Busy as a bee

I seem to be as busy as a bee but don't have many photos to post as most everything is in various degrees of completion with nothing totally finished yet.

I did finish sewing two more throw pillows (20" square) for my friend today. I call this my neverending sewing project as the more I finish, the more there seems to be left to do!

I was reading on Gingerwood today about gals altering the popular Brides flowers (these are tins of white/ivory flowers sold in the bridal section of Michael's that everyone was talking about recently and are far cheaper than paper flowers found in the scrapbooking/stamping department). I had bought some a few weeks ago and since they were lovely as is, with a beautiful subtle sheen, had only used them "unaltered." So, I dug them out and here is a chart of my results of altering. The top left shows a plain flower. Top right is one that I stamped with Archival Black ink and a text background stamp. I wanted to try coloring the flowers to test different inks to see what would dry and keep the sheen. Of the four I tried - Palette Hybrid, SU Dye, Brilliance Pigment and Adirondack Dye - all worked well, dried and retained the pretty sheen. On the two colored flowers on the right, I applied the ink to the reverse side and like how ink did not get into the little outline groove. Lots of possibilities for these little guys and I like that I will always be able to have a matching flower if I choose!