Pretty Pretty Flowers

That went out today.......

Haauuullll!!!

I had to run into town for a few bits yesterday and finally managed to get the 1” round labels for my Brother labelmaker. I had had them on order from a store in town who took SEVEN weeks to finally tell me they were on indefinite back order with the manufacturer, even after they told me several times they would be receiving them to send out to me within 5-7 days. Funny that the manufacturer has them for sale on their own website the whole time. From now on we’ll only buy from that store if the item is physically on the shelf ready to buy as this isn’t the first time they have kept us hanging on an exorbitant amount of time with a pre-order item.

But now I have the nice neat little labels needed for my small bridal button looping packaging as well as Thank You stickers and web address stickers for tissue wrapped items and neat business return address labels – Yay!

Now this ‘stuff’ has be niggling at me to buy for a month or so now, and I needed to go to the florist supply store to pick up a tall pillar candle anyway so I finally gave in and bought some. It’s weird! But great! It kind of looks like silly string made into mesh, the receipt lists it as Sisal, but its definitely a man made foamy concoction. It does have some stiffness to it, but I’m going to gently steam it at some point, I do want to keep some of the stiffness in parts to create a cage type feel to the finished hat.

Positions…Please!

Developed from Wooden Flower Bead Insert Buttons, with flowers in different positions. Current project.

Today I Have Been Working on….

A load of cute girly buttons. No hats today, far too many express orders in the button shop to get finished :)

Haaauuuulllll!

 

What I’ve been working on today…

One of the things I have been working on is finishing off deco-ing my 4th July hat. The stars are now finished and the brim is wired, all it needs now is fixing the hairband.

Royal Ascot Ladies Day

Today is Ladies Day at Royal Ascot at Ascot Racecourse in Berkshire England. This year is the 300th year of the prestigious event, attended annually by members of the royal family. Ladies Day is when the fight is on for who can wear the biggest, best, most outlandish hat to win best dressed of the day. The event of the day is The Gold Cup at 3.50pm.

Our Milliners of Etsy team set the last team contest as Design a Black & White Hat for Ascot. It was judged by the milliner Mark T Burke, the closing date was June 1st and the winner was announced a week later. You can see all the entries here as well as Mark’s comments on each one.

And my entry Fame & Glory was the winner!!

I named it after the favourite to win todays Gold Cup race.

I mixed and matched materials rather than making it all out of sinamay. The base is a simple small black wool felt smartie with a white sinamay saucer perched on the front edged with grosgrain and finished with a swirly twisty knotty length of black and white striped grosgrain ribbon.

I had only just got the 6” saucer block (along with an 8” one) the week before so I was super excited to get working with it at the first opportunity, and so pleased when it helped me win!

……now I just have to hope that the horse it is named after wins this afternoon…….

*Update* Fame and Glory won the Gold Cup!