Inspired

My husband, Alex, and I just returned from a 2 week long trip to Europe. It was amazing and we had a wonderful time, but I'm glad to be back home. Unfortunately, he had to whisk off on a two-day business trip right after we got back so I'm at home with just the cats. I guess that gives me lots of time to reflect on our trip and all of the wonderfully crafty things I saw!

Our favorite stop on the trip was to Porto, Portugal - famous for Port Wine (yum!!). This city is very artsy. Everywhere we turned there was a little street market with local artists selling their creations. I fell in love! These are two things that we purchased for ourselves:

The left picture is a hair barrette made from a zipper (I guess I'll be the only one using that, but Alex thought it was really cool). They were also selling necklaces and bracelets to match these, but they were all a little too large for me. The right picture is supposed to be a necklace, but we are going to use it as a Christmas ornament for our tree. It's made out of comic book pages and newspaper that has been rolled together and shellacked. The vendor was also selling baskets and bowls that he had made with the same technique. I want to try to find a tutorial for this, or see if I can figure out the craft on my own. The bowls he had were really unique, but I really didn't have room to bring one home.

Everywhere I turned, at any city we went to in Europe, all of the women were wearing scarves. I guess this is a big trend in the US as well, but much more so in Europe. It seemed like they thought they would be committing some type of fashion crime if they didn't wear a scarf every day. I saw a lot of these type of T-shirt scarves for sale in Porto, and I want to make one of those soon. This picture on the right is just one I found online from Make & Do Girl. But... I've started another knit scarf. I'm so new to the world of knitting that I wanted to give it another shot with better yarn. This scarf is so soft compared to the one I made for my husband, and coming out much neater. It's still getting warmer here every day, but not too warm to still wear a scarf.

The last major thing that inspired me was the Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It is so beautiful, colorful and vibrant that I can't help being in awe of its splendor. Someday, I really want to make a quilt that tries to capture its beauty - or maybe a cross stitch. Either way I won't be able to do it justice, but I like the idea of having a crafty work of art made in its honor.

I hope you've all been inspired recently to create something beautiful and unique! Happy crafting

Linking up to Freshly Pieced today for WiP Wednesday.