Here I Go Again

 I know it is just June 1 but every year, right about this time and even though my 4th of July decor has over another month to be out, I start thinking ahead to late summer. Everyone knows that is because the main focus of my late summer decor is sunflowers and that the sunflowers automatically start to take my mind to autumn colors and autumn feels and autumn temperatures! I have already had my share of heat! It am NOT a fan. And so, after perusing my blog from last year and looking at all of the sunflower things I have, I knew I needed to add a few new things just to keep me interested. And, like so many other themes for me these days, I am having trouble finding things I haven't already done. So, when I saw a few things like this on Pinterest, I decided I would give it a try-and, it didn't hurt that once I had a craft I wanted to do I knew I would be putting the yardwork off yet another day-at least. I started by gathering up my supplies.

I had some muslin that I had "dyed" with acrylic paint and water a few years ago when I was making the Mason jar ring sunflowers still in my stash. I knew there would be enough green for the leaves but figured I would need more of the "sunbeam" color so I grabbed my trusty container, squirted in some paint, thinned it a bit with water and got the fabric soaking.

It didn't take long to accept the color and then I draped it over a bush to dry-which also didn't take long in this heat.

I honestly didn't really have any idea how I was going to do the flowers as all I had was pictures-no tutorials. I thought about making a petal pattern and cutting lots of them but then decided to try a much easier way at first to see if that might work-and it did. I just cut 3 large circles for each flower then traced the small circle in the middle and cut up to that line around the circle. Once done, I just twisted each circle a little bit so the cutting lines weren't all in a row.

Then, I pulled some burlap threads to use as embellishment, covered the small wood circle with burlap and glued the flower together.

I used some distressing ink on the flower centers and petals and then tied the burlap strings into a circle and glued them around the flower center.

I went outside and cut some branches and then cut some leaves from the green muslin.

I ended up using a different piece of wood that seemed to already be the perfect size so I didn't have to make a pallet. I think it might have been left over from the barn doors that we made a number of years back. It was already chippy on the edges and had a light coating of white. Since I was going for the chippy look any way, I just added a bit of my Waverly antique wax and I was good to go.

Then I just played with it until I liked the way it looked. The last thing I did was to use some letter stamps to add the word "BLOOM". I think I like it. I may come back and sand down those letters a bit so they are not so dark but I was impressed that I managed to actually stamp 5 letters without messing up at least one so I am going to leave it a bit before I make it not so perfect on purpose. Lol

Our temperatures are actually down into the 80s this weekend so I think I will might get outside and tackle some of the things that have been on the list for quite some time tomorrow-that is, unless another brilliant idea should come down the pike before then. We shall see. Stay safe and stay tuned.