My "Practice" Piece

Yesterday, I showed you this inspiration piece that I bought at a parking lot sale.

I really liked it until I started making my "practice" piece. Here's my "practice" piece...and I love it even more than my inspiration piece.

I'm not one to measure much --- I just "eyeball" things. And since I wasn't being very precise, I decided I didn't want to "practice" using some of my pretty pieces of ivory upholstery fabric, so I used muselin instead. And I'm really, really liking the muselin.

I'm keep referring to this as a "practice" piece because most everything I used on it were things I had laying out on my craft table...little bits and pieces that I had been playing with and were left over from other projects.

Little bits and pieces like the little wand I made as part of a swap, and a pink rose from my Pretty Little Things album.

and the "happy birthday" banner, also from that same swap,














a clothespin I had distressed and stamped on, a left-over sheet of music and a defective piece of shaped chipboard to insert into the pocket.

And, my first hand-stitched muselin flower -- which I thought was not too bad for a first try. And, of course, I always have charms from ACharmingplace around - so I stitched a few of those on as well.

I also didn't want to "practice" using one of my pretty pieces of lace, so I grabbed a scrap piece of doily that I had cut up and stitched seam binding to. I was originally going to use that piece of doily around the bottom of an altered tin I made for my friend Kelle (I made her a tin similar to the altered tin I posted earlier). Well, that cut up doily piece didn't work out well on the tin, as the doily was too long. So I figured it'd work great for my "practice" piece.

I love the pleated bottom (I'll make that piece of fabric a little bigger next time so I'll have more uniform pleats) and the elastic pocket to insert fun things into. The "happy birthday" banner was just something I threw on because it needed "something" on that spot, so I grabbed it and it worked for "practice". Now I'm thinking this would make a nice birthday card -- a pretty little gift card holder.

So there you have it...my "practice" inspiration piece. I think there's a mentality about saying the piece is a "practice" piece...it's not final so I feel more free to just throw stuff on. After all, it's just for practice!

I think I'll make a few more of these and use them in various ways. Fun!