Moonbeams & Fireflies: net

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

May Baskets and a Photo a Day

As a young child, May Day and the tradition of delivering and receiving May baskets held such delight for me. I loved the thrill of quietly placing a homemade basket filled with candy and violets from our garden on friends' porches, ringing the doorbell and running for dear life.

To this day, whenever I work with construction paper, pipe cleaners and paper doilies, I'm reminded of May Days past.

Since my children have long since left the nest, the basket tradition is a thing of the past for me. In fact, I'd venture to guess that the tradition has all but disappeared in many American neighborhoods.

Last year, I commemorated May Day by paint washing and embellishing the berry baskets above. Recently, I again got the itch to create a couple of pretties in the spirit of May baskets to fill a couple of gaps in my spring vignettes.

They started as peat pots I picked up at an estate sale. I painted them--one an icy blue, the other a mixture of a couple of earthy colors that resulted in a pale terra cotta that I then dry brushed in a creamy white.

I found a lovely French label graphic at The Graphics Fairy to add to the blue pot. I combined three of Karen's images--a sweet little bird, a beautiful crown and an elegant frame--to create the image in its crowning glory that now graces the terra cotta pot.

To give a slight aged look to the bird basket, I distressed the image lightly using stamping ink. I Mod Podged the images onto the pots. As a finishing touch, I added wisps of vintage seam tape in complementary colors.

The pots by themselves looked a bit naked so, out of some raw materials I had laying around, I stitched up some little pouches to scrunch up inside the pots. Both pouches are made from wide ribbon--one sparkly tulle, the other vintage net. I simply folded the ribbon over on itself and stitched up each side to create the pouch.

No more stealth deliveries to friends on May Day, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy creating a grown-up version of the May basket.

NATIONAL PHOTO MONTH

May is National Photo Month. Today is Day 1 of my attempt at posting a photo a day.

Today's photo is a version of the French blue peat pot on a wonderful background texture called "Stay," created by Kim Klassen. Kim's creations are exquisite and worth a visit to her site.