Flowers!

Green with taupe flowers, varied colored beads
(I'm wearing the small one in my hair today for St. Patrick's Day!)

Burgundy flowers with brown-y lilac beads

Taupe flower with pink beads

After coming across an excellent how-to on Craftzine for making organza flowers (thanks so much, Tresa for this great how-to!), my friend Ali and I decided we love them and want to make lots and lots and lots of them. After a long and exciting trip to the beautifully new JoAnn's, we came home with an armload of shades of organza fabric, beads, and ribbons.

Our palate so far...
(I'm sure it will grow with the next fabric shopping trip!)

The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent figuring out a good general flower shape to cut out, practicing burning the edges without burning the actual shape too much, and then sewing beads into the center.

Little poppy-like flowers

We're planning on making lots of these, then turning them into hair clips, brooches, headbands, bracelets, and belts, as well as leaving some of the large one plain for filling a pretty bowl with in place of real flowers. The main source of inspiration for these is the craft fair in May (my first ever!!) which falls right before Mother's Day. Ali and I are hoping the between spring and buying something pretty for a mother or friend, we'll sell lots. (Fingers crossed.) If not, if you're friends of ours, you may be seeing these again as a birthday or Christmas present...

Now if only we could figure out how to make them smell as pretty as real flowers...