Hello Flourishes friends!

Today, I want to chat with you about something that has a very special place in my heart — lace.  I remember when I was a child, my grandmother would from time to time take down a special book made up of pieces of lace samples that were all hand-made. I would study them and cherish each and every unique design. While living in Europe, I remember shopping the market squares for special “jewels” to add to my lace collection. And now, I am sharing that love of lace with all of you! Have you seen the new categories of items in the store? Have you seen the variety? Earlier this year I asked what you wanted more of in the store. and you said lace, lace and more lace!  We we listened.

You can check out this new addition by clicking  HERE.

One thing you will notice is, we have added a variety of sizes – the tiniest being 1/4 inch to a grand three inches and everything in between. And, we have  a beautiful color range as well – from soft celery, taupe, pewter and black to fabulous whites and creams to bright hues as well.

Did you know?

Laces come in several types, such as bobbin lace, needle lace, lace tape, netting, and embroidered lace which have their origins in many kinds of needlework and weaving developed in the maritime centers of Venice, Geona and Ragusa.  Lace makers in England stepped up to the top and created the beautiful lace for the dress Kate wore for the royal wedding last summer. Here’s an interesting fact — I read that the lace makers that worked on Kate’s dress worked for only thirty minutes, then changed the needles they used and washed their hands. All had to be pristine. I am sorry to see that this is almost a lost art since making real hand-made lace is so very costly. Most laces today are now machine-made. For our use on cards and scrapbook pages, however, even if a piece of lace is pricey we can often put just a snippet from the yard to make a luxurious statement.

From the petite to the simply grand we have a great array. Most of our laces are from France, so you are not likely to find them readily available except here at Flourishes, where we want to offer those special and unexpected embellishments just for you. Most of the lace names bear their orgin and or type such as crocheted, Venise, tatting and the like.

To give you a feel for the kinds of lace you’ll find in the store, I rounded up some of my personal creations to show you the beautiful effects you can create with lace!

Here is one that I created, using this month’s 1,2,3 Create Kit called Bonjour. It has the sweetest light green lace which under I ran a length of black 1/8″ ribbon on top of the larger ribbon in the kit. I added another new item to the store called Candi, using the pastel green from the pastel kit. The images used are from our just released Tiny Flowers & Tags. These where stamped and colored three times and I used dimensionals for depth. Kaiser pearls and a black bow made with my Becca Peg Bow maker which will be available here very soon. I just love mine!

And my second card, I am using a new large size Lacy Trim called Guipure – Taupe as well as well as Floral Venise Lace in Taupe.

Visit our new Lace category HERE, select a few and put more lace on your cards. Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me.

Ciao

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