Rusty Mantel Part 2

What do you think of when I say RUST?

How about the word AUTUMN?

and yum, how about a mantel?

Here is my opinion...

 This year, it has been a bit odd.  Even though I love white and shabby chic with a bit of turquoise and pink and mint green and cream, and a robin egg blue...:)  I am loving browns and blacks.

So voila!  Rusty Mantel with a rusty round table, a black garden gate, and the folk art black star.
All around these pieces are cork, candles, old alarm clocks, keys, brown bottles and globes and my AUTUMN pennant that I made out of burlap, a stencil with black ink and various ribbons.

I lovvvvvvvvvvvvvve summer, but I love decorating for the fall.

Garden Seed Harvesting Time

 I love harvesting seeds almost as much as I love planting them because I know I will have heirlooms, and I don't have to buy as many seeds next year and I can share yea!

This was supposed to be a video and it is not working, but I think it is kind of cool that it looks almost like a slide show in its own way.

Take brown bags you buy at the Dollart store, and go out, cut the plants down to the ground, and stick the stems upside down in the bag, use an elastic band or twine and close the bag so it is tight and the seeds will stay in the bag.  You can also just pull the flower head off and throw that into the bag to save space and then  ut the bags in a shoe box and store in a closet for the winter.  Don't forget to label the bag or just write on it with a marker or pen what the plant is.  I don't care how good you are, good chance you will forget which plant is in which bag.  I have an idea....When you plant your seeds, take the envelope from the seeds and keep them, then in the fall, put those seeds in the envelope and you will save room from the size of the brown paper bags.  Use white envelopes instead of paper bags, use zip lock bags, make envelopes out of pieces of paper and just fold in half and staple, be creative with any idea you have to make a sealed enclosure.

Rusty Fall Mantel/Mantle

I have alot of rust i my house, on my mantle, in the opening of the fireplace,, parts of the coffee table which is a train cart is rusty (havn't done a thing to it yet), scales of different sizes and sorts that have rust...I wonder what rust means to me?....I would think it would mean old, falling apart, corroded, bad for your health if you cut yourself with it...and yet, I love how it looks as a texture, and color...

 Here is the train cart.  MMMM...should I paint it, sand and stain, leave it...I have asked myself for over two months now, I think I may paint the slats different colors and then sand them good so hints of color show, and maybe paint the iron parts a silver/black and not just a hard black.  I also thought of painting the table white with black hardware and then maybe stencilling it with french script on the top.  Perhaps a turquoise kind of robin egg blue with stenciling it on the sides with some sort of train cart company name that I have to investigate what it looked like.

How do you like the lockers?  My hubby ran over a can of paint and it splattered the lockers.  It looks like an art piece-a deco piece.  Oh well, now I have to sand the paint off, do some rust work and then paint.  I think I am going to paint them aqua

No maybe RED

maybe yellow?:O)

If anyone wants to buy the lockers, or scales, just write, I am willing to sell

Art Studio/art room

Can you even believe it?  This is what my art room looks like?  How could I?  I grew up OCD and so was my mom.  I didn't like being OCD and prayed that I would not be any more.  Did I have to go the opposite direction?  Oh well.  Enjoying myself more in my life and learning to let go.  My mom died five months ago, and again, having health problems...my husband too...and my daughter too.  My laundry looks the same.  So, every day, I set up a schedule, see if anything will interrupt it and go from there.  I finished my art room, and only have five more loads of laundry.  After my mom died, my husband and I travelled to see his mom and mother in law from his first wife, then we had to get caught up here with so many errands and then we took one week for vacation.  So things added up.  Now, after a week on my back from pulling my back out (last year the same thing happened mmm)   I am up and vacuuming, cleaning frig, drawers in kitchen, and laundry.  My art room will always be there, but people can see it right when they come in the house,  oh well!

How did I house clean this room.  I brought everything in the middle, heaps and all:)

I went through each box slowly, had another empty box to the side, what I did not want or need, I put in the empty box.  I made an area in the room for sewing, an area for beads, I made a couple of baskets for office supplies, and for a week I bit off a bit that I COULD CHEW and did it.  Much of it got done in two days, and piddly little stuff I did later.  Under my desk that is in front of the white chair, I had a huge basket under there filled with every sort of goody from papers to small art pieces, acrylic paints, plastic easter eggs, new supplies that I bought at Hobby Lobby by Claudine Hellmuth and I put the paints in the paint box, put the easter eggs in my three dimensional box, small art pieces went on the window sills so I could see them, Claudine Hellmuth paints on my desk to try out, papers went into a huge box because I love collecting all sorts of papers and cutouts for collage.

I will post up-dated pictures of how everything looks.