Almost Spring!

 It's the Ides of March!  Today's weather:  wind, rain due to turn to snow.  But we've had a few lovely days with blue skies and warmer temps, so almost all of our snow has melted and the mud had dried up... will have to see how things look after this storm passes, but my Daffodils and Tulips are poking through so Spring is definitely coming, yaay!

So here's what I've been working on in the past few days:

I used a glass vase as my form - wrapped with plastic wrap, then glued 3 layers of fabric scraps over it.  I let it sit overnight, then tried to remove the vase - easier said than done on this one!  It's 7 1/2" high and about 3 1/2" wide.  With other forms, I've been able to wiggle them around a bit to loosen the plastic wrap then remove the outside, but with this... hard to grip glass, and as tall as it is, I had to finally resort to slipping a letter opener between the glass and the plastic all around, a few times before I was finally able to gradually remove the vase.  Lessons learned, lol!

Then I bought some more glass from our local thrift store, and decided this one was perfect for creating a small bud vase:

This one was really a fun one to make!  I had a length of stitched fabric strips where I zigzagged funky yarn over the top, and the fabrics were in my fave - rainbow colors.  I first wrapped and stitched on a piece of cotton batting, then I began wrapping the stitched cording around the base.  When I got about a third of the way to the top, I stopped and pinned the cord to the batting.  Then I brushed on some Fabric Stiffy to glue it all together.  I let it sit and dry, then I finished wrapping and gluing the rest.  The top rows were a little challenging since the bottle narrowed to the neck.  So I pulled out my hot glue gun and that did the trick.  I left it to completely dry overnight.  Then I started playing with ideas for making funky colorful flowers, but wasn't able to achieve what I had in mind.  My next thought was to use the tree twigs I had wrapped with yarn awhile back, just to see how it would look.  I decided that was just the trick, so I'm probably going to add this to my booth at Arts Connection next week.  Meanwhile, I'm busy making more of the fabric/yarn strips - I really love how they look, so they'll no doubt grace some more of my vessels soon!

Now what?  Well, our weather is supposed to improve very soon, and I'm looking forward to doing some dyeing soon - got a huge order from my supplier, so time to get busy!  Stay tuned...