St. Patrick's Day and shamrock

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It is common knowledge that all 4 areas of the UK have national flowers associated with them as well as patron saints. Next Monday, 17 March, Ireland is celebrating the day of its patron saint, St. Patrick. It is customary to wear a shamrock in honour of this day. This plant’s story is that St Patrick used it to explain the Trinity from the Christian religion – the three leaves represent the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

Pink clover worn as a hair embellishment

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Silk leaves for restoring an antique piece

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I am sorry I have not posted in weeks. To start with we went for a fortnight to Russia to visit my family and have a change of scenery. And then for another three weeks I have been very busy working away on a pretty big, I would even say a wholesale order: I have been making 300 acer leaves for an unusual customer.

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New silk poppy

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Undoubtedly fabric poppies have always been popular. Especially fire engine red ones, which resemble the simple wild poppies grown without any cultivation in a natural setting. As we all know the red remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to the poem "In Flanders Fields". To cater for all tastes I have several Remembrance poppies in my portfolio ranging from satin to velvet ones, with and without foliage, with just 4 petals or a fuller version with 14. Here is one of the most popular designs:

Remembrance Poppy Brooch

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Indian Summer has arrived. New line of leather flowers

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It is official, autumn is here. And although the days are still rather warm and even sunny the mornings are chilly and filled with dewy cobwebs.
In colder months I find that silks and other delicate fabrics tend to lose their appeal and give way to more seasonally appropriate fellow material, leather. Lately, I have been working on my new line which I dubbed Indian Summer. Those of you who live in the Southern Hemisphere may not have experienced this natural phenomenon. Indian summer is a bit of summer in autumn, a period of lovely warm and dry weather that occurs between late September and mid November in the Northern Hemisphere .
So what I was trying to achieve here is a line of brightly coloured accessories featuring autumnal blooms in rich and seasonal hues.
I started with chrysanthemums and have created this rusty orange open chrysanthemum corsage made of thin leather.

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The next piece was a red and brown leather gerbera.

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How I tame leather. Mini-tutorial

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Those of you who have tried working with genuine leather know how temperamental it can be. Leather is a natural product and as a result may have imperfections such as holes or scars, the thickness and stretch can vary too. And it is completely unpredictable when it comes to shaping it with hot flower iron.
For my floral pieces I stiffen leather is several ways. Today I am going to share one of this ways with you. The result is a flat stiff piece of leather that can be shaped with a flower iron. I use flat stiff leather to make a range of flowers including my camellias, gerberas etc.

So here is how I do it. But first of all the kit:

1. Measuring jug
2. A piece of genuine leather for stiffening
3. Bowl
4. White (PVA) glue
5. Measuring spoon
 and a piece of plastic or a glass board as seen in the picture.
I use a rather thiсk PVA glue intended for craft purposes. The ratio of glue to water can be from 1 to 5  to 1 to 10 depending on how thick your leather or glue are and how stiff you want the leather to be. You might need to experiment with the quantities, but the general guidelines are: the thicker the leather the weaker the solution (less glue). The ready to use solution should look like milk.

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CHARITY SALE TO HELP UKRAINIAN KIDS WITH SCHOOL ESSCENTIALS

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My dear fans and friends!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I did not think that I would be ever writing this but here I am offering you to buy some of my flowers so that I could help refugee Ukrainian children with school uniform and stationary. I understand that I can not do much but in this situation everything matters and every little helps. I am sure you will agree with that.

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One wedding, three creations

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Last week we went to a wedding, my husband's niece was getting married.
To prove the well-known proverb "The shoemaker's son always goes barefoot" wrong, I decided to create a cocktail hat for myself (for once! :-D) to wear at the wedding. It gave me a chance to try my new hat block, a mini beret. I covered the base with a beautiful quilted dupioni silk and decorated with a spray of rumbling roses in purple. 

Floral cocktail hat

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About fabric dyes I use to colour my flowers

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Often I am asked what sort of dyes I use to colour fabrics for my pieces. And it is a very relevant question as not any fabric dyes could be used for our purposes. To start with I can say that acrylic fabric dyes are not suitable for a number of reasons. First, they are quite thick, they coat the fabric rather than just penetrate it thus changing the texture of it and they also stick to the millinery tools when we shape petals or leaves.
The right dyes to use when making silk flowers are so called aniline dyes, synthetic dyes that come in either liquid or powder form.
I started with these Russian made aniline dyes, which come in 11 rather strange completely artificial colours. They need careful mixing before one can come up with a suitable delicate colour to use on flowers.

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Butterflies for a wedding hairdo

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Recently I accepted a custom order for a set of 5 silk butterflies to decorate a bridal hairdo. The bride-to-be has taken her inspiration from this Pinterest photo and wanted a similar hair style

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Oversized rose headdress

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I have finally finished this custom oversized rose headdress. This was an experimental piece, the one your customers inspire you to dare and do it by ordering something quirky. You try your best and come up with ... well, a masterpiece!

Oversized rose headdress

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Hydrangea experiments

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I wonder if there is ever going to be a moment when I say to myself: I have tried and made all the flowers imaginable. For some reason I do not think this is going to happen and you know very well why: there are sooooooooo many flowers out there that it is virtually impossible to make them all. Every time I come across a flower picture in a book or online or I see a plant in somebody's garden or at a garden centre, I make a mental note "I should try to create this one soon!". One of such flowers, hydrangea has been on "to do" list for a while. Last summer I was admiring its faded pink blooms in my own garden, the colour I would like to call "antique pink". Here is the photo of it:

Hydrangea from my garden

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Spring in leather bloom

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As the days become warmer Eva and I spend more and more time wandering pedestrian paths and little streets of our city enjoying spring and the blooms it has brought.
One of the classic spring flowers is a noble camellia. Often hidden in the back gardens it is in full bloom at the moment. More often than not camellia flower has clean lines and a regular shape which is perfect for recreating this flower in leather. I have gone slightly mad and made a whole load of smaller and larger camellias in differently coloured genuine leather and suede.

Leather camellia

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Butterfly decor

Hand painted pure silk butterflies

I know everybody's thoughts are about spring and summer these days especially with wall-to-wall sunshine outside. But some of us do like to plan ahead. So instead of thinking about Easter preparations one of my customers is busy planning her next Christmas tree design! Surfing the Internet she came across a picture of a tree all covered with butterflies and got so inspired that wanted the same. Unusual as it is, I received this order for 10 different sample butterflies a couple of weeks ago. Here are the butterflies, which are going to decorate a fir tree next Christmas. 

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A velvet rose

 Recently I have added a couple of new stunning roses to my portfolio. One of them is this large beauty.

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Velvet poppy brooch

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In November I was talking about new poppy designs which I would like to add to my oh-so-popular existing line. One of the ideas was to create a poppy using luxurious velvet fabric. Finally last weekend I found the time for this experiment.
Please welcome the wild poppy made of cotton velvet for petals and cotton melton for leaves and stems.

Velvet poppy brooch

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New year - new tools!

I am always on the lookout for new ideas in the world of fabric flowers. This include different technology, tools, materials, ways of presenting the work.
At the end of last year I decided to be generous and get a silk floristry related gift for myself. I simply could not resist these gorgeous Japanese brushes!

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