Joe The Funky Bird

A visit at the junk yard and a walk on the beach have something in common for me. I never come home empty handed. A few weeks ago we made a trip to the coast a little down South. It was a perfect day for a beach walk - sunny and warm with a soft breeze. The beach was about 200 yards wide, deserted and I was in driftwood heaven. It’s so easy to make me happy.

Among all the pieces of driftwood we brought home, there was one that talked to me right away. It was no doubt that it wanted to become a bird. Not a regular one with feathers and legs. No, this bird head wished for a special body and so I made one from miscellaneous junk yard finds. The main part is an old rusty water valve with a gas cap on top. I added a little wheel and some small parts like washers.

Please meet "Joe The Funky Bird" who was renamed as "Pelican Joe" after some lovely readers had commented that he looked like a pelican.

He is a fashion-conscious birdie and chose a spiky hairstyle to be attractive for the ladies. I can imagine that the girls will line up soon to get a date with this handsome guy. I’ll let you know when there is anything serious going on in his love life.

He might look a little bit bewildered but I can tell that he is very pleased to have met you today. We both wish you a wonderful and sunny weekend.

Joe will show up at the following great parties:

When Lace meets Rust

Contrasts can be very exciting. I love culinary ones like in sweet and sour chicken or salted caramel but also visual ones. When I made the “Rusty and Weathered” wall hanging back in 2012, I was sure that it wasn’t the last time that I would combine lace and rust in a quilt.  The soft and feminine laces and the rusty stains and parts had formed a contrast that I found very appealing.

Since then my stash of rusty treasures has grown and among others, I have collected several lightweight round motor parts that always remind me of flowers. It was time to make some of them bloom. I sewed a background using fabrics, laces and some pieces of a 100 year old sewing pattern.

For each blossom I combined several rusty components and added buttons in the middle. The stems were made from twine.

I machine quilted the background and free machine embroidered the leaf veins. For a three-dimensional look, I zigzagged down the leaf stems and attached the leaves from the back with one stitch to the background.

Thank you for stopping by in my rusty flower garden today. Next time you’ll meet a pretty funky bird.

My flowers will bloom at these great parties:

It all started with a piece of pallet wood

We had some wooden cubes leftover from the pallets we had taken apart a while ago, and I knew they wood be great as a base for something. A few days ago, I brought one of them in my studio and combined it with a used brush. A magnetic card holder was born.

When I looked through my stashes of wood and metal, more ideas for magnetic card holders popped into my mind. My muse is quite hyperactive at the moment and I happily let her run riot.

For this one I used a vintage keyhole plate as base for a hotel key chain and a clock winder.

I chose spring themed flash cards for now and will exchange them according to the season or other decorating themes.

For this card holder, an antique pair of scissors met a piece of driftwood. The magnets were made from simple ones you can find in craft stores and some buttons from my stash.

What would you have done with a wooden cube like the one that got me started?

My cardholders will be joining these great parties:

Be Inspired at Common Ground

Party Junk at Funky Junk Interiors

Sundays at Home at Thoughts from Alice

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday at Coastal Charm

Knick of Time Tuesday at Knick of Time