PETS PETS and MORE PETS!

Now that the Cashiers Village Hillside Shops are closed for the season it's time to retreat into the studio bunker and start the Potting Table Project. (As soon as the builder finishes it and delivers it!!) In the meantime, I've got custom projects for two of my favorite clients to occupy me.

These pet frames were my most popular items over the summer but now that my Cashiers cottage is dark, they are listed for sale in my etsy store. (Use sidebar on right, please.) One of my custom pieces in progress is a 4x6 frame for a black Pug and a Dachshund. More on that project soon!

Garden Room Potting Table Project

I am about to start the massive Garden Room project for Suzan Z!
I first talked about it here last April.
You can see that the details are getting further refined. I have no idea what any of it means at this point.

Monty the LabDoodle was bored with the whole thing but enjoyed the cool floor.

Likewise, Ralph.



Suzan and I decided that the legs of the table would be all flowers and the backsplash-like panels would be solid Fiesta pottery with some interesting 3-D pieces mixed in. I chose all contemporary colors so that additional plates would be easy to reorder. Tangerine, Lemongrass, Scarlet, Peacock, Plum and Shamrock.

The Shamrock green on the bottom will be the solid I combine with the flowers on the legs.

Two 65-pound boxes of Fiesta were delivered to my porch. Thanks UPS! They were quite dusty, but not a one was broken. Not that it would have mattered anyway.


The black, white and vintage Chartreuse bread plates (splurge buy!) are tentatively scheduled to be used alone on the narrow shelves to the right of the potting table, which is, apparently, a seperate (sic) piece in theme sort of.

Here they are, down in my studio, awaiting the nippers of death. Or nippers of reincarnation, depending upon your interpretation. The contractor who built the Cashiers Village Hillside Shops is constructing the table in workable pieces so I can create at home and he can transport and attach to the walls at the Z. house. Stay tuned. Should be a very interesting project!

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dancer

Proud Grama Field B. came to the Hillside Shops in early July with her daughter Kelly B. Field loved my pique assiette work, and was especially fond of the mirror below (available for sale in my etsy store!) Her son had just sent her a professionally shot 8x10 photo of granddaughter, Eleanor, at her first ballet recital and Field wanted to commission a frame for it. An hour later, she was back with hubby John and the photo. (I shot a photo of the photo for inspiration, of course!)

Field loved the porcelain rose on my heart mirror and as serendipity would have it, I had one left that I'd been saving for years. I got a sense of the color scheme in their mountain home and Field gave me ideas on which patterns she favored that I'd used on other pieces.

As always, the lazy art interns were ever-present in the studio. Creative Director Annie likes to think "inside the box" when we work. Leah mostly pants.


I was happy with the frame and while Field and John are out of town for a couple of weeks, daughter Kelly picked it up for them last weekend and assured me that it matches their decor perfectly and that Field would love it. Couldn't resist the ballet slipper broach from eBay!

Or the ballerina one.

These gorgeous white flowers are two of close to 50 that I scored when a friend's lamp fell over and shattered. I got the entire lamp base, which is nothing but wall-to-wall white flower clusters!

After a creatively rewarding day in the studio the lazy interns retreated to the office, exhausted.

Thank you for this most wonderful custom opportunity, Field! I'd love to post a photo of the original photo in the frame on its easel in your home.

Love My Big Cat Furs!

I had so many wonderful Big Cat brooches and charms to inspire this 5x7 frame.



"Love My Furs" came about when a couple visited my cottage at the Hillside Shops last year and bemoaned the fact that I did not have a dog/cat combo frame as they had lost both in the previous year. This one sold just yesterday to a super lovely couple, Terri and Mike, who love cats as much as I do. We swapped stories about consulting pet psychics for quite a while. Annie's hypnotic gaze is pretty hard to resist.



Resistance is futile.


UPDATE 9/1:
Terri just sent me two photos of darling Sister, the lucky kitty for whom this frame was purchased. That is one content and confident cattitude!




There are still a few pet frames in my etsy store.

Custom Pansy Pot Sans Sunflowers

Over the 4th of July weekend a woman visited the Cashiers Village Hillside Shops and spotted my 10" Pansies and Sunflowers flower pot. (See previous post.) It seems it was the PERFECT gift for a good friend of hers, but a bit too large. Because I had another hand painted pansies in a pot plate identical to the one I used on the large pot, as well as another cluster of purple pansies plate, it was easy to make her a custom piece in an 8" size.

She had also requested that I hold the purple and incorporate black and white if possible to match her friend's kitchen colors. Fortunately, one of my very favorite Meakin Sterling patterns comes in black and white.

I used a light green contemporary Fiesta solid and matched the inside paint pretty closely.

Here is the 10" for comparison:



Annie lost interest in the piece when her backyard deer supervision duties were needed.


Catching some sun at the Hillside Shops.

Thank you, Marilyn!
(Marilyn owns The Cabins at Seven Foxes in Lake Toxaway, NC. Interestingly enough, she recognized me from an outdoor craft show in Cashiers two years ago. I donated a mosaic dog bone to her Atlanta rescue group, New Leash on Life, at the end of that show. Marilyn continues to be very generous with her time in support of animal rescue groups having just hosted a fundraiser at her Toxaway property for two of Transylvania County's best no-kill groups!)

Pot O' Pansies

Been a very, very long time since I've done a flower pot, let alone a 10". I decided to chunk it up and use large shards. Pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

Planted some happy sunflowers on the back.



I did not realize till I brought it up to the Cashiers Village Hillside Shops how great it looks on my floral plant stand with purple grout! Maybe I'll get lucky and sell them as a pair.

Mo' Mirrors

I had a bit of a color binge last month.




And I had a huge collection of big jungle safari animals going on.





Appearing now in my etsy store.