Brought to you by the letter H

I've had a busy holiday weekend. Our hot water heater went out, so we had that ordeal to deal with... ok, that's a bit of a stretch. The hubs is really the one who dealt with it. But I did go back to The Home Depot to get a thing-a-ma-bob during the installation. Don't ask me what it was. Luckily there were two and he had one, so away I went with it in my hand, showed it to the salesman and declared, "I need one of these". But, thanks to my handy hubby,  now we're good as new in the hot water department.

I wanted to try my hand at making Gypsy Carpet bags. I just love the feminine look of them. I have a lot of vintage linen and lace in my fabric stash, so it's a good use of that too. Here's the first one I made. I finished it about about a week ago.

 I added a piece of vintage jewelry to this one. The flowers are the satin ones where you burn the edges to curl them and stack graduated sizes of circles. I had some vintage floral tapestry fabric that I used for the purse base and handle.

Today I finished up another one. 

I think I like this one better than the first. I looked up how to make ribbon by cutting woven fabric on the bias. I had linen pieces left from where I had cut away lace corners to applique on other projects, so I was able to use up the remaining linen by cutting strips that I made into the fringe. I used the same method to make fringe of some more of the seafoam green sheer fabric that I ruffled on the first bag. I'm really happy with how this turned out.

Then I was back in Home Depot this afternoon. The hubs needed a piece of lumber to fill an order he had for another barbed wire cross like this one.

So I guess this holiday weekend was brought to us by the letter H... Home Depot, Hot water Heater, and Handbags.
I hope you had a safe and happy holiday!

New Purse Design

I've been neglecting my blog. Work's been crazy and since that's my "bread and butter" so to speak, it has to take "front and center" at times. But... amongst the craziness at work, I did manage to create a new purse design. It was inspired by a Mary Frances handbag that absolutely made me gasp when I first saw it.
Here it is... just look at it... isn't it fabulous??

I just love everything about it. The ruffles, the flower, the tassel, the beading, the color. But, at a price tag of over $200, I was left with the age old question... Why did I have to be born so dang pretty instead of rich??
(heh heh)
So I could either admire it from afar (really, Really, REALLY Far), or I could use it as inspiration and create something that had the ruffles, a flower, a tassel, and some beading. And so... drum roll please... my latest bag design was born!

The brown ultra suede beauty. (And, yes, in case you're wondering.. that IS a handmade beaded lace scarf tied around the mannequin's waist in this shot... also created by me!)

A version in olive green ultra suede. (And, in case you're wondering... the only credit I can take for the hat is finding it at an estate sale. But isn't it cute?!)

 A fun animal print.

And a fancy purple beauty.

They aren't Mary Frances bags. I "get" that.. but they turned out really nice, if I do say so myself. If you want to see more pictures of them, you can do so here.

Thanks for letting me share them with you. And here's to hoping I can get back to regular posts again!