yellow...all sorts of colors and widths. I have been meaning to do something with it but always pushed it aside until now. What was I going to do?

I woke up one morning and stood in my tiny kitchen with a cup of tea wondering what I could do that would be pretty and inspiring. I would look from the open box of lace to the dull gray sky outside and sigh. Our lovely Los Angeles weather had finally turned somewhat wintery on us. The lack of blue and color was dismal and if you know me, you know i am a bit of a color fiend. As I took another sip of my green anji tea, I had an idea, or at least an idea of an idea. Why not take care of two things at once? I am nothing if not a manic multi-tasker. I would create a pretty science project using tea and lace. It would start out as a bit of prettiness on my kitchen shelf and hopefully, it would turn into something else. So I brewed three new cups of tea. A darjeeling, a chamomile and another green anji. I popped the tiny glasses of tea on my tiny kitchen shelf and dropped a snippet of lace into each one. As the tea brewed, so would the lace and in the end, I would have some tea-dyed prettiness to play with. I then spied a bit of left over coffee and dropped a bit of lace into that as well. For the next four days, the tea cups of lace acted as a mood lifter for gray skies. So pretty.

Finally, I took out the small pieces to dry and wondered, wondered, wondered what I could do with them. After many trials and errors, I was left with only itty bitty scraps and in desperation I had it! Documentation. Out came four metal ringed key tags, the mod podge, scissors, a sharpie. a scrap of wood and four tiny nails. So here you go, an itty bitty portrait of tea colored lace, labeled, hung and documented for future art endeavors. Enjoy!

Thank you Jek, you never fail to inspire :)

Our girl Ashley created this little bit of pretty, and apologises for the bad scan.

I am making one art journal a month, so for this months, i whipped together a little patchwork, squidgy book, with canvas pages inside. i used lace as the closure, and as a little handle so i can hang it when it is time for the march journal to be made and filled :)

Dani's whimsical creation makes my heart happy :)

The other girls will be adding their projects shortly, when they find their way out of the mounds of lace they are currently stuck under.

a penny in a fountain...

a star in the sky,
a word spoken in frustration,
or a thought written secretly.

Wishes.

This is a prompt that can be full of emotion, magic, or humor. Cara's here to share with us her wonderfully hopeful project.

Meet our guest designer:

my name is cara harjes.
i love lazy rivers, tiramisu, and hanging with my cute husband.
i dislike eating my veggies, putting away laundry, and people who are difficult to read.
i grew up in st. louis, mo but i have lived in denver, co for almost 10 years!
(if you are also from st. louis, i will ask you "where did you go to high school?")
(if you are not from st. louis, i don't care where you went to high school.)
(but we can still be friends.)
(and that concludes the parentheses portion of this bio!)

when kara asked me to play with the prompt "wishes" i was more than a little unsure of what i would end up making. "wishes" felt really dreamy and light and easy-going . . . things that don't really describe me. so it was a good challenge. one day i was driving home from the office i share with my husband. it is across the street from a treatment center for adults deal with substance abuse. i saw a very confused, disoriented looking lady wearing a sequined gown in the middle of the day crossing the street. i felt her pain all the way through the steel doors of my car. but i was also listening to a really hopeful song. something inside of me began to stir. i started thinking about what is going on in our world and what i would like to see change. the concept for this video was born immediately from that short exchange. i was also really inspired by the Wizard of Oz. to me, it embodies the whimsy and magic that all good wishes are made of! you will find several yellow brick road references here.

you can find my stories, pictures, and recipes here, and my most recent brain child is my *BRAND NEW* blog, The Marriage Mix. it is a place for folks to find encouragement and hope in the midst of marriage - which, as it turns out, is not as easy at it seems in romantic comedies!!! (perhaps if i woke up looking like meg ryan or reese witherspoon things might be different.) (probably not.) (there i go again with those parentheses . . . )

thanks so much to the girls from The Art is Found - you are lovely and i am so happy to have the honor of playing with you this month!!!!



Cardboard Wishes from Cara Harjes on Vimeo.


The other Kara made a lovely layout with the new Hambly butterfly paper:



Fabulous Debee did a digital layout:



Here's Dani's layout:



And I (Mandi!) altered a dollar bill. ha

Ashley dedicated her *wish* to *wish*ing that Six Feet Under was still on the air...

The other girls are posting later tonight and this week, so check back!

As usual, we *wish* you would play along with us. :) A random participant will be chosen to win a *free* spot in Kara's up and coming online class! It's bound to be as fabulous as she is.