Inspired By Nature: Garden Sun Prints, a Guest Post by Buzzmills

Welcome to Jane from the consistently inspiring blog Buzzmills!

I first took notice of Jane's work when she entered our Feather Your Nest sew along contest last year (and won Judges' choice!). She produced quite a few unique, resourceful and beautiful projects! She presented a few topic options for a guest post for our Inspired By Nature series, and I selfishly picked this one because I want to use some photosensitive paper we have in our craft cabinet! Can't wait to try this, don't Jane's prints look amazing?



* * *
There has been a blank spot on our bedroom wall since we moved in. We have struggled with just what to put in the space. Nothing too expensive, nothing that will make it feel too cluttered.

Hmmm?

And then one day... Someone was giving away a package of sun print paper on Freecycle. Well, why not? I'll take it! I thought it would be a super fun project to do with the kids. Do you remember doing sun prints as a kid?

I let Violet and Henry pick what they wanted to put on their papers. It was fun to see them wandering around looking for just the right items.






And then we waited, curious about the outcome...




The kids thought it was pretty awesome!




It turns out that I thought it was pretty awesome too! I loved the cool blue of the paper. And the pictures have a slightly modern feel while also feeling a bit "old school" as well! So I hoarded the leftover pieces of paper ;) and made my own using flowers and herbs from our garden.






It took me a while, but eventually I made it to Ikea and bought some inexpensive frames for my new art. And so, I filled the blank space in our room.




The four pictures hanging this way mimic a window and really help to open up our small room.




The blue looks great against the pale gray of our room and with the yellow and gray of our bed and embroidery hoops on the opposite wall.










Now I have "fresh" flowers from our garden in our room every day!

And the kids have some new "nature" to add to their hallway upstairs!




Of course, there is still a bit of a blank space above the mirror to fill... In time in time... It always has to be a little bit in progress or else you wouldn't have anything to do, right?

Oh, and one more thing, before I go... Speaking of nature and art... I thought I'd share where I decided to put my Feather your Nest print from Jenny!



(Sorry these hallway pictures are not so great, there is almost zero light there, but it does look great in person!)

A perfect fit, don't you think?

Thanks for having me Jenny and Angel!

* * *
Thank YOU so much for sharing this project with us, Jane! We can't wait to try it ourselves. It looks fabulous.

What do you guys think of these botanical sun prints? Aren't you antsy to go pick up some photosensitive paper to try it out?


For more posts in our Inspired by Nature series, click the image above. If you have a guest post to contribute, we'd love to hear from you! Shoot us an email at stumblesstitches AT ymail DOT com.

Tutorial: Felt Beehive Ornament

Greetings friends!

If you've been following along, you'll know that I've been working on this tutorial for quite awhile. If we lived in the same city, and I could sit down next to you and show you, you'd have learned how to make this ornament months ago! But I seem to be at odds with technology these last six months or so, and I feel like I have wrestled with every single step of this online tutorial.

BUT: it may have all been for a larger purpose, because tomorrow is NATIONAL HONEYBEE DAY! (Click the link to find out how you can participate!). Perfect timing, after all: my inspiration for the ornament I'm sharing is our family beehives! (I'll get a post up soon to show off our hives.)

Whip up a beehive ornament for your favorite bee lover, or for yourself! (Or, head over to my SHOP to buy one that's already been lovingly hand sewn!) More than a "holiday" ornament, it can be a year round reminder you can hang anywhere to remind you to LOVE THE BEES!!!!!!

So, without further ado, here it is.

 

Inspired by Nature: Urban Wildflowers

Hi Angel!

Your beautiful backyard post inspired me to stash the camera in my big mama purse on the way to preschool pick-up this week. I had been obsessing over a patch of wildflowers at a particular neighborhood intersection through which we walk nearly daily, and finally captured it!




I wasn't kidding when I mentioned that wildflowers adorn the roundabouts in my neighborhood. Most of the houses have been here for well over a century and, come Spring, there are flowers everywhere!

Many yards are carefully manicured, but a good portion also feature gardens (and chickens!) or wonderful assortments of wildflowers that have probably come and gone for years and happily spread out onto the sidewalk grass patches -- and the roundabouts! I love being bombarded by color when we walk through the neighborhood.

Guest Post: Nature and The Creative Process

We're on Whip Up this morning! You can see our guest post here. (And welcome, Whip Up readers!!)

Kathreen asked us to participate in her guest series on creativity and we wrote about how Nature influences our creative process. It was such an interesting exercise to analyze and describe how the natural world weaves itself into our projects.



We also loved discovering more about each other's creative process -- we both learned something about the other! I hadn't grasped how important the animal world was to Angel and how meaningful sketching is for her; she liked understanding the inspiration behind my fabric and texture choices. We hope you enjoy reading the post!



This post about Nature and the creative process officially launches our Inspired by Nature series. You can read more about it here. We look forward to sharing more nature-inspired projects with you all very soon!



Thank you so much to Kathreen and Whip Up for featuring us today!

Inspired by Nature

Dear readers,

Today we'd like to introduce a new series that will be ongoing on Stumbles & Stitches: Inspired by Nature!




This new series will be off to an exciting start with a guest post on Whip Up tomorrow! Please check in. We can't wait to hear what you think!

Nature is ever present in our lives and environment. Angel and I find ourselves drawn to it for inspiration in our projects, both consciously and unconsciously, and want to share more of this process with each other. In our home lives and the way we raise our families, we strive to be respectful of the Earth, conscious of the natural world, and mindful of the Seasons. In our creative endeavors, through our choice of materials and subject matter, we find ourselves connected to and Inspired by Nature.

In this series, we will share projects with each other (and with you!) that are representative of this push to connect further with Nature in our creative process. We hope to inspire you as well, to connect with your natural environment and let it guide your creative life and projects.

The Inspired by Nature series will be ongoing, which means you can expect regular posts through the next weeks and months focused on this theme. There will be posts and projects by us of course, but also guest posts, interviews, tutorials and more. We plan on sketching and drawing more too, so get out your sketchbook and join us!


<a href="http://stumblesandstitches.blogspot.com/search/label/Inspired%20by%20Nature" title="Stumbles & Stitches: Inspired by Nature"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7226/7162058351_b4676a14d0_o.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="Stumbles & Stitches: Inspired by Nature" ></a>

We've created a button for this series. Feel free to grab and share it! Please share your own projects that are inspired by Nature on your blog and link back! We hope you'll also post photos in our Inspired by Nature Flickr pool. Finally, if you have a project or guest post to contribute to this series, we'd love to know. Please submit it at stumblesstitches [at] ymail [dot] com.

We're so excited to get this rolling, and can't wait to hear what you all think!