About Me

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Sublimity, OR, United States
****WELCOME FRIENDS****
I am artist of texture and color. I enjoy working with textiles, mixed media and the graphic arts. I am an avid cottage gardener with a love for pass along plants and big fluffy pink peonies and pink roses. Many of my tangible creations reflect my love of the garden and all its wonderful colors. I have been selling my creations online since 2002 beginning as a hobby. After 10 years I quit the day job to pursue my art as a full time passion.

31 December 2013

2013 re-purpose upcyle projects in review

As 2013 comes to a close and I have neglected my blog during the busy holiday season, I am playing a bit of catch up on some of the projects I worked on this last year that I never posted about.  I love the thrill of the hunt finding treasures that can have a new life. Some of these I sold on my website, but most I kept for myself!

Starting with the pic below, this is a big haul that I made at a farm sale last August. Most of these pieces came out of an old barn and were literally rusty, dusty, dirty but truly vintage treasures! That little yellow watering can my granddaughters loved to use it as it was just their size!



Starting with the spools, I cleaned them up, painted, added some vintage sheet music, some cup hooks, lace and a soft pink rose~viola, a jewelry tower below.

Vintage spool Necklace Jewelry tower Shabby French Cottage

The banana rack below was a simple project with painting, water slide decal
and a bit of distressing for  great retro cottage charm


Retro French Farmhouse cottage style wood banana rack Apples, distressed chippy shabby and chic ECS

You may have seen these other pieces incorporated into my fall and summer porch decor, the rusty scale (I love this, it fits so well as a decorating element))


 
The plant rack I painted yellow

worked great for both summer and fall decor


I think my best and simplest find was the wood carrier as I did nothing to it except fill it with seasonal charm! Below are the fall and Christmas displays I used it for.



at Christmas another purpose



Then the vases...those were for the glass bird feeders. these were so fun and they sold well both locally and off my website.I collect the pieces for them all year. Tutorial coming in the spring on these too.

 
A picket wood piece I picked up at yet another farm sale


A simple fix of "flipping" it upside down, painting, lettering and distressing gave it a nice "frenchy" appeal 

Paris Marche' French Market wood picket sign Shabby chippy chic distressed garden decor

 I never did get to the ladder in the top pic, it is intended to use as a garden junk element. So when the weather gets nice, I will put my thinking cap on. I also have this chair back I am excited to work on.
I would love to hear your suggestions on this piece!

Whew! Now it starts all over again...the thrill of the hunt, and the vision of something wonderful for 2014!

Happy New Year to all my Junkin friends!





28 November 2013

Free images for your creative muse!

It has been a while since I shared some of my digital art with my blogger friends-----

Here are a series of vintage postcards that I cleaned up the colors on and overlaid  on a toile background.

They are free for you to use in your personal tangible projects. Commercial users please give credit to my etsy shop Cottage Rose Graphics

Click on each image to enlarge and right click to save.





17 November 2013

Printing images to fabric


 

I have had a lot of requests from customers in my graphic art shop on how to print images onto fabric. So I decided to publish this on my blog as a quick referral.

Yes, there are pre-made printer fabric sheets that you can buy, but they are expensive. A few years back I learned how to use the freezer paper method and this saves big time money. I put together this tutorial in 2010 to present at the Smoky Mountain Retreat for the members of ShabbyLaneShops. It was later published in the ShabbyLaneShops magazine.

Since it was originally formatted for printing, it is posted here as images. You are welcome to enlarge and print out for your own use, even share, but please do not remove my personal and business information




05 November 2013

Support Handmade and Vintage this holiday season

I have been AWOL for the last month...actually did not realize I was so far behind in my posting. I have been so busy sewing and designing graphics for my website and etsy shop, I have hardly looked up!

A couple of  graphics that I have long had my "to do" list was something to share with all of the art and vintage seller community was to have a pretty graphic we could shout out a reminder to all holiday shoppers.
I have seen a few floating out there but they weren't "pretty". So, please feel free to copy, save, share to your blogs, websites, facebook, even as an extra image to your etsy listings. I only ask that you do not crop out my watermark at the bottom right hand corner.





05 October 2013

Fall on the front porch

The best part of the season, is that my dark red house really does lend itself to fall colors. I will be honest that I am not a big fan of Autumn (as I have stated that in my past blog posts). Autumn signals a long rainy winter here in Oregon with little sun. But when my flowers are tired, I really do embrace the season. Plus my porch really does look bare.


I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to be able to decorate my porch for fall. We had an outstandingly beautiful summer her in the Pacific Northwest. Usually we gracefully transition into fall with September still summer dry, but not this September. We had 2 big rainstorms dumping EIGHT inches of rain! Normal is just a half inch of rain for the entire month. Needless to say, it was a mess cleaning up my summer porch garden.


Once that icky weather moved on, we were treated to some beautiful Indian summer sun and 75f.  Today I brought out the fall decor.  I must admit that this current fall display will only be fully functional until the next rain and wind event comes along. While my south facing front porch is tranquil and relaxing in the summer and early fall, it becomes a nasty windy place to be in the late fall and winter.  Our inclement weather blows in from the southwest. I learned quickly the first year we lived in this house, that anything that wasn't anchored, would be blown into the field across the road.

The Squirrel Haven Nut Farm sign
~long story~
but a sign I had at another house we lived at several years ago and a not so nice neighbor. 
It always gave us a chuckle, and still does :)



Just before sunset, the colors are amazing!


22 September 2013

And we almost stayed home....

Last week I took you with us on our mountain adventure east and this week I am taking you west to the Pacific coast. The one thing about living in western Oregon is that you are never too far from the mountains or the beach.

Yep, we had the dates set aside for the family beach house since last spring. But the weather forecast was not promising at all. Rain. And lots of it. But we decided to go anyway. We brought several movies to watch and figured we would hunker down and just enjoy being away from it all. When we arrived Sunday evening it was cloudy with a heavy mist. We hit our favorite restaurant in Newport, The Chowder Bowl for fresh seafood and of course the clam chowder. We settled in for the night, and the next morning woke to drizzle. By mid morning the clouds broke and out came the sun, And by one o'clock the weather was so fabulous, I was planning a beach hike for us.
This is an easy 2 mile trail that winds just above the beach.



We didn't see any seal pups today, but they are quite common on the beach here

We pretty much had the trail to ourselves...


The above is one of my favorite scenes...the trees show the force of the wind that mother nature doles out on the coast line in winter.
until next time...lots more trails to discover!

Today is rainy and windy, how appropriate for western Oregon on the first day of fall.The forecast is that late this week we get maybe one more peek at the sun with some warm weather before the eternal rainy season sets in. And maybe one more chance for an outdoor adventure?

14 September 2013

from the top of the world...

Well, not really the top of the world, but it felt like it climbing those bumpy roads that you can only drive with a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle. I feel like somebody beat me up.

 We climbed to the top of several mountain ridges, and came across this spectacular vista~Mt Jefferson in the Willamette national forest.

The roads got worse with big chuck holes and washed out areas, but the rewards were so worth it. The little lake above is one we kind of stumbled upon. Jim decided he wanted to climb a more rocky dirt road. At the crest of the hill was this serene little lake.


Above and below is another larger lake a couple miles up the road. This one is Elk Lake. It has a forest service campground, just shy of being a total primitive setup. You bring in your own drinking water.and cart out your garbage.There is no options for a quick run to the store for ice or beer LOL. This is getting away from it all. The peaceful beauty makes you never want to leave.


We figure we have 1 or 2 more outings left before the rain and snow move in. 
Enjoying the beauty in our own Oregon backyard is so wonderful!

05 September 2013

Summers garden review

Yes I know, I should be thinking fall. but not just yet. I guess it must be something about growing up and being from the Pacific Northwest. While many of you breathe a sigh of relief when the cool fall weather arrives, I don't.  to me, it must be that here in Oregon, fall signals the start of a long gray rainy winter where the days are shorter and no hope of really seeing any sunshine until late March (if we get lucky). Spring can be slow to arrive and the joke is that summer never really arrives until July 4th. We also do not experience high humidity so hot summer days are tolerable. I am a summer girl, and nobody can force fall on me!



So I savor September as another month of glorious summer. You won't see anything related to fall on my porch until late October when I finally give in and accept the change of seasons. But I do use the month of September as a time to reflect and note what worked and didn't work in my garden.



My front porch hanging baskets were my prizes this year. Early spring I purchased large peat pots  with a special loop metal hanger for each one rather than the wire or chain hangers. This gave the plants plenty of growth room since my goal was to have baskets that lasted all season without being root bound half way thru the season.


I purchased 6 inch pots of already mixed combos of annuals. That way I didn't even have to think about the perfect composition of flowers to each basket.



This chair planter sits on full shade, impatiens planted in an old hard hat worked well this year.


Back in the cottage garden, it was glorious until the hollyhocks, mallow and queen annes lace came out. Note to self: more color in the middle that blooms longer, And no more of that mulit color Alyssum, It got ugly early. I scrambled to fill in some holes with a few of my flea garden finds bringing in a little color

The chair back was in the re-purpose pile for next year, but it found a temporary home for the rest of the season.

 My granddaughters placed their little watering cans on this chair, keeping them handy for when they help in nana;s garden.

This little garden vignette is not new, but I do like to share it. It is simply a watering can hung off a shepards hook over a little bird bath. When you have visitors, put a few big chunks of ice in the can and water will drip as it melts out into the bird bath. Quite a conversation piece as folks try to figure out where the water is coming from!


Every Saturday

Where we reside

Where we reside

The Oregon Coastline

The Oregon Coastline