Eternal Love

On Saturday I attended a bridal shower for my niece Taylor.

Here is the beautiful bride to be. I just love her to death. She is more like a daughter to me than a niece.

So for her shower I wanted to make her a gift. I wanted to give her something that she knew came from my heart.

Now you know how I love my letter art. So I thought I would make her a sign that would mean something to both her & her fiance Michael.

They will be getting married in the San Diego Temple on August 14th where they will be sealed as husband and wife for not just time here on earth, but for all eternity. Their marriage will be eternal. So ETERNAL was the word I decided to use for their special sign.

Here is the finished sign. And because I am such a procrastinator, I made it Saturday morning. Right before going to the shower.

How did I make this? I'll show you. If I can do this, anyone can. All you need is a camera, a printer and a little imagination.

First you need to look at everything to see if you can find a letter somewhere in the shape.

See this iron scroll work? The end looks like an "E".

So you take a close up photo of the portion that makes your letter. And now we have an "E".

Next I needed a "T"

This is a plate rack that hangs on my kitchen wall. See how the railing in front looks like a bunch of "T's"?

I just took a close up & like magic, a "T".

Next I needed another "E". But I wanted a lower case version. It really doesn't matter if you mix lower case with upper case, but since I had two E's in this sign, I wanted them to be different.

One of my patio chairs looks like it has a lower case "e" on the back.

Yup, I was right. I did have to lay the chair on the cement to get this photo.

Next I needed the letter "R". But I couldn't find another shaped like an "R" in anything around my house. So sometimes I cheat a little & use actual letters from something else.

Like this Merry Christmas glitter sign. I just took a close up of an "R".

And got this "R". I love how the glitter gives it texture. Luckily I already had this letter from photos I took last winter. But I had not used it yet in a letter art sign.

"N" comes next. But "N" was a hard letter to find at the last minute.

Luckily I have this apothecary jar full of letter balls. And look, the "N" was right there front and center. I didn't even have to dig through all the balls to find it. It was meant to be. And yes, my patriotic decor is still up. Got a problem with that?

And here is the result for "N".

Next comes "A". The only thing I already had for "A" was an Eiffel Tower. But I wanted to try and find something else. So I was at Target on Saturday night & came across a fold up chair in the garden department.

The side view of the chair looks like a letter "A". So I snapped a quick pic & was done. I forgot to take a photo of the entire chair but you get the idea of what it looked like.

And finally I needed the letter "L".

This glider bench was where I found my "L". Can you see it?

I'll give you a better hint? It's down here.

Did you figure it out? If you use your imagination you start seeing letters in most everything.

Once you have taken your photos. You then upload the photos to whatever photo editing software you use. I use Picasa. It's free.

Once uploaded to Picasa, I crop the photo to whatever size I needed. In this case 4" x 6". I then make the photo black & white and add a little tint to make it darker. I then print it out on white card stock, cut it out & place in frame. I actually tape the back of the photo on top of the display paper inside the frame. That way you get the photo positioned in the right spot. Plus it is easy to remove & change out the letters to change up the sign.

This particular frame came from Kohl's last year. The positioning of the openings are a little skewed. But that makes it more fun.

Kohl's has been a great source for finding frames with numerous openings for making these letter art signs. Just be sure to wait until they are 1/2 off. I've even found frames at Walmart that work. You could also use a separate frame for each letter if you wanted.

And here is my niece after she opened up my "Eternal" sign. I wish I had snapped more than one photo as she is making a funny face in this photo. Doesn't show her true beauty or gratitude.

Here is a better photo of Taylor with her fiance Michael. Aren't they a cute couple?

And one final look at the sign. My niece loved it and so did everyone else at the shower.

Have you priced this kind of sign? They can be quite pricey. Since I already had stuff around the house & yard I could photograph, and I already had the frame, all this cost me was my time, a few pieces of card stock and some printer ink. And we can't forget a whole lot of love. This was the biggest ingredient in this project. But we all know that I have a lot of love to give, so it was a pleasure.

Thanks for taking the time to look at my letter art transformation. Now if I can do this, you can too. Now get out there and find some letters and make your own, or if you want, you can borrow mine. Be sure to let me know if you do, I want to see what you make. I'm noisy like that.




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Summer Cloche Party

Marty over at A Stroll Thru Life is having a Summer Cloche Party. And we have all been invited. Yipee!!!

You know how much I like parties and I love cloches. So you knew I was going to be in attendance. Even if I am a tad late.

The problem is, I didn't prepare for this party. In fact, I completely forgot about it. I had such great plans for some new summer cloches to show you. Not really. I don't think that far in advance. I'm a spur of the moment kind of gal.

So I guess you will be stuck seeing stuff I've already posted about. But it might be worth a 2nd looksy. At least I think it is. But then I might be a little biased. Or self centered.

Anyways, let's start with my June bride cloches.

This is a vintage cake topper that someone placed inside a glass dome. My hubby got this for me last Christmas from an antique mall. I just love it!!! I used it on this years anniversary tablescape in June. Yup, I am a June bride.

This bride & groom figurine sits under a cloche on a home made cake plate for most of the month of June. I love using my bride & groom figurines to decorate with in the month of June. And they look even better under glass.

Now let's move on to July and my patriotic cloches. You already saw most of these cloches when I posted about my thrifty red, white & blue hutch, and when I posted more 4th of July decor.

Cheese domes make great cloches, but they are a little harder to decorate as they are kind of short & squatty. Kind of like me. Wait, I'm not short & squatty, I'm tall & fat. But you get the idea.

Under this cheese dome I placed a vintage flower frog & just stuck flag toothpicks in almost each section. Easy, peasy.


This small cup & saucer looks fabulous with a small cloche placed over it. Both came from a thrift store.

In this cloche I placed a reproduction vintage 4th of July postcard nestled in another vintage flower frog. I placed fire crackers on top of the base. Don't worry, I don't have any small children in my house. And no one smokes so I don't think think the firecrackers will be going off. At least I hope they don't.

I think this is actually a glass terrarium. But it still works as a cloche. It came from Goodwill last year. Inside I placed a green plant ball on top of a small white vase. In front I just printed out a vintage patriotic print from my collection of CD's and placed in front. I added a flag toothpick to the top of the ball. And instant 4th of July decor.

Inside this cloche I stacked 3 blue & white transferware cups and saucers. Luckily they didn't fall over when we had our earthquake a few weeks back. I love to collect blue & white transferware. All of mine comes from thrift stores, garage sales or antique stores.

This is a cloche that I made by gluing a glass knob on top of a glass dome that I found at the thrift store. I placed some vintage bottles inside & placed a small flag in one of the bottles.

Here is another cloche I made. This is a smaller one. I placed a small patriotic birdhouse that I've had for probably 15 years inside & placed on top of some ironstone saucers I picked up at a thrift store.
This cloche has some more vintage bottles. This time with 2 flags and a small wooden star sitting in front.

I found this patriotic creamer a few weeks back at a thrift store. I placed a small Uncle Sam (from Michael's) inside and placed under the cloche. I printed out some patriotic music onto paper, cut into strips & then curled the strips as a filler.

In this cloche I placed a vintage stencil with the number 4. I taped a small piece of patriotic paper behind so you could see the 4 better. Stuck it in a vintage flower frog. I found some grape vine at my local thrift store to use on the outside of a lot of my cloches. Placed this cloche on another stack of white ironstone saucers from the thrift store.

And did you notice the cheese dome in the background? I made a patriotic fan pinwheel & placed it under the dome. I did prop it up a bit.

Besides cloches, I love apothecary jars as well. And Marty said we could show them off too. In this one I placed my scrabble pieces. I finally found a scrabble game at the thrift store. They are hard to find. I need to find another one as there aren't quite enough letters to fill this jar.

This jar has some number balls. I hung a star from the lid to give it a patriotic look.

And this jar houses some dominoes that I picked up from a thrift store.

So far we have covered June and July. But summer doesn't end in July. Next comes August. August is one of the hottest months here so I like to decorate beachy for the rest of summer, to try & trick my brain that it is actually cooler than it is. But to tell you the truth, my patriotic decor is still up. I've thought about what I would do for my beachy decor for August, but so far I haven't gotten any further than the thinking stage.

Probably due to the fact that Summer has finally arrived here in southern California. We've had a cooler than normal summer up to this point. But yesterday it was like 110 degrees at my house. So that would make my attic (where my beachy decor is stashed) about a gazillion degrees. Too hot for me to venture up there.

Since I don't have any current beachy cloches or jar stuff to show you. I'll show you what I did last year.

This apothecary jar sits on the small cabinet at the end of my kitchen cabinets. I just filled it with shells. Doesn't get much easier or summery than that. Thanks to my son who was once obsessed with collecting shells when he was a child, I have quite the collection to display.

I picked up these blue canning jars last summer at a thrift store. I filled 2 with shells and the 3rd with small glass thing a ma bogs (can't think what they are called) that I got from Dollar Tree.

Don't have a cloche or an apothecary jar? Use a crystal glass or compote & fill it with shells.

Under this cheese dome I placed a summery looking bowl filled with shells & placed some glass beads around the base.

Have a collection of something? Put it under a cloche & it makes any collection look fabulous. I placed some of my vintage bottle collection under this cloche.

More jars, vases & compotes filled with shells.


Shells, shells and more shells. Can you have too many shells for summer?

Well I hope that you enjoyed my cloches, apothecary jars and just jars in general. Even if I did cheat a bit.

Street Painting Festival

A few weeks back I went to the annual street painting festival in Old Town Temecula. This is the 2nd year I have attended. I really enjoy seeing the artwork.

Today I will share some of my favorites.


I loved the colors in this flower.

I wish this photo of Pegasus came out better. The girl was still working on this so part is in the shade. I just love Pegasus.

This woman was still working on her art. The photos in the shade don't show up very well.

Loved this black & white one.

Hubby was enjoying a Pepsi while listening to a band playing music from the 40's.

It was really hard to see exactly what I was taking a photo of out in the bright sun. Sometimes I got the complete piece of art, sometimes I didn't.


This butterfly was fabulous. Loved the blue color.

Softer colors were used in the one, but still liked it.


I seemed to really like the ones with all the bright colors.


This was hubby's favorite. He loves how the dwarfs are looking down into a well.

They even had an area where kids could draw their own art masterpieces with chalk.

And of course there had to be a balloon man.

I thought this years Festival was much better than last YEARS. The artwork was better this year. More entries. The only thing I didn't like was the area they had it this year. It was kind of hard to walk around as there was quite a few people & a small area to walk in.

But I still love attending this annual event. Gives me a reason not only to see some fabulous art, but to eat at Rosa's Cantina, one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. And I also got to visit some of my favorite shops. I'll hopefully share those tomorrow.

So if you live in southern California, be sure to put this festival on your list of things to do next summer. They usually have it around the end of June. But if you can't wait until then, get out your own chalk & draw on your own sidewalk. Or you could just go to Old Town Temecula to eat at Rosa's Cantina or visit all their wonderful shops. You can even do a little wine or olive oil tasting while there. I promise you'll have a fun time whatever you do in Old Town Temecula.

And afterwards, you can travel up to my house for a swim to cool off. Just bring your own towel. And don't all come at once. ;)



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