Regal Roosts

This is the small [incredible] woodshop I worked with for over a year.  Still taking your custom orders, Regal Roosts is undergoing a slow but steady transition to Arizona. Here is their sparkling new website (via Seven Set Studios).  Specializing in handbuilt, Victorian style, meticulously hand-painted, beautifully distressed, seriously fine crafted birdhouses with ornate, aged copper roofs. These pieces last for years, indoors AND outdoors, (so as to be used properly by birds). Gorgeous garden additions, we also produced extraneous furniture pieces and garden items by request. There's even a shop dog.
Read about the Hursts in the Baltimore Sun, like their fb page, pass this info on to collectors, and remember what spectacular gifts these gems make.

We spent over a year fulfilling high volume orders of several styles for the Frontgate company; find only limited lines through Frontgate right now, but place an order directly through the Hursts, at regalroosts.com for endless color and style possibilities.

Cottage Collection (hanging) and the Diamond Lady series, front

Copper, detail

Hand-painted game table

Series of bottoms, and my all time favorite bottom

Everyone's favorite watermelon house

Faux rust

The Palermo, one of the first Frontgate orders

Custom painted and refinished antique garden cart

Hand-painted chest, turned urn

Doolittle

Tables: Part 1

I refinished my great aunt's telephone table a few seasons ago, and though it is still serving the purpose of yellow in my life, it was long before the time I've spent in a woodshop. My currently convenient  knowledge of dry times paired with clear coat sanding might have prevented the chipping. Still thinking about coating the pulls with tiny broken abalone shells. Look at my shark!

From old scrap particle board (from an old crappy job) came my new favorite table. I've always been partial to the corner table with rounded front. It may not have been the best move to make an outdoor table with less than real wood (I do know better), but I just wanted to put it to decent use, and employed a generous amount of sealant; at least the legs are real. Needing to fill the space on my porch, I forfeited the learning process of continual legs (through tiers) for time. One summer later it looks naturally distressed, reminds me of the Greek flag, and holds my rubber tree plant perfectly.

This small fold-up is my most recent assignment. A very thrifty find from my new favorite antique shop in Annapolis. Several coats of a light and dark blue mixture, while sanding in between the stages for a galactic, layered result. Now I have to decide if a mosaic of foreign coins will still look good lacquered onto the top, (a few beautiful ones from a friend's African journey pictured).

Pete, following his greatest love The Flower.

And by the way.. notice these strange and lovely little cicada soaps, a gift from my aunt! 

Sugar Farm Productions

A few photos by my friend Alison Harbaugh: photographer, videographer and the girl behind Sugar Farm Productions and Freckle Photography. Her work is fantastic and worth checking on often to see what new things are coming out of that Sugar Farm. Recently Alison shot a short bio/intro film for Makeup artist Rachel Leight (Rachel McKnew) of DaintyArtistry (Redding, CA). As part of the trio, I had my makeup professionally done for a day, and we all got to bask in the beauty of this woodland pond, though it was deceptively cold out.

Something Better Than Nothing

Another polycrylic gem. This unfortunately dried transparent!
Blue Orchid- The White Stripes
Something better than nothing.

A Little On Preservation

Dipped my yellow chrysanthemum today. Beginning to wonder if the polycrylic is making me ill (or ill in the future). Some of these flowers seem to be shirking their preservation; the finish rolled right off the insides of those tendril-petals, unlike the rose. Then I dipped two shoulder blades (probably from a fox). They have been perched nicely in my closet for over one year and I was tired of knocking them around.

This is the skull they were found with, now gleaming and fixed to a mobile device. Lovely photograph by Melissa A. Cromwell.

This is exactly how it was discovered in Nova, Ohio.

Clear Satin

I recently had a very vivid rose, and a tendency to dip things in a gallon of Minwax Polycrylic. It seemed a good enough idea to apply this to the rose petals now half dead, but perhaps in hopes of a little preservation. They look good here, but barely kept that color overnight, making for a nice light pink and brown. Strung together with metallic gold thread I gave it to my mom on Mother's day. She said that if it were longer she'd wear it around her neck. So here's to the fleeting and beautiful..

Floral Pageantry

Where can I get to the next local Floral Pageant... just like in this Bermuda poster I'm currently obsessing over? Courtesy of bermuda-online.org, for any of you kids in 7th grade out there doing a report.