Tablescape

The Captain and I just got home from Scotland (much more on that later!).  We had a great trip, and as always, there is a point when I'm on vacation that I'm ready to come home.  My head is swirling with new project ideas and I feel  lost after so many days with no creative outlet. Vacations aren't just a time for new experiences; I always come home all fired up with things to do.

Practical things had to take first place - like mountains of laundry, weeds apparently on crack that have taken over the gardens, and over 1,000 pictures( there's no success like excess!)  to edit and organize.  Then there's that jet-lag problem - I've been falling asleep early and waking up at 4 a.m.  I was weeding at 5 a.m. yesterday - the neighbors are beginning to wonder!

But today I had fun making a new tablescape for our dining room table. I've had the Pottery Barn runner and love the text and images.   I used things that speak to my obsessions - old mirrors, shells, letters, stones and bird nests.   I started with an old mirror as a base since I like to be able to pick up all the doo-dads at once when we need to use the whole table.  You get a two-fer using a mirror with the reflected image - a nice bonus!

I separated the nest from the candlestick  base and added a small glass candlestick to it to  hold some limpet shells I collected on a beach in Scotland.  The pottery heart was a find from Paris.

I love Scrabble tiles and use them in art projects, but never thought about displaying them.  I had to play around with them in this beaker.  At first I just dumped them in and for some reason, most were turned to the blank side- go figure!

We live near the beach and it's hard to resist smooth, flat beach stones.  I embellished these - one with a stamped star, one wrapped in a strip of dictionary page and one wrapped with twine.

Feels good to be making things!