feeling affectionate about: Boden Summer 2011

I received my Boden catalog in the mail some time ago and their stuff is absolutely

gorgeous!

The pieces are simple but the details are so beautiful;

 fueling my current obsession with anything floral.

Here's a few I loved...

Find these beauties here

I know all these objects are a bit out of my budget, but they definitely serve as inspiration for a few diy projects. Oh, if only I had enough time...

Affectionately, Lily

Feeling affectionately about: Mexico...

...More specifically, the small coastal town of Puerto Nuevo in Baja California.

There's small shops all through out where you can admire and purchase all sorts of colorful handcrafted souvenirs.

They also house the biggest fish I've ever seen:

 When you come here, this is what you eat:

Fresh Lobster... 

 Every restaurant in the small town sells this specialty.

But after seeing how "fresh" they really were I just couldn't try the poor critters :{

I ordered this instead:

 This man used a little saw to cut out tiny letters to spell your name.

Freehand, without any stencils or anything.

It was amazing

He then glued then to the backs of key chains he had previously made.

My hubby and I chose this one:

 

Hope you enjoyed the pics.

Affectionately, Lily



affectionately made: tree branch jewelry holder...in progress

Recently, I've been in dire need of a place to keep and display my necklaces... Here are a few options that caught my eye...

 The Container Store

 Urban Outfitters

Anthropologie

But this seemed like more fun...

You know where I'm going with this...

Just painted it white and used a pot I had laying around...

Now, if I could just get it to stop doing this:

I'm open for suggestions.

Affectionately, Lily

feeling affectionately about...

I'm really liking these ceramic flower candle holders from Zgallerie...

hmmm, this gives me an idea for another project...

affectionately made...

Another little project to brag about. Inspired, of course, by Emersonmade.

(Told you I was obsessing about this)

 

I really liked this flower pin paired with this blazer. It adds a nice touch of femininity and the yellow of the small flower really pops with the gold buttons...

Oh how I love my flowers. Hope you do too.

Affectionately, Lily

affectionately made...

Just another small project here based off this tutorial. Very simple yet oh so pretty...

Affectionately, Lily.

affectionately made...

So here are some of the fabric flowers I've been working on, inspired by the lovely Emersonmade flowers which I've been obssesing over lately.

The above is a "posterized" version of a picture created using

 the awsome and totally FREE photoshop site Picnik.
Wouldn't it look great as decoration in a little girl's room? Like on a canvas print or something.

To create the flowers I used this tutorial from 100 Layer Cake. I kept messing with the petals until each flower turned out how I wanted it to look. I also used linen instead of the soft and flowey fabric from the tutorial.

This little flower is one I'm particularly fond of. I wasn't able to find any nice, pink, linen-like fabric at Jo-Ann's, so I bought some Rit Fabric Dye and hand-dyed my own fabric.

My favorite part about dying was being able to decide how strong the color of the fabric would end up by simply varying the ammount of dye I added to the water.

 Finally, I used fabric glue to attach a felt circle to the back of the flower and sewed on a pin.

 They were a lovely gift for my pregnant friend,

 made with all my affection...