Grand Revival Designs

Crafts Beautiful Magazine and Homemade London

I recently made two wonderful discoveries when the lovely Natalie Osborn, an editor from Crafts Beautiful Magazine, www.crafts-beautiful.com contacted me to let me know she had used my fabric for a lampshade workshop at the beautiful crafting venue Homemade London and had featured the experience in an article for the magazine. I'm a fan of anything that encourages others to explore and express their creativity in new ways and Crafts Beautiful really does that with lots of ideas and inspiration for papercraft, sewing, and jewelry crafting to name a few. I'll be working with Crafts Beautiful on a couple of exciting things in the next few months which I'm thrilled about and as for Homemade London I love the idea of this place. A beautiful environment to learn and craft lots of different kinds of things in one space. I wonder if this is a trend?? I haven't seen anything like it up till now and I'm just loving the idea.

I'll have another tutorial up for a cute little clutch soon. I'm packed with creative energy lately. I'd felt a bit sapped of it for a few months after the book was finished. Suddenly though so many projects are coming to mind that I want to share...

xoxo,

t

Christmas Muse and Romantic Homes

I'm so proud of my mom! She opened her Etsy Store Xmas Muse again this year. I love her stockings, just so sweet and nostalgic. But even more exciting, she did an article for Romantic Homes magazine about how to make one of her pretty hanky stockings and her stockings ended up making the cover!!!!! So cool, and she was nice enough to use my fabrics from Darla and Ava Rose for the cover stockings,thank you mom! Anyway, check out her handmade goodies if you have a chance or pick up the December issue of Romantic Homes to learn how to make a hanky stocking of your own.

I Love Martha

OK, enough of that un-crafty stuff from the last post!! But before we get onto other things, may I just say, I LOVE YOU!!!! you totally wonderful people who wrote such lovely supportive things in the last post!! That silliness hurt my feelings so I'm just grateful to you who commented for throwing some love my way when I needed it.

With that behind us, this will probably be my last post for a little while cause I'm moving in 4 days!!! Can not wait. Trying to learn French, pack, finish re-working strikeoffs for my next collection, it's crazy here but very happy. Next time I'll be blogging from BELGIUM!!!!! So excited for this next chapter.

Got the July Martha Stewart Living in the mail this week and got to see our Practical Bag Pattern right there in the pages of the magazine (in the Briefing section, pg. 30)  I've been reading since it began all those years ago. Amazing, amazing feeling to see that because, ya know, I love Martha. She's an icon, I grew up with her, I've learned from her, and I have enormous respect for what she's done as a business woman.

Fat Quarter Shop tells me they are having trouble keeping the Practical Bag in stock as they are the resource listed in the article. Such is the power of of Martha I guess...

I will talk to you soon!!!

love,
t

Vintage Christmas

Are you getting that holiday feeling yet? I'm just starting to, having just put a bunch of work behind me including a new collection called Lulu and Delilah. I now feel that I can fully embrace and enjoy this wonderful time of year.

A nice way to start it out was to see this whilst in the supermarket checkout line over the weekend. Jennifer had told me she saw it but I hadn't gotten my subscription copy. I wanted to tell the lady in back of me, hey look there's my fabric on the cover of Country Home, but I decided to hold back and avoid an uncomfortable moment. Matthew Mead styled up a beautiful, crisp, red and green holiday 6 page pictorial spread of my fabrics made into all manner of Christmasy craft goodness. That color green on the walls is just killing me, I love it!! We had originally discussed doing the shoot at my house but it didn't happen for various reasons and I was kind of relieved and there's no way the final result could have been any prettier then this so I'm very happy. Matthew's a genius designer, stylist, author and photographer so of course I knew the story would be great but oh how beautiful it turned out to be.

Check out more Matthew goodness here and his blog. And check out the Country Home website where I think there are more pics from the story but they weren't coming up when I looked at it. There's so much other great Christmas inspiration in this issue so it's well worth picking it up.

And if you're looking for a great gift idea here's one

It will definitely be under the tree of some of my loved ones. Available here

Book Description:

In Entertaining Simple, lifestyle and entertaining guru Matthew Mead shows you how to say goodbye to party jitters and say hello to stylish, easygoing gatherings. He gives you everything you need for parties that are wonderfully simple--and simply wonderful.

Packed with beautiful color photographs, this great guide gives you innovative ideas, tasty recipes, and complete game plans for all kinds of get-togethers. To demonstrate how to put his simple entertaining ideas into practice, Matthew gives you complete plans for eight fabulous get-togethers and he provides creative serving ideas and tempting menus for each party.

Oh and I found out that one of my Christmas projects from last year will be featured on HGTV on a show called 25 Great Holiday Ideas airing Friday November 28^th at 9pm. I think just a photo will be shown but still thought it was neat.

Talk to you soon. Happy almost Thanksgiving!

Love,
Tanya

 

Flirty Skirts

 

Been wanting to tell you about the Quilts and More summer issue featuring "Flirty Skirts". Almost the same as the ruffled skirts but I actually sized them up and down a couple of sizes to fit bigger and littler girls. I love that picture, that little cupcake on her tippy toes, sweetness. I almost forgot about the article it until I came upon this site last night. I love the idea that this girl in Finland might be making some Flirty Skirts for her little one.  Also, found this today which I also thought was cool. I don't know, seeing my stuff up on the Coats (parent company to Westminster, which is the parent company to Free Spirit, the company that manufactures my fabric) Spain site just seems exotic. And Sew Simple has an article on my "beach balls" made up in Barefoot Roses. They have a couple of super cute bag patterns in that issue as well. Back to work, finishing up patterns and working on French Hatbox strikeoffs, not easy with 3 kids at home. I can't wait for day camp to start....Happy summer all!!!

The Romantics (who me?) & New Year Gratefulness

I haven't actually seen the February issue of Romantic Homes yet. Didn't receive my issue in the mail for some reason but my mom was kind enough to scan it and email it to me. I knew the article was coming for a while now but I must admit to being incredibly excited to actually see it, I surprised myself last night when I found myself in quite a tizzy about it. I've contributed in small ways to Romantic Homes and other magazines over the years but this felt quite different and, I must say, really, really good. Two pages devoted to pics of my stuff and my take on romance? what? who me, romantic? Not the way I think of myself (I think of myself schlepping around in sweatpants and flip flops, and if I've been cooking, usually some kind of stain on my shirt). But I guess the way I think of other stuff, houses, textiles, objects, is sort of romantic, I guess... Also, kind of honored to find myself in the company of a whole bunch of other women I respect and am a fan of as entrepreneurs and designers who are also featured in the issue.  I've been a long time reader and fan of Romantic Homes for their incredible photography and fine tuned editorial point of view. I'm always inspired by it and so, of course, am grateful and humbled that they included me in this issue.

I have to say a big thank you to Andrea Singarella who helped me style the article, both the beautiful collage vignettes in the corners are her work. She has a real gift for such things and her on-line store, One Hundred Wishes, is just exquisite, I want every single thing in it, seriously, everything! She helped me with this thing just a couple of weeks before giving birth to her second child, what can I say but thank you sincerely Andrea.

I can't wait to show Alvin, owner of Country Boy my favorite antiques store, that his card made it into the article. I love his card (I have a weird thing for beautiful business cards) and always ask him for one when I'm there cause I keep losing it. When I was there last he reluctantly gave me his last one, only after I told him it maybe, possibly, might end up in an article, so I'm glad he might think it was worth it to give me his last one.

This was a really nice way to cap off an incredibly good year. My best year yet in terms of business and career. There is just so much to be grateful for this year, one of which is this blog which I am enjoying maybe too much! and for you lovely people who come to visit me here, thank you. There are many more things to be grateful for this year, I won't bore you with them all though. The things I'm most grateful for are the health and happiness of my children and the fact that my best friend and husband still loves me, thinks I'm funny and wants to hang out with me....yeah, life is good...

I'm wishing you all the best New Year ever and I hope that all the things you want and deserve to happen in your life actually do happen.

with lots of love,

Tanya