Petal & Pins

Tag: spring

Out & About This Spring

spring 2017 tableau greenery dress and perle d'or

©2017 Sandra Alcorn  petalandpins.com

We’ll be making a few market & fair appearances this Spring so why not come and say hello!

First up on Sunday 17th September is The Market. Hobart – this curated design market of local Tasmanian artists + makers is held in the charming old Masonic Temple 3 Sandy Bay Rd from 10 to 3.

On the 23rd & 24th of September we are excited to be heading to Launceston to be a part of the Blooming Tasmania Flower & Garden Show held in Princes Park & Albert Hall – there is a terrific program planned for this event and you will find us at stand 46 inside Albert Hall so do come and have a chat and see all our new designs.

Sydneysiders we’re heading your way too so pencil Sunday 8th October in your diary! We will be at the annual Made By Hand Market at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery 782 The Kingsway Gymea. Always a lovely event with stalls in the gallery and gardens -why not grab a friend and make a day of it with lunch at the gallery cafe too.

November you will find us at the Bowerbird Design Market in Adelaide – a hand picked selection of independent Australian designers. With over 160 stalls, it’s the perfect place to seek, explore, find and collect unique high quality wares. Held over three days from the 24th to 26th at the Adelaide Showground Fri 4 – 9pm Sat + Sun 10 – 5pm

Hope to see you at one of these events – we love getting to meet and chat!

Sweet Cécile Brünner

cecile-brunner-rose-in-my-front-gardencecile-brunner-dress-in-the-making-and-petal-pins-card

We’re having such a great season for roses in Hobart and one of my favourites is the sweet Cécile Brünner.

I love to pick petite posies of them whilst still in bud and their size is perfect for creating my miniature flower couture!

Peace, Joy & Dessert

Basket of garden rosesPeace Roseroses in the gardenI’ve been cutting big bunches of roses to have inside this spring and admiring ones that vie with each other for attention from behind fences when strolling down the road.

My basket is laden with  a trio of Rosa ‘Madame A. Meilland’ or Peace rose – in Italian, Gioia  – meaning joy. I don’t know the name of the pinky red one, it was already growing in my garden, planted long ago and the blooms get pinker the more open they become – any suggestions from a keen rose grower?

The peace rose in bud reminds me of that classic dessert Peach Melba with it’s raspberry coloured streaks and since my raspberry patch is looking pretty fine this season too I’ll have to put it on my summer entertaining list!

Intertwined

mid spring vase of flowers from my garden

It’s been a while since I’ve joined in on ‘In a Vase On Monday’ but this morning after a few hours of sun to dry off yesterday’s rain I decided I needed to make time before spring gives way to summer.

Cathy from Rambling In The Garden started ‘In A Vase On Monday’ to share what’s in the garden year round and invites readers to share their vase or jam jar arrangements too in the comments section of her Monday blog post! (or hashtag #inavaseonmonday to your photo on Instagram)

It’s inspiring seeing other peoples arrangements, read about their gardens and the reminder that my spring is someone else’s autumn. It’s also a lovely way to take a moment out and slow down!

For this vase I wanted to recreate the part of the garden I’d gathered from – the pink climbing rose  was a house warming present and now clambers up a verandah post and tangles with the lilac and the Chinese snowball tree all intertwined with a white clematis. Near by the apple tree is in blossom and an old cécile brünner rose bush has it’s first flush of pink buds.

vase flower detail

clematis

I’ve been designing new Spring dresses for the Garden Fairy’s Wardrobe too and you can see a special one I designed with daphne, hellebores, jonquils and plum blossom gracing the cover of the online Spring edition of OnTrend Bridal magazine!

Pop!

Salamanca Pop Up shop Hobart, Tasmania

petal & pins + amanda sheen jewellery pop up shop at Salamanca Arts Centre

We opened the door to the petal & pins + amanda sheen jewellery pop up shop last Thursday.

It’s located in the lovely Salamanca Place inside an old stone warehouse – we’re having fun ‘keeping’ shop, meeting locals and interstate and overseas visitors – so thank you if you’ve come in for a chat and browse!

We’ve also been selling bunches of spring flowers picked and gathered each morning, they make the outside of the shop really pretty and add a burst of colour to the pop up shop bicycle basket.

Open every day until the 5th of October at Space 008 Salamanca Arts Centre, Salamanca Palace Hobart.

Celebration & Anticipation

petal & pins geranium dress card and spring vase

Ahh spring…you lift the spirits like no other season!

Maybe it’s all the colour that you bring or the sweet scents of jasmine,jonquils and magnolias that fills the air.

If I were in Sydney I’d be heading to the David Jones Flower Show – this years theme is a Celebration of Fragrance.

I’ve had my own mini flower show on the dining table this week with a trio of vases filled with camellias, peonies, jonquils, grape hyacinths, hellebores and japonica. Inspired by the David Jones Flower show I clustered them together for maximum impact.

Ahh spring…you inspire celebration and anticipation every year.spring vase trio

spring flowers

 

 

An Invitation

“I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck”
Emma Goldman 1869 -1940

Hobart designers Sandra Alcorn & Amanda Sheen celebrate spring, friendship and its connection to the garden at Salamanca pop up shop  from 22nd September – 5th October.

Designer Sandra Alcorn’s garden inspires her miniature flower couture and under the petal & pins label she designs and produces a range of greeting cards and art prints featuring these ephemeral dresses.  For spring 2016 petal & pins launch their Garden Party Collection and new print range Atelier Pétale featuring floral millinery.

Jewellery designer Amanda Sheen brings her hallmark style of organic shapes and playfulness to design a range of jewellery, objects and accessories using silver, gold  and mixed media from classic pieces to statement collars that will add an air of haute couture to the simplest little black dress.

Sandra & Amanda often spend time together in the garden – they celebrate summer days with a gin & tonic, autumn with fruit bottling sessions, their birthdays together in winter and spring with flower adorned teacakes.

No matter what the season there is endless conversation and most likely champagne! From all this sprung the idea of the shared pop up and they invite you to come and see their work.

Space 008 Salamanca Arts Centre Hobart Tasmania

22nd September – 5th October Mon to Sun 10 to 4

Opening night  Thursday 22nd  5pm to 7pm

petal & pins pink hellebore and purple iris cards

Stop & Smell The Roses

The pink hawthorn tree from my last post is now just a canopy of green leaves, when I photographed it just over a week ago in flower I also took some photos of roses around my  neighbourhood and I thought I would share some of them with you.

What’s flowering  in your neighbourhood at the moment?

pale pink climbing rose

street roses

neighbourhood roses

roses

apricot coloured rose

Little Joys

At the top of the hill there is a roundabout that peels off in several directions past which my street becomes a dead-end.  If you walk right down to the bottom you will discover a path that follows a creek bed.

It feels like you are in the countryside, not a city suburb with all the hustle and bustle that entails, and so it is a favourite route when walking with Mr Petal & Pins and Agnes.

At this time of year a pink hawthorn tree adds an extra air of romance to the entrance, the flowers are so pretty they look like bunches of miniature roses and I can’t help but dream of garden fairy dresses when I walk by.

pink hawthorn tree

petal & pins dress from pink hawthorn flowers

Walking somewhere regularly I think you discover a favorite route that isn’t always about the shortest way but more about the little joys that things along the way can bring.

In primary school I would cut through a vacant block that had wild freesias growing and my sister and I would often stop to pick them.

In high school it was walking past a large overgrown garden with a mysterious old house that you could just glimpse through the corner gates that fed my imagination (helped along with a few urban myths).

Passing that garden nearly everyday for five years felt like a glimpse of  ‘otherness’ – how I would have loved to explore it.

These days it is home to the Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre  thanks to the generous bequest of the original owners and so it feeds the imagination and brings joy in other ways.

On Sunday I am taking petal & pins to the Wild Ones Art & Design Market held at Hazelhurst and a little smile of joy is bound to cross my face at the memory of those days peering in.

Wild Ones Market

pink hawthorn flowers

Glamorous Clippings

I’m joining in for Cathy’s weekly challenge of ‘In a Vase on Monday’ today.
Since this morning was an unseasonal wintery temperature and raining, I have cheated a little by using the vase arrangements I did last Wednesday.

The time had come to trim some of the low hanging banksia rose as you needed to duck to get down the garden path it so beautifully arches over. Mr Petal & Pins trimmed sparingly and I gathered some of it for vases.

banksia rose and peace roses
banksia rose flower arrangement
I added some peace roses to one arrangement and some elderberry bush and three flowers and leaves from a lily that perhaps someone can identify for me.

Last year I created several dresses with the banksia rose, one of which now features in my Red Carpet Collection of cards.

Spring floral display with a petal & pins greeting card
I was also delighted earlier this year to be commissioned  to create one of my Garden Fairy’s dresses as a life size one in a wallpaper panel and it was this dress the client and I chose.
It was a lovely project to take on and I was very excited to see it in place – hopefully it will lead to more commissions – enquiries most welcome!

petal & pins banksia rose dress wallpaper

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