Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Woodland Style (in My Mom's Kitchen)

Storey's upcoming book, Woodland Style, has inspired me!


Melanie Jolicoeur and I are a team of two in the marketing department. To promote our upcoming books, we design marketing materials for our sales team to present to trade reps, booksellers, and store owners. For this particular book of inspiration, Melanie had laid out a BLAD (a printed, saddle-stitched representation of the book cover and sample interior pages with sales and marketing information on the back — BLAD is an acronym for Book Layout And Design). Being a team of only two, we usually help one another out, and the project ended up in my hands during the final stages of production. This is when I first glimpsed the wreath that inspired me.

Click here to view the BLAD.


The wreath of inspiration, made of pinecones,
turkey feathers, and locust pods

I spend a lot of time hiking with my dog Lily. Only a few weeks before seeing this wreath, I had found a feather just like the feathers pictured in the wreath above. And I have a collection of pinecones from hikes past that I have been saving for a crafty creation just like this. It was only natural that this particular decoration caught my eye.

The wreath pictured is adorned with locust pods. I was unable to find any now that the winter months are upon us, so I had no choice but to skip the pods altogether. However, I plan to look again next fall and renovate the wreath — I think that the locust pods will make the wreath much more visually appealing. As I mentioned, I had found one turkey feather similar to the feathers that appear in the photo above, but I was unable to locate any more like it. Instead I went to Michaels (the craft store) and bought those of a pheasant (the only real feathers that were available for purchase).

I knew from the moment I decided to make this wreath that I was going to give it to my mom as a Christmas gift. She recently repainted her kitchen, which is now brown, ivory, and a very pale peach — my woodland style wreath will coordinate well with her color palette. Did I mention that my mom loves anything to do with nature? This will be a perfect gift for her!

I took out my glue gun and went to work on my wreath this past Friday night.

The wreath making in progress

The picture below is the wreath hanging on my wall, not its intended location. I am excited to see how it will look in my mom's kitchen.

The "final" wreath I made for my mom.
The renovations will have to wait until next fall,
when the pods are ripe for picking!


— Kristy L. MacWilliams, Marketing Manager

2 comments:

Melanie Jolicoeur said...

This looks great Kristy. I can't wait to try some of the projects from this book myself.

Looking at the first photo (the one from the book) I realized those locust pods are what cover the ground across the street, on the way to the courthouse parking lot! I had no idea. I always refer to it as the "bean tree."

Kristy Rustay said...

Yeah, I didn't know what they were called either, I had to look it up!
And I do remember seeing those there too. Now I know where to get them next fall.

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