Author: Flower Roberts

Making Mama’s Memorial Ornaments

| Flower Roberts

This will be our first Christmas without Mama. I am making memorial ornaments for me and my sister. They are pink, Mama’s favorite color.

I will share the steps for doing this. You only need plain ornaments, decorative napkins, glue, foam paint brushes, glitter and scissors.

Remembering Mama


I use paper plates to contain the mess.  This is a really messy project. That’s why I love it!

Do not sigh or sneeze PLEASE!


Used yogurt containers, Choboni flip and Qui, are great for glue and water. I labeled my glue containers M for matte and G for gloss. I have used both so you can see the difference.

Peel the back two layers off your napkins. Save these for cleaning up.

Peel off plain ply layers from the back.

Also remove the top hanger of the ornaments. Do not lose these in the mess!

I stick shewers and my fingers in the top holes to hold the balls.

Hold by the hole.

Cut out the central designs to be featured on your ornament. These go on first.  Plan your spacing and arranging.

Sometimes parts get cut off and must be replaced, like little paper Frankensteins.

Soldiers with new hat and new legs.

Then either hang or perch them on something to dry. This means leave them alone for a bit. Repeat again until totally covered.

Hung on a skewer.

If this were a Decoupage Party it would be time for Mimosas and snacks. Since I am alone, I am using the down time to write steps as I go. Pausing is hard for me.

Now use the napkin scraps to fill in the blank parts of the ornament. Overlap as little as possible. Glitter and glue will cover the booboos.

Glue more, hang to dry more.

Lastly, you cover any bare sections with custom cut pieces of plain background from the waste left from the napkins.

Let’s talk glitter. It is possible to do a perfect job of decoupage and ruin it with the wrong glitter. Very detailed designs need white, extra fine glitter. Do not use irridescent unless you want to add color, or there is a simple design, or lots of repetition or you want to cover up some ugly. Some shaggy irridescent glitter totally blocks the design

Fine white rose irridescent on left, mixed sized bling in the middle called party blend /snow swirl, white iris on the right

Party Blend or bling should be used on plain ornaments as a featured texturizer.

Party blend glitter on the left on a flat white. Flat white ornament/ no glitter on the right. Easy enough for children. Ribbon can be glued around the sides.

I usually save all residual glitter and mix it on the last ornament.  I hate the ball glitter. It rolls. Do not buy it…ever.

Let the completed ornaments dry over-night. I usually use clear spray to seal these, but don’t have any here.

Almost done.

Warning, if you sigh alot or sneeze, this may NOT be the craft project for you. I am a sigher and usually send tiny pieces of napkins and glitter all over.

Blogging and decoupaging.

FLOW

The Morphing Memoir

| Flower Roberts

What happens when the storyline falls apart and you are left looking at a completely different tale. In my digging through family artifacts to write a book that was supposed to be about paternalism and over-reaching parenting in past generations of my family history, I have discovered evidence to the contrary that was never mentioned.

The thread that joined the parts has been broken. The stories have shifted. How do I piece this history back together. No one is left alive to ask about any of this.

Does every family clean up their past and hold the next generation to higher standards? What do I do with this mess?

It is funny how one conversation or one letter can change everything.

Envelope with a surprise inside. No date stamp.

I found this last night as I purged another box of letters and papers. I may have seen this letter before in the box of letters from my Gran to my great, great aunt Ethel. I got up in the middle of the night to check for a date stamp on the envelope. There was not one.

Inside this envelope was a letter from my mom’s sister thanking her for sending the copy to be copied.

So my mom found this letter after my Gran died and thought enough of its contents to mail it to Canada to be copied and returned.

Box of letters that looks like a book on bottom shelf, far left, bottom of the stack.

This flagged that letter for me. Upon closer inspection, I realized a new part of the story was in there. How did I miss this? My cousin now has the originals. I am anxious to see if this letter is in the box and if it has my sticky note attached to it. This will confirm my craziness!

I must add a side story here. I found the box of letters from my Gran to Aunt Ethel in 2024 as we were cleaning out the house to sell it.  I took pictures of everything in the house in 2022. I did not know that the box of letters was actually a box, because it was disguised as a book. So to find photo of where it was all those years, I had to go through thousands of photos, mostly plants, to find a picture of the bookcase in my parents’ bedroom.

It has occurred to me that I am the only one who can carry this through.  I am the one with the photos and memories. I would never have had the time to do all this if bad things had not happened to put me in the right place as the world has shifted around my family.

I will continue until the universe stops me.

Stay tuned.

FLOW

It’s Melting

| Flower Roberts

Water drops and snow plops are making patterns in the snow.


The deer have criss-crossed the yard many times during these past three days.


Deer spent time under our porch.

Deer tracks headed under the porch.

The two rabbits that live in the thicket bedded down in the leaf pile.

Rabbit tracks around the thicket.


The quiet is now punctuated by the soft sounds of snow cascades dumping off the tree limbs.

Even endings are lovely here on the mountain.

FLOW

Diamond Dust

| Flower Roberts

I have spent today in a frozen cloud. There are ice crystals on everything. I call this “diamond dust.”

Big crystals


Frozen fog makes the air white. Visibility is severly limited. It has been strange to be in a frosty cloud all day long. All sounds are muffled.

In a cloud.


Look how the frosty fog is clinging to the deck railing. It has stayed around 20° F all day.

Frozen Fog


Rose just informed me that more snow is expected here. I am content to stay inside to read and write. I can pace on the porch if I feel antsy.


This is my first big snow on the mountain. I am happy to be here to enjoy it.

FLOW

Watching It Snow

| Flower Roberts

I have watched the snow in silence all morning. I am truly grateful for this period of quiet peace. I have needed to concentrate on a project I have been working on.

The view from my desk.

No, it is not decorating for the holidays or decoupaging Christmas ornaments. That would be fun. I will hold off on glitter and glue until after 5:00PM.

I am rewriting my story. Not just a chapter, the whole thing. Well almost all of it.  I am culling what was myth and wishful thinking to see what is left.

This has not been an easy thing to do. If I did not feel that it was necessary, I would not be doing it. I am tackling one past event at a time and looking at it from all sides. We usually do not look at things from perspectives other than our own, especially when we are young.

Piling up quietly.

This has been hard work and has required my actually drawing scenarios and stick people and writing out what each person might have been thinking. It usually gives me a headache, but is very enlightening so I will keep at it until I get more clarification.

Watching the snow in silence is like staring into a fish tank. It somehow clears my mind like rice clears the palate.

Fluffy snow slowly falling is so soothing that it feels like balm for my troubled mind as I brave things I have refused to face.

This snow is like an angel. Nature’s way of quieting the setting and softening everything. Muting the noises and covering the colors so that things are monochromatic and muffled.

I did not say I would be making a snow angel nor snowman. My neighbor did bring me some snow cream.

I feel gratitude to my parents for leaving my sister and me this haven. It has brought me so much peace and comfort.

The results of this work are for a book that I have been working on for a long time. There have been surprises. I am sure there will be more. Bring it!

FLOW in SNOW

The Marine’s Letters Make It Home

| Flower Roberts

My sister and I met Louis’s daughter and grandson for lunch yesterday. Both of them resemble him. I felt relief to finally hand over this important part of their dad and grandfather’s history to his family.


They left us to take the notebook to share with her daughter, Louis’s grandaughter. Today, they will share the letters with his widow, Linda. Then take them home for her brother and mother to read.

Louis’s grandson and daughter.

The circle can be completed without me. I have done my part to make it happen. I did this for my mother, who saved the letters for over sixty years.

Dottie

I did it for a young, lonely marine who wrote so beautifully about his first years in the military and service overseas and then came back to a different world.

Louis in 1950

Most of all, I did it out of respect for first loves. When hearts do what they do without reserve, fear or reason. Before things get guarded, complicated and weighted.

The story of Dottie and Louis is sweet. I am not sure how or why it ended. We got conflicting stories from mama due to dementia. My mom went on to marry my wonderful father. They stayed together over sixty years until his death in 2020.

But that’s another story.

FLOW

Supplies for Enduring Bad Weather

| Flower Roberts

I am thankful to be prepared for the first bit of icy weather here on the mountain. Now that my body is worth more than my car, I will not be risking a fall nor a wreck.

I have a wonderful stash of napkins. These have been carefully selected and collected. I am very particular about my napkins.

Part of a vast napkin collection

I hope I have enough glitter. I left those awful tiny balls at home. Do not buy this type. It rolls off your table and across the floor. Enough of it could cause a fall. Stick with the flakey, shiny, traditional glitter that gets stuck in your hair and carpet.

Clear and iridescent glitter work best

I usually have both matte and gloss decoupage glue on hand. This glue should be thinned with drops of water.

matte or gloss glue

I guess I should check on my food stocks. Do I have milk, bread, eggs and kerosene? Why yes! But I am more worried about boredom than starvation.

Here are some suggestions for laying up your decoupage supplies for future bad weather.

Choose napkins with all sides decorated. Some only have pictures on the front.

All panels on one side decorated.

Also, randomly scattered small pictures on light backgrounds are easiest to work with.

Small and random is easiest.

Stripes with repetition are for flat surfaces and perfectionists. Individual stripes can be cut and used around the edge or middle.

Stripes are tricky.

Large central pictures are great as features on larger items.

Great feature picture.

Many items can improved by decoupage.

Light colored items

Do not try to work with thin glass Christmas balls. I have gotten all the way finished and cracked them moving them around. Thick glass, paper mache, wooden, and plastic things are best. Avoid dark colored objects. Stick with creamy, light colors or white.

I will add links to the end for further information and ideas.

DECA DECO

Glitter, Glue and a Friend or Two

Paper Gardens

FLOW IS READY FOR ICE AND SNOW

My Ephemeral Art Box

| Flower Roberts

Sometimes I need to play with options of an idea I am developing. That is when I pull out my Ephemeral Art Box. It contains fragile, small trinkets that can add details to cards, letters or dress up decore with a tiny accent.

Tiny, fragile treasures to add details to projects.

I added a bluebird to Daddy’s picture frame
by cutting this bird off the corner of an envelope.

Paper bluebird glued to frame.
Corner of a Christmas card envelope


Any time I find a tiny piece of art that I can use, I pop it into this box to save for later. I snip pictures off cards and envelopes, save stickers, buttons, old stamps, even pieces of broken jewelry or matches to lost earrings.
I have bigger boxes at home, but this one came to the mountains for a workshop. That will be another post.



I will share some photos of tiny treasures I save to use in future art projects.

Scattered treasure
Tiny fairy stickers
Inside a tiny box
Fairy door buttons
Stickers may have borders or not.
Ferns without background may be stuck to glass on outside and art on inside and overlapped for a 3-D effect.

Tiny 3-D objects may be used to add details.

These may need extra glue.
I love these little doilles.
Antique card from my grandmother’s house.
Also save textured paper and fabric scraps.

The best thing about having tiny treasures to play with is they all go back into this little box.

My Ephemeral Art box

FLOW

Letters from a Marine: 1949 – 1952

| Flower Roberts

My sister and I found a large envelope of letters from my mom’s high school boyfriend while we were cleaning out her house to sell it. We started to read the letters while mom was still alive in a nursing home. We just could not do it. We felt like it was an invasion of her privacy. She had dementia. Sometimes she spoke of Louis like we should know him. Once she wanted to leave him a message over the phone.  She thought he needed to know where she went. Mama wanted to leave Daddy messages, too.  Both of them were gone by then. We just let her do whatever comforted her.

After Mama died, my sis and I were sorting contents of boxes we had moved from the homeplace to my sister’s house. Here was that envelope again. I opened it and started reading the letters outloud. Louis came to life right there in my sissy’s kitchen. His letters were full of what he was doing and what he was missing.

RIFLE Practice

He was riding on a ship or a helicopter, hiking, digging foxholes, cleaning bunkers, standing watch, stringing barb wire and cleaning his rifle. He was missing deer season, trout season, football games and home.

His duty in 1951 took him to Kobe, Japan and then Pusan and Yanngu, South Korea. He describes the steep mountains and cold weather often.

Three buddies

He tells stories of a pesky mouse in his bunker that dropped things during the night. This caused some drama in the dark. There was also a lizard that drank coffee.

I have put the original letters, envelopes and photos in plastic sleeves and organized them in order in a big notebook. This treasure will be going to his daughter to be shared with her two brothers.

This young Marine was a great writer and storyteller. I see why my mom kept the letters for over seventy years. This is a window into the past of a nice person who ended up serving as a Marine for over thirty years.

I have always appreciated our military putting themselves in harm’s way. This is the first time I have closely considered their time away from friends and family, as well as the freedoms they give up to serve.

This young man missed his hometown, football games, hunting and fishing seasons, his family, his friends and my Mama.

Louis and Mama married other people, but they were great penpals for over three years. I doubt my Mama’s letters made all the moves of a Marine, but I am proud to give these to the children that missed precious time with their Marine father.

Thank you Louis.

FLOWER