what do you think of these colors?

I just adore color. It really is one of my reasons to make art. I found myself giving unsolicited advice yesterday to a neighbor painting the facade of his new restaurant here in New Harmony, to change a tiny little detail in a scroll color -- and prefaced it with the fact that I am a Colorist. (oh, please! I can be a bit high handed, I am sure).

Here are some proposed new colorways for my Auricula Ribbon. I want to do it in a narrower width -- maybe 7/8" -- and think the round flowers will look like punchy polka dots at that scale.

Please weigh in with comments as to which colors you like best!

These designs are copyright Laura Foster Nicholson 2009.

creative mending with ribbon

I have been advocating mending for while now as the truly eco thing to do, yet I find myself happier making something from scratch than mending something old & familiar. The creative in me I guess. But I adore my Uzbek embroidered bag, so yesterday I mended the frayed handles by enclosing them in ribbon. I was particularly happy about this because it gave me a chance to decorate an original piece of Uzbek stitchery with one of my suzani ribbons -- Samarkand Scroll -- which is an homage to Uzbek stitching ("Suzani" comes from the word meaning "stitch").

There is a detailed account of this project on Rayela's Fiber Focus blog, where this is posted as my first guest blog.

next ribbon show

I will be taking my ribbons on the road again in June, to the Original Creative Festival in Cincinnati. I thought it would be a good way to build on the positive response to the ribbons in Paducah.

Show dates are June 25-27 at the Sharonville Convention Center, 11355 Chester Road, Sharonville OH. Come visit if you are in the area!

I wish I could make these things

I was just scrolling through my files of "things to make with ribbon" and I found these images which have always inspired me. These are some of the best things I could ever dream of making -- but as you can see, somewhat time intensive. All of these images are courtesy of the Victoria & Albert's amazing website.

summer's sweetest oranges

What a lovely photo, no? I received this yesterday from Renaissance Ribbons -- it is part of a new promotion for LFN Textiles ribbons, and the photographer, Keith Walley, has added such magic to the ribbons!

new ribbon ideas

It has been my intention for some time to show some of the things that my customers make with the ribbons I design. Yesterday a fellow etsy seller contacted me telling me she had made this wonderful sash with them. Wow! what a great display of plumage! Her shop name is EachDayIsRemarkable.

She has a second shop, Goodblossoms, selling wonderful fabric flowers, and had contacted me earlier regarding a fun flower using the red suzani ribbon as a center. She still has this charming bloom made with the lavender Auricula ribbon as a center.

Easter Basket

We have gone oddball for the holidays lately. For Christmas, unable to do the simplest function of getting out and buying a tree, we resorted at the last minute to taking one of the poor, dead, but beloved espalier trees which we had unsuccessfully moved from our Chicago garden, and strung it with lights and ornaments. Though it might have struck some as a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, we thought it was transcendentally beautiful.

This weekend our friend Christine and her son Desmond joined us for Easter. Christine is fabulously unconventional, and as Desmond is getting to the age where the Easter Bunny might soon be of interest, I asked her to pull together the Easter basket for the center of the table to hold all of the assorted chocolates and Peeps I had brought in. We ended up with a silver soup tureen lined with straw brought in from the garden, and filled up with blue & yellow Peeps and marzipan eggs. Splendid!