sticks for flowers

There are several distinct disadvantages to leaving all this behind and moving back to life in the city.
In addition to the lack of fresh tomatoes, zucchini and rhubarb (especially rhubarb) growing, I have no sticks. What is a girl to do when she has no woods full of dead sticks laying at her disposal?

One day I looked around and didn't see much other than palm trees ... and mesquite trees.
The mesquite trees had some branches that looked a bit promising.

 

Of course, I wouldn't have had this grand idea in the middle of winter when the air is deliciously cool. No, this idea would hit in the dead of summer. So, after a dip in what probably qualifies for nearly a kiddie pool, I set to picking branches and avoiding ant hills. Those buggers are vicious on bare toes!

 



While green branches may work great for other things, my branches needed to dry out a bit. Being as humdity at this time of year is not a problem here, it probably took about 2 minutes.

Once the sticks were dry, they were ready for paint. Being as I am one of those use whatever you have kind of people, I started digging. Freezer paper (still working on using it up before Christmas wrapping starts) to cover the counter, and some black paint. First I used up the last of the spray paint (from some previous project) and then moved on to sponging on paint to finish up the job.

While the sticks were drying, it was time to play with paper. Here, I didn't take any photos of making the little paper flowers. There are plenty of tutorials online to be found. I've done these before and just wanted some more hanging around filling a small piece of my world.

I would prefer a little larger flowers .... maybe later.
For now, I have a stick supply.

Now I keep seeing all these cute ideas for Christmas that involve even more sticks. The tree is probably ready for a decent trimming, but I may not need to. The neighbors trimmed theirs and rather than pitch their own trimmings into their trash bins, they left it on my side of the fence. Being as we forgot to put the dumpster out on Thursday night (and it was already full), there is no hope of getting the neighbors trimmings into the dumpster anytime soon. Might be just long enough for me to go trim off a bunch of sticks for some of those Christmas projects that involve white paint and sparkles.