TeaCup Stitches Blog GiveAway!

Meet Lynn owner of TeaCup Stitches. This is a lady I have admired for a long time. I first met her on eBay years ago. She makes the most beautiful handmade pretties I have ever seen! You'll find items like, embellished bottles dripping with pink florals, ribbons, and victorian lady labels, stunning embellished pillows, sweet pin cushion confections with each one always more beautiful than the next, lovely hanging sachets, delicious strawberry sachets, and when I first met her she made the most beautiful hand bags and totes. And every great great once in a while you would find a vintage Steiffs bear that was absolutely too precious.  Well I have now found her beautiful blog. I could stay looking at it all day if I had the time. You must take some time and visit her here: TeaCup Stitches. Her blog is  absolutely gorgeous but then again everything she touches is gorgeous! Anyway she is having another giveaway, seems she has these often, lucky for us! This is her latest giveaway. It's one of her beautiful embellished vanity bottles.

This giveaway ends on 6-30-2010. Go here to enter the Sweet Pink Roses Bottle GiveAway. Be sure to become a follower too! I'm sure you'll want to continue following the adventure of handmade pretties and to walk with her through this beautiful blog!  Have fun and enjoy!

You can also purchase her items here on eBay when she has items listed, and her sweet pretties are also here at Victoria Rose Cottage, but everything goes very fast!

TuTu Cute Boutique Toddler Tutu's

Look at these just tutu adorable tutu's. Aren't these just the cutest?! Talk about frufru! We are so excited to offer these darling Tutu's with matching headbands and you'll be able to find them only at Cameo Kids Boutique in the next day or two. The bodice of the tutu dresses and waist band of the skirt are made of a soft stretchy crochet along with the headbands. All flowers are mounted on clips and are detachable. Fun, fun, fun! ... for dress up and play, perfect for photos, costumes for dance, or whatever. These are really beautiful and I hope they show as well on your monitors. We took these photos at our little kiddies water park here where we live full of water fountains and water falls and just an awsome beautiful place full of fun for kids. My grandchidren absolutely love this place! It was a beautiful sunny day for pictures other than a few clouds rolling over. A couple of the pictures are a little darker because of the clouds, but I think overall they show just how sweet and beautiful they are. Your little one's are going to love these! Hope you love em too!

Cupcake Birthday Tutu with Matching Headband

Elegant Cream and Black Tutu with Matching Headband

Fairy Pink Tutu with Matching Headband

Strawberry Lemonade Tutu with Matching Headband

Patriotic Tutu Skirt with Matching Headband

Hurry on in to get yours before they're all gone! There is only one of each set available!

We're Creating Little Works of Heart with Your Little Ones and Mommies in Mind!

Something Sweet for Emma

My daughter bought several summer tops for my granddaughter Emma and brought them to me and says "Do your stuff on these".  For this white tank top t-shirt I just made this simple white flower out of vintage feedsack and frayed the edges. I then was just playing around with some pink satin ribbon which I rolled into a flower, frayed the edges, then I took the frayed threads and sewed them into the flower and thought "how sweet. I layed it in the center of the white flower and thought, "thats looks even sweeter! So I sewed the pink rose flower in place and added a pin fastener on the back and embellished the little tank t-shirt with it.  I have this yummy pastel pink cotton fabric that matched so beautifully to the pink in the flower so I made her a pair of pantaloons to match. I love how the set turned out and missy Emma looks so good in pink so it was simple but perfect! A whole new outfit for my Emma!

Part 2: Journey from Recycled Vintage to Heirloom Little Girls Dress

The Dress is Done! - Just the Pantaloons Left to go to Finish this Journey! 

Here is the picture of the gorgeous vintage pillowcase where I added a bit of pink and green into the original all white embroiderd design. Now this little lovely is a beautiful little girls vintage pillowcase dress too, an heirloom for today's and tommorw's little girls. I hope my customer, now friend will be pleased.

Here is the before as a pillowcase in it's original form.

I added a touch of color with a soft pastel pink and a soft light green to enhance the beautiful embroidered design and I hand embroidered the little girls name.

Now that beautiful white embroidered vintage pillowcase is a beautiful little girl's pillowcase dress.

All thats left is the sweet pink vintage chenille pantaloons to finish the set and this journey!

Stay Tuned!

See the beginning of this journey here:

http://cameokidsboutique.blogspot.com/2010/04/journey-from-recycled-vintage-to.html

The Pink Violin

I just have to brag about my newest purchase from a lovely friend of mine at My European Touch on Etsy. Her name is Monika and she is a mosaic artist. She offer's a wide assortment of quality mosaic art made by carefully hand cutting mosaic tiles from vintage and new china plates. Her work is beautiful.

I found her when I came across a real violin that she had applied her mosaic craft to and I fell in love with it but didn't have the money to spend at the time. She now offers a layaway plan and will also do custom orders. The other day she emailed me to let me know about this sweet little piece she did. Although not mosaic, I just adored it. It was made with everything I love! It was pink, had pink pearls, is covered with vintage lace, gimp on the edges, and old vintage brooch with roses, beautiul pink roses, feathers, and a cameo! (I love and collect cameos). She also sent me a couple of glittered butteflies that I placed among the roses. It was also a violin but made out of wood, about 18" long, and I could afford it. It was just my cup of tea so I bought it right then and there. Isn't it just the sweetest thing?!  I laid this on an old vintage photo frame with the oval glass and all. I wished it would fit inside because it really looks great!  Don't mind my rug in the background though.

 

If you Love Mosaic, you must visit her at My European Touch or visit her blog here.

Tell her Debi from Cameo Kids Boutique sent you!

Journey from Recycled Vintage to Heirloom Little Girls Dress

I'd like to take you with me on a step by step journey of this next custom order I have.  One of my repeat customers called last week all excited because she finally knew someone that had a baby girl!  She loves the pillowcase dresses and our vintage chenille pantaloons and wanted so badly to buy them but there was no little girl for her to give them to.  Well now she does.  (She is the one of sweetest customers and so cute and bubbly in personality.  She is one of my favorites).  Anyway she wanted the dress to be for the baby to wear this summer so we would need about a 3 months size.  Her only requirements were, she wanted something pretty with maybe some pink in it, pink ribbons for the shoulder ties, and white vintage chenille pantaloons.


Now, I'm sure she had looked at all the pillowcases that I list on Cameo Kids because she visits the website frequently  Moms are able to choose the pillowcase they like, and then I custom make the dress using their childs measurements.  I list them that way also, because I truely hate to cut these beauties unless I know there is someone to wear it.  I have premade a few before and then I'll get a customer who just loves the dress but it would be to short, so I have a dissappointed customer and sometimes a lost sale.  Now if it is longer than what they need, I can take it all apart and shorten it and now I have a happy customer and a sale. 


Pillowcase dresses can be worn for many years as they are a grow with me type of dress.  As a child grows taller and the dress becomes shorter, it can be worn as a top, kinda of like the swing style. Adjusting the ribbon ties on the shoulders allow you to adjust the the length to some degree too.  But, our customers love to be able to have it made with the exact length they want for the child to wear right now.   I have over 60 vintage pillowcases listed on the website with another 100 or so that I still need to photo and get listed. I also have just shelves and shelves of fabrics that I have collected, vintage and today's fabrics, but I never seem to have time to make dresses with them. 


I think I'm addicted to collecting fabrics and linens.  I have a lifetime of all this stuff I could make just sitting here waiting to become something and I just keep buying more!  It all gets added to the pile of when I have time.  I have outgrown two rooms now!  Anyway lets get back to the journey of this new creation.  I do tend to wander in my thoughts and have this insane habit of thinking I have to describe every detail.  I don't know how to make long stories short!  Oh well to love me is to know me and then you get use to me and sometimes that helps you tolerate me better.


So I tell my sweet new customer friend that I will go through all the pillowcases I have yet to put up on the site to see what I might have that I believe might be exactly what she is looking for.  I also need one that can be cut down in width because, this is going to be very short and I don't want the dress to swallow the baby up.  I also need to find one that doesn't have a large embroidered design across the front so when I take it in width wise, it won't cut into the embroidered design.  As I'm going through the piles of pillowcases I find and realize I have so many cute, sweet, and unique ones that I had forgotten all about!  I really need to carve out about a weeks worth of time and get these photographed and listed as I am sure they would sell in a heartbeat, well pretty sure anyway. 


As I'm sifting through I find this one set as many of my vintage pillowcases will come as a set, I see this one and it just jumps out at me.  It is perfect for taking in the width, but it was all white embroidery and she wanted something with pretty pinks hopefully.  The design is really sweet which she wanted too.  It has three larger roses that kinda of arch downward and then splashes out on either side into a spray of tiny leaves and daisies.  Under the arch of roses, there is another upward arch of more of these tiny daisies.  It ends up with a bit of a cameo shape for its center, just big enough for me to hand embroider the little girls first name into it.  (Bea just loved that idea when I told her what I had envisioned.) But it is still all white.  As I went to set it aside to finish looking through the rest of them, or maybe another that would work, I get this total vision.  So I ran downstairs and grabbed the phone and called Bea, (that's the customers first name). I explained to her what I had invisioned for the dress and pantaloons.  She thought it perfect and it was more than she had even hoped for. Yea i think to myself.  She says " I trust your judgement and I know I'll be happy with what ever you come up with."  Well that set me to beaming! It's so nice to have customers give you such blind trust. 


So this is what we have come up with.  I am going to enhance or alter just a little bit the color in the embroidery, as I am learning how to do some of the embroidery stitches and, these are all pretty simple ones.  We also decided to do the pantaloons in the gorgeous pink chenille I have called squiggle chenille, instead of the white I have in the same squiggle.  It makes just the sweetest looking pantaloons and, it will give a great balance to the entire set with the pink shoulder ribbons, a touch of pink in the embroidery to enhance its beauty, topped off with the pink bottoms.  The eye will be drawn to the whole set, but yet it won't take away from the beautiul embroidered design.  That's what the aim is here. We want this vintage pillowcase to show off it's beauty in its new life form! 


The picture up above is the original look of the pillowcase.  I had intended to snip the embroidered white stitches and replace it with the pink, but as I got to working I saw that all the stitches were the same string of embroidery floss, so if I snipped it, it would cause the rest to undo because I wouldn't have enough to knot off the ends.  So what I did was embroidery over the areas I wanted to add the pink to, which ended up giving it a bit of a 3-D look.  It acutually looks stunning with the white soft floss behind it.  As I was adding the touches of pink I then decided to add just touches of this gorgeous soft green I have to some leaves and the leaf veins. The roses, where the flower centers have the french knots coming up, there is a bit of stem to them so I added the green there too.  The pictures below show you how I have added just a bit of pink to the flowers and the green to the leaves and stems.  I hope you can see it on your monitors.  I think the change is just stunning. I hope Bea will just love it!  I think she will don't you?

The next step now is creating the dress.  I'll keep you posted with the finish of that which I'm going now to do.  Then the pantaloons will be the last to finish for this journey to be complete.  Stay tune!


TA TA for Now!