Vintage Hankie Scarves Part 1 of 2

Working with vintage hankies has become a favorite of mine.  I love the colors, the florals, the fine embroidered lace edgings, the textures. 

Combining 5 vintage hankies that coordinate or complement each other takes time as

 I decide on the 5 vintage hankies that will be re-purposed into a

 one of a kind 

Vintage Hankie Scarf.

I have been posting one or several of these a day on my Instagram account - IsaCreationsVintage.

Here is my new collection of Vintage Hankie Scarves

Available September 5th at

A Paris Street Market 

in Aspen Grove

Littleton, CO

White vintage hankies with embroidery and lace details make a wonderfully unique scarf.

I have decided to keep this one for myself!

My friend Amy (Pink Attic Cat) loves eyelet embroidered details.  I needed to create a new display board for my vintage hankie scarves.  I traded this scarf for a vintage door used in my new display.  Love to barter with Amy, her shop always has vintage finds I must have.

And there is more vintage hankie scarfs,

I will post those next time.

Vintage Embroidered Linen Pin Cushions Summer 2015

During the summers, I typically struggle with having consistent productivity when it comes to Isa Creations. Although I have not even started on one of my summer goals - re-opening my Etsy shop - (That requires a certain "Administrative" frame of mind which I have not been able to find ALL summer).  

Moving on to better news, I have been very productive in other aspects of Isa Creations.  I have been in a "Creative" frame of mind and when I am in that place, I need to stay in that place because that is my favorite!  Most of my work has been accomplished late evenings and into the night. I am definitely a productive night owl.

I recently open an Instagram account, ISACREATIONSVINTAGE where I have been posting many photos of my work.    Here is the link.  Love using the various collage frames and grids to post on Instagram. 

In the last month, I have created  over 110 new vintage linen pin cushions which is a good thing because of those I have sold over 24 pin cushions to Carolyn  (The Barn in Castlerock) who buys them from me wholesale.  I also re-stocked my consignment supply of pin cushions at SEWN located at 18 South Broadway in Denver.  With my existing inventory plus the new ones my inventory, as of yesterday is at 120.  This year I want to make sure my inventory is healthy as I return to A Paris Street Market in Aspen Grove, September 5th, October 3rd and then on to the Holiday shows in November and December.  Last year I was so busy creating holiday inventory, my pin cushion inventory was sad but did I not have any time to create more pin cushions for the holiday shows.  This year, I should not have that problem!   My pin cushions are my #1 best sellers, so I am happy to have a very healthy inventory.

These are photos was my newest batch of over 30 vintage embroidered pin cushions created this past week:

The other area I have had success is with vintage hankies.  The last 4 or so months, I have been lucky to find so many great vintage hankies at various estate sales.  My dear friend Amy of the Pink Attic Cat gave me a wonderful gift a few weeks ago!  She gave me her portable Iron Mangle!   With that gift I took the tall pile of washed vintage hankies and started ironing ALL of them!  This lead to two areas of productivity.

First, I was able to re-stock my Vintage Hankie display boards (ready for shows).    My hankie boards has been looking a bit sparse so it was time to re-stock.  The second, is I have created many one of a kind Vintage Hankie Scarfs (more on that in my next blog post).

And finally, this area is still very much in progress and currently  most of my studio in the basement is a mess; however, I have been making slow progress is consolidating my vintage button collection.  Here is the progress made so far, photos posted on Instagram.

Love my collection of Black Glass, White Vintage, Mother of Pearl vintage buttons!

Danielle Donaldson's Creative Girl

Jeanne Oliver is having a wonderful giveaway  of Danielle Donaldson's Creative Girl book!  I love the whimsy and colors  of Danielle's artwork.  I also love mix media and look forward to learning from her.  I have never painted in watercolors, but this book makes me want to learn or at the very least have fun and play with watercolors!

Please visit Jeanne Oliver's blog posting for more details:

I am registered to attend a class with Danielle Donaldson, hosted by Jeanne Oliver at Old Glory Antiques on August 22nd.  We will be taking my daughter Laura to CSU (Colorado State University) on Thursday, August 20th.  Laura will move into her dorm on the 20th while we participate in parent/family activities at CSU.  This will be the start of an exciting new chapter for my daughter, but one that will require many adjustments to our daily family life as we know it.

In an effort to help me cope, I decided to sign up for this class with Danielle Donaldson.  Being creative in one form or another is how I cope with life.  This will be MY therapy!  Thanks Danielle and Jeanne!

This is one of my favorite illustrations posted on Jeanne Oliver's giveaway blog posting, created by Danielle Donaldson.

Repurposed Vintage Embroidered Linens into Pin Cushions in Vintage Molds

My last blog posting was over a month ago.

  Summer months are always a mix bag for me.

My creativity is more sporadic and unpredictable.

 I feel a pull in different directions during the summer months.

Since my last blog posting

We enjoyed a few days in Estes Park, CO where we enjoyed a few hikes, fishing (hiked to a lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, visited with former Houston neighbors who have a summer home in Estes Park and even spent time at the YMCA of the Rockies craft room!)

A few days later, the kids and I went on our annual road trip to El Paso, Texas to visit my parents, sister, nephews, niece and other family members. We celebrated a few birthdays and spent quality time with family.  Kids and I cherish this time.

After two weeks in El Paso, I continued working on my vintage linen pin cushions created using vintage embroidered linens and various vintage molds, including Jell-O and heart shape molds.

We were back home for just a week when the kids and I went back on the road for a short trip to Ft. Collins, CO for my daughter's student/parent orientation at CSU (Colorado State University).

Exhausting but very informative 2 days.

Now, we are back home and looking forward to staying home.  

In between all this traveling I am rather surprised I managed to stay focused to get more than 75 new pin cushions done.  My next show will be September 5th at A Paris Street Market.

Until then, I have several goals:

My craft room is a mess...again.  Need to work on it!

I have a long list of items I want to create, including creating Halloween items.

I am hoping to re-open my Etsy shop.  

However, like I tell my daughter, let's focus on what we have accomplished and not so much on what we still need to accomplish!  So with that in mind, I am happy to share 

my new pincushion  photos I posted on

my Instagram  and Facebook account for Isa Creations Vintage.

I am not sure how to link my Instragram account but here it goes

https://instagram.com/isacreationsvintage/

And, here is what I created during our trip to Estes Park (YMCA of the Rockies craft center).  A large wooden lazy susan with a house mosaic design.  I still need to paint the edge of the wood and the base.

A Paris Street Market, June 2015

Thanks to everyone for another successful show at A Paris Street Market  this past weekend.  The weather cooperated...for the most part.  Morning was sunny and beautiful.  Early afternoon a brief rain shower went through.  Laura and I were able to cover things up before the rain started and thankfully it was mild and brief we were able to uncover everything pretty quickly. 

Here are the photos from the show:

 

Soldered Pendants and Vintage Lace, Trim & Hankies

Talk about taking a leap of faith in my creative endeavors.  I have always admired soldered pendants and now I know why they are typically so expensive to purchase.

In an effort to learn as many ways as possible to repurpose vintage linens like lace, trim and hankies,

I decided it was time to make an investment in funds and time

to learn how to solder.

First I purchased several books I spent time reading & studying.

Watched several videos, although I have to say I had to trust the books more.

Put together a list of essential tools & supplies.

Invested in a Weller 100 Soldering Iron

Visited my local soldering glass store.

Learned how to cut glass at the store and purchased more tools!

I have played with it

Even burned myself....just a bit.

I had to ask myself.  What if I purchase all these items and then I can't do it?  All the books say, you have to be patient and practice.  It does take lots of patience and  practice.  It also says refrain from re-working the piece to try to make it perfect, because you will just get frustrated.   

I can be patient but it is really hard to not want to re-work the piece.  Believe me, I struggled with this aspect but just kept telling myself, this is a handcrafted item.  Created by me, not a machine.

Naturally, I had to learn the hard way to just let it go.

I have some ruined pieces to teach me that lesson.

I am so glad I took that leap of faith in myself!

I am more comfortable with soldering and in time hope to improve upon this new skill.

Although I have invested lots of time and even more money that I planned, I am happy I have jumped into soldering jewelry pendants using vintage linens.

I will have a small batch of Soldered Pendants available at 

A Paris Street Market this Saturday, June 6, 2015

at Aspen Grove.

Here are the pictures of some of my packaged soldered pendants with a 24 inch length chain all created using Lead-Free Silvergleem Solder.

Now, here are some closeup photos of my new soldered pendants before packaging.