Monday, May 23, 2011

New Vintage Papers!

I have been so blessed lately, I have come across a plethra of new vintage paper, old hymnal sheets,  dictionary pages, old maps, and 1854 ledger sheets and parts of english and foreign books.
(No rare, valuable, or collectible books were harmed in aquiring these pages, these books were already in non repairable states.)

A Vintage Hymnal has been repurposed into a beautiful flower arrangement with burnt orange roses with burnt orange paper stain accents and brown roses with blue paper stain accents.

A vintage English dictionary has been repurposed into these beautiful roses!  They are accented with red beads and red paper stain.


A vintage United States road atlas has been repurposed into these beautiful roses!


and lastly I bought some buttons from a shop "blacksheepyarns" on ETSY and when they arrived the shop owner had wrapped the buttons in the most beautiful old ledger paper, well I couldn't resist and this is what the sheet yielded -

I just love it so much that I contacted the owner and bought the rest of the ledger sheets from her. How lucky am I?

I have posted new flowers in my shop on Etsy "Bees Blooms"  http://www.etsy.com/shop/BeesBlooms?ref=si_shopand more are coming.

Blessings, Bea

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Pictures and more pictures of handmade flowers

Just as I promised here are some wonderful pictures taken by my daughter of the flowers that I have been making over the last two months. A couple more of the music flowers and the dozen roses I just finished for Sarah's friend.



Here is a grouping that I am working on titled "Roll Tide" in honor of the University of Alabama, since this picture was taken many more flowers have been made. The next grouping is in honor of Auburn University  "War Eagle", again more flowers are being made each day.




This grouping was done for my daughter Lizzie in colors of her college sorority Delta Zeta. The pinks look a little washed out in this picture but believe me the colors are pink and green.
and the beginnings of another soroity.

All of these flowers make wonderful gifts and are beautiful as stand alone blossoms or as a bouquet in your vase or mine. Bottles from my antique bottle collection make beautiful vases for the roses made out of my special  papers or yours and they are all for sale with your flower purchase. Together we can pick out just the right one for your Bea's blooms!

These are for sale as a bouquet or by the stem - just let me know and as always I can design any flower you wish in any color/colors you wish. Just check out my shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/BeesBlooms?ref=si_shop or email me at beesblooms5@gmail.com.

Paper Flowers from New, Recycled, Handmade and Vintage Paper

Hi I'm Bea this is the first post on my very first blog and it is dedicated to my dear friend Marija. She is my paper mentor the one who enlightened me into the paper flower world and she encouraged me to start this blog. Thank you Marija for your kindness and for always sharing, I value our friendship.

Ok my story goes as such I come from a long line of proud women from who made everything by hand--the clothes for their family, quilts and rugs for their homes, and the food they ate. My mom made our clothes, cooked every family meal and grows the most amazing flowers in her flower garden, my grandmother was a weaver and worked the family farm alongside my grandfather, my great-grandmother hand-stitched quilts along with her families clothing, and I studied art in college and got a BFA - making things. I have always made things - it's in my blood. From having my own garden to feed my family, to drawing, painting, weaving, quilting, basket making, knitting and now making beautiful paper flowers.

I love paper, all kinds of paper and because of that I began making flowers to make one beautiful brides dream come true - my own daughter.

All of this started when my daughter Lizzie became engaged, during the planning phase of the reception we were trying to decide on how to decorate this "Ginormous Big Brown Wall" at the venue. It's called the Huntsville Roundhouse Depot an pre-civil war antique railroad depot. This place is huge ...



The first thing I did was to go to Etsy and send a message to a shop named Momicka who made paper flowers and said "HELP". Marija answered all of my messages and then asked for a picture of the "Ginormous Big Brown Wall" (see above straight ahead) and thanks to her in a few days and alot of brain stormming later we had a plan for a beautiful wall of paper flowers.

Marija, myself, and others made floral decorations, cards, tags, matchbooks and favors all out of paper for the pre-wedding parties, all of the bridal showers, the bridesmaid luncheon, and ta da the reception - lots and lots of flowers. Marija  kindly shared her templates with me for the beautiful flowers, LED candle flower  holders and we were both became flower making machines for months and months.

 A special note: the templates that she shared were ones she designed herself and used in her own beautiful wedding, see her own ETSY shop for all things amazing and her beautiful designs http://www.etsy.com/shop/momichka. The rest we designed as we went along and we had a blast dreaming up one thing after another.

Fast forward - I had so much fun playing with paper that I haven't stopped making paper flowers since the wedding. Now I am expanding my paper flowers to include  flowers made out of speciality papers, card stock, old dictionary, magazine, music, and map papers.  I'll try any kind of paper once, some work, some don't so if they don't work I move on and find something else that will.

In fact I made so many flowers that they were taking over the house. It just so happened that my youngest daughter Sarah came home from college and said we needed to start a little business and she took alot of the flowers that I had made back to college with her and put them around her house. As her friends, and their friends came over to her house and saw the flowers the orders started. Sarah has really had some amazing marketing ideas and I am really enjoying doing this with her. Lizzie my married daughter is quite busy with a full time job and a husband to care for, however when time allows she too has been showing off my flowers.  In fact she and I are doing a bridal shower the first of June but more to come on that later.

Here are some music roses in an antique bottle that I just made for one of Sarah's friends.  She loved it and I think it turned out perfect for that special music lover wouldn't you say?




I know that you want to see the "Ginormous Big Brown Wall" decorated with over 100 handmade flowers so I won't make you wait any longer - Here is the wall that love built.





To conclude I will do a special wedding blog to show off all of our decorating and the rest of the magical things that were made when we get the wedding pictures from the photographer.

I am in the process of taking pictures of all the new flowers that I have made that are for sale, and of course special orders are welcome too!  I can't wait to show them to you all.

Until next time - blessings.
Bea