Introducing....

Mr. and Mrs. Joe Higley
July 26, 2008

(photo by the talented Isaiah Eyre)

Here is the bride with her bridesmaids right before the bridal march. You can glimpse the paper filigree embellished keepsake box in Sarah's hands, made by moi. Rather than using the traditional pillow, their rings were nestled on red lining inside.
It is covered with red folded roses and tendrils and I will get a close up picture soon.
Still in recovery stage from the craziness leading up to the wedding, but plan to be back into the groove by next week. Until then, here is a pic of our newly expanded family.

Vintage Father's Day card

My dear friend and fellow paper filigree artist, Heidi Bishop, once created a card featuring a filigree fly fishing lure. I had to try my hand at it, and created this thank you card. Don't you think it would make an excellent Father's Day card?

The small piece of paper with vintage fishing logos/labels seemed the perfect thing to pair with the lure.

I found a photo of a Royal Coachman Bucktail lure (photo source)
Creating the hook was time consuming and the entire fly took a good deal of fussing and precision. You can see my duplication efforts below...remember that I was working totally with paper and glue! It required some very, very fine fringing.









The most difficult part was creating the cursive lettering though...was nearly tearing my hair out to get the curves and sizing even and to get the paper to hold its shape long enough to get it mounted!

However, the resulting masculine paper filigree card was worth the effort.

Few guys get excited over floral cards, but boy-howdy do eyes light up when they spy anything to do with angling. And when they discover it's created from paper by lil' ol' you, it might leave them slack-jawed and speechless!

Whipping out place cards

(click on pic for a larger version)

My SIL delegated to me the task of decorating tables for my nephew's wedding rehearsal dinner. Yesterday morning, I suddenly decided I didn't have nearly enough stress in my life and determined to create 32 placecards and 17 tablecards for dinner that night. (I still have the flower girl dresses to hem, but hey...that's what Friday is for!) I'm so thankful for Jacob (16) and Susannah (14) and their excellent attitudes and assistance! At 11:00 am we kicked it into gear and set up an assembly line, with less than 4 hours to get these whipped out. Though I had some folded roses pre-made, I was short over 70. Greens had to be punched, tendrils had to be formed and everything had to be glued together into a lovely whole. The place cards were vellum and were created with my printer...after a lot of trial and error to figure out the best way to feed them. The table cards were stamped with my new flourish stamps and the Fiskars stamp press...just set it up and Jacob whipped out 17 cards in short order, though the center didn't imprint as well as the edges on these paneled cards. It didn't matter as much, since the vellum insert covered the center anyway. Fed the white vellum into my printer in 12"x4" sheets - 4 to a page, which were then cut to size and mounted with glue dots at the top, and embellished with a similar rose motif used on the placecard, but with all large roses. (Man, but vellum smears at the slightest nudge when fresh from the printer!)

Turned out pretty swell for a slap-dash project and added a lovely touch of elegance to the tables. Many of the guests brought theirs home, which is always a nice compliment! I saved the cards left behind and will 'pirate' the rose motif off those for some other occasion. That is the other advantage to using vellum....the pieces actually can be peeled off without too much trouble.

McConnell Mansion Christmas Tree

So, the party was wonderful - many kudos to the director and staff of Latah County Historical Society and all their volunteers. My Littles had a fabulous time making tags and cards and just soaking in the atmosphere of the old home. Here is a pic of the tree. The small round things were roses made from crepe paper. I wish I would have taken a close-up of them.

Here is a close up of the fans I made. The papers for the roses were chalked and tea-dipped to achieve the same tones as the wallpaper.


























And here is one version of the paper filigree snowflakes.




















And the display in the Gift Shop.

And finally, here is a future project idea....a filigree brooch. I stopped by the grocery store on my way home, and the kind woman demo-ing some cake mixes allowed me to snap a picture of her festive bell pin. I will omit rhinestones, but I can envision this in beautiful white paper with a silvered edge or maybe in a darker color like black or deep blue, with gilded edges.

Which just goes to prove, you never know where you'll be when inspiration grabs you!