fall flower headpieces

Today I am really excited to announce that I have been selected by Carte Fini as the first artist in their new featured artist program. For the next three months I will be creating seasonal projects made from their gorgeous floral crepe paper which will be featured at the Carte Fini website.

For my first project I've made these pretty (and pretty big!) dahlia and marigold headpieces. Click HERE for the full fall flower headpiece tutorial over at Carte Fini. There I'll walk you through how to make the pink, pointy-petaled dahlia, but there is also a guide for how to cut the petals for the other three flowers. I'll be slowly adding these headpieces to my papel SF Etsy shop as well. 

I hope you'll head on over to Carte Fini and check out their featured artist program. And have a happy Monday!

for our girl

Stella turns eight tomorrow. Unbelievable. She is an amazing young lady, even if she takes after her parents a little too much. I love, love, love her, of course, and want to give her everything.

Stella thinks nothing is going on for her birthday. She thinks we're just going to a pumpkin patch tomorrow to celebrate, just the four of us. What she doesn't know is that I'm picking her up after school with seven of her friends, who also don't know anything, and we're coming home for a quick and sweet surprise birthday party! My mother did this for me when I was around her age and it is something I never forgot. She had me come down to the garage to help get the groceries, but instead of groceries it was a car full of my friends! I hope Stella feels the same way about this surprise!

I am throwing things together quick and dirty. I bought five of the posters above from our local shipping store. One is on the front door, three more are hung inside and the last one I just decided to turn into a "pin-the-candle-on-the-cake" game. My glue gun should just never get unplugged, it's always good for something. I've got another crazy game and some snacks, then we'll order a pizza or two. I was thinking of letting them go crazy and order the world's most disgusting pizza, but we'll see what they say. Then a special cake idea (using my donut pans, of course) that I need to get back to right now, and then our house turns back into a pumpkin at 8:00 tonight.

I will say, it was interesting and a little hard selecting which friends should come to Stella's party, since she had no say in the guest list. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and there are many more little ladies (Stella is just not into boys right now!) that I would've loved to invite, but I'm already walking down the Panhandle with eight eight-year-olds today. Any more than that would just be crazy. It's hard to figure out. Stella never seems to care what group she is involved with, save for one friend that hurt her badly a few years ago, so I sort of forgot that other girls might not feel the same way. I was going to go strolling onto the pick up yard at school with a bunch of balloons until one of the other mothers politely suggested I might be a little more discreet. Took a minute to sink in, but she was right. This is delicate stuff!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and please come back next Monday because I just finished a super great project I can't wait to share with you. It's beautiful here right now, I hope it is where you are, too! xoxo

showtime: my first performance, elbo room, december 14, 2010

Sketch at bottom right corner by Joshua Johnson, I'm shaded in gray.

(Throwback posts this week as I am too busy to make donuts or take photos of Stella and Oliver.)

These are a few fuzzy images of my very first burlesque performance, before I even had a stage name. A super chaste and cute performance to "Minnie the Moocher", played live by Fromagique with Bombshell Betty singing. I wore my brand new Stop Staring dress, from which I begrudgingly removed the label so it wouldn't show when I dropped it on the floor. We prepared for this class in Betty's Intro to Burlesque class over three weeks, and it required me to buy my first strapless bra, my first piece of shape wear (I was about 16 months postpartum, sadly I'm not in any better shape now) and my first boa. I thought that was worth the price of admission alone, that I would finally seek out these womanly things I'd never owned before. I am lucky to live just down the hill from Dollhouse Bettie where I got everything I needed. It was expensive, but I was excited.

I decided to start studying burlesque for two reasons. One, at one of Betty's shows a month or two before hand (my first ever) I was watching the acts on stage, laughing hysterically, and had one of those anxiety attacks that make you feel like I. MUST. DO. THIS. and WHERE DO I SIGN UP?! And two, I had had a health scare earlier that spring that has left me with the ongoing drive to grab life by the balls and keep looking for opportunities, and this was one of those opportunities.

I just signed up to perform in December and January. I've been on a hiatus which has been totally necessary for our already kooky schedule and on my stress levels, but I need to get back out there! I'm feeling timid and like I don't own it anymore, so I definitely need to get back up on stage to build my nerve up again.

Here's a video shot on a tiny cell phone of my first performance. It's really cute, and don't worry it's totally safe. We LOOK like we're being naughty but we are just fooling you. ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤