Flowers, a sweet ‘win’, another beaded shell

Good morning Folks ~ Hope you are all doing well. I am feeling better with each new day.

Monday afternoon I received a wonderful give-away win, that I had forgotten about.  Terry, who had the give-away, got sick and waited until she was well to work on my gift.  I ‘love’ it. It makes me feel happy. It suits me to a T. She did a lovely job. I don’t know much about needle felting, but have admired lovely creations by so many out on the web.  You can read Terry’s post about creating my piece, here. She did a wonderful job!  Butterflies, flowers and birds, bring JOY to my heart.

Thank you Terry.

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Next we have three glorious stems of the Dancing Lady orchids. I’ve been watching for a few weeks for these to open. This is at the back/east of caravan, between caravan and the ‘solar clothes dryer’, (clothesline).

I just love the ‘cat whiskers’ blooms.  These do look like Miss T’s whiskers.

This is ‘sweet almond’ and the scent is heavenly.

Here are another couple of pics of the first beaded shell I did. More of the detail.

Here is the second beaded shell.  I just love this design and it was relatively simple to do. Except that I bent my needle out of shape going through the somewhat hard backing to do this on, when getting started. Needle is very thin. The needle has a long eye which is great for threading. I did buy some of the .006 very fine beading thread and it works great.

You can see how to do this here.

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I need to quit procrastinating and get some pieces listed in my little Etsy shop. Kathy B. gave me a huge plug in her comment, so I need to get busy.

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Well, I guess that’s it from Plum Cottage.

( I need to do quite a bit of prep work, before repainting the cottage plum, although, if I do it one section or two at a time, maybe it won’t be so bad. I had a ‘highly recommended’ painter out yesterday to get an estimate. He would charge me $60 an hour, he normally charges $75, said he’s fast. He understood if I wanted to do it myself ~ I told him I am on a limited budget ~ and gave me some pointers.  He also told me the paint brand I have picked out is a very good one. Behr Premium Plus Ultra. It has the primer and the paint all in one.  I had read about it online, decided it was what I wanted to use, and it was a joy to work with from the paint samples. Anyway, this is going to be an ongoing project, doing it when I can. He told me to not work in the sun, to take breaks and to drink lots of water. He sounded like my DH. (We were always conscious of these things, so as to not get dehydrated.) He/Jimmy the painter,  encouraged me and said he would walk me through the job and if I needed him for tips or any help to give him a call.  The encouragement alone was worth $60.)

Enjoy your days ~ FlowerLady

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If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces,

never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.

Flavia Weedn, Flavia and the Dream Maker