Tidbits : Garden and Brooding 2

A short update about the garden and the broody birds in it.
The swallow babies are starting to fly out, and they survived all four up till now (had a good talk with Peggy....).

The black bird babies have opened their eyes and start to get feathers. Mum and dad are still going strong with the feeding.

The climbing rose is now at his top, and I assume there is a nest of song-thrushes in it because they fly and go in it.

Tidbits : My Bee Hotel

Estella ftom Star of the East made a lovely blog post about the bee hotels from Wudwerx; so, I thought I will show you mine. My husband placed it in our garden the day before I went to hospital and today we have already six bee guests, and some more in the make. Isn't that lovely ?

And some quick pics of my garden (pics taken in the evening while the light better was as during the day):

Tidbits : Flickr Favourites

Today I was drooling about all the gorgeous zipper creations I found on flickr, so my flickr favourites are ZIPPERS today.
For more flickr favourites see ArtMind's blog.

1. Getting the roses made, 2. WheelerWillisJewelry zipper bracelet 1, 3. OutsaPop zipper necklace 3, 4. zipper on canvas no. 2 :: © amalia versaci 2010

Fabrics : Mourning Kraplap

I got a request from a customer on Etsy to make her a kraplap like the one above, but then from fabric and fitting to black clothes. She said: "create your ideal mourning kraplap for me !" after she had read my blogpost about the kraplap. After some searching through my traditional costume books, I got lots of inspiration and made a pattern based on the kraplap from the traditional costume in Staphorst in The Netherlands.
(Mourning Costume, Staphorst - from my postcard collection)

I still had some black and white fabric from Staphorst which is actually used at mourning and decided to sew the kraplap double so that it was wearable on two sides. For the other side I chose a black traditional German fabric with stripes and pink roses, which could be seen as "light mourning".

And this is the result. I like it ! Now I hope the customer likes it too.....