Coral inspiration

During my recent trip to Cuba, I stubbed my toe on what I thought was a rock. Ends up it was piece of coral. The texture and pattern on it are amazing. I had never seen coral close-up before. I decided to use this as my inspiration to re-design a top I had in my summer collection.

Available here

A much needed vacation

Last week, I got to travel to Cuba for a friend's wedding at a resort. It was a much needed vacation. It felt great being in the warm sun after a cold winter.

White sand beach

View of the chairs at the end of the day

One of the pool areas

Bride and groom

Salsa classes in the evenings

A catamaran trip (I was too chicken to go lay on those nets)

Visiting the San Pasqual (a cement boat)

Local wildlife

A little snake outside our hotel

Dried flowers

After my boyfriend reminded me that today was our 4th year anniversary living in our house, my first thought was it took us 4 years to hang stuff on the walls.

To celebrate the occasion, I decided to re-frame an old dried flower arrangement my mom made me about 8 years ago. It's previous frame was ugly and it was banished to the basement. Now I think it's pretty cute and deserves to be on the main floor. One wall down, 6 more to go.

Button stamp

A few months ago, I saw a tutorial on making a button stamp using old thread spools . I thought these would be perfect to decorate my envelopes. My mom volunteered to make a few button cut-outs for me since she owns a button punch. Today I finally had a chance to test them out. Fun stuff!

New eco friendly fabric swatches

Organic cotton, Tencel and ramie.

It's so hard to decide, I wish I had the money to buy them all!!

Speaking of doilies..

I've had this idea about using doilies on a tank top for a while now. Last year, I bought a bunch of doilies and tried dying them myself. The only thing that got dyed was my basement tub and my rubber gloves. Lesson learned!

So when I saw these cuties on Etsy from an Australian seller, I knew I HAD to buy them. She cuts out doilies from old tablecloths and dyes them all different colours.

The only thing that was left was to design a top that would accentuate the corsage but still be fun and unique. As always, it's available in custom made sizes from xs-xl in bamboo jersey.

Doily top

Simple doily project

During my Christmas vacation, I made a few crafts with my mom. This was one of them. My mom provided the 2 vintage doilies. I provided the double pane frame. Simplest project ever!

Photographed next to my Valentine's gift - a miniature rose bush. I'm not very good with indoor plants, hopefully this one will last more than a few weeks.