Brimfield 2010 Follow-Up

After taking in all of the non-stop, slow moving crowd-filled, junk-packed, over-priced excitement that is the Brimfield Antiques Market on Sunday, (read my report on the day here!) I felt like I needed to go someplace free of crowds where I could just take in some fresh air and nature, and perhaps do a little casual beachcombing. One of my favorite places to take just such a ramble is on the grounds of Bristol, Rhode Island's Mount Hope Farm, which their website describes thusly:

Mount Hope Farm, overlooking Mount Hope and Narragansett Bays in Bristol, Rhode Island is the quintessential saltwater farm consisting of over 200 acres of fields, woods, streams, and ponds with expansive water views. The landscape abounds with wildlife, handcrafted stone walls, terraces, flowers, mature shrubs and indigenous trees. Walk the grounds that our forefathers walked before and after our nation declared its independence.

A perfect description, and just the thing I needed to clear my head and sooth my nerves! Except.... It seems Brimfield had worked its way into my brain. WAY into my brain! Was I out among flowers and wildlife, slowly making my way along handcrafted stone walls towards Narragansett Bay or was I back in Brimfield????????

The parking lot looked so invitingly open, and free!



Within moments of walking out of the parking lot, I found something I desperately needed, right out in the middle of a big field...



Turkey feathers! Dozens of them! And the price was quite reasonable!



With my feathers locked safely back in the car, my pulse quickened as I approached the gate. Immense crowds were gathered, waiting anxiously to storm the market and beat each other to the bargains!!!



Once inside, I overheard these old dealers bragging about how much money they had made selling reproduction Art-Deco feathers to "antiques-obsessed sickos" earlier in the week. Shameful!



When I asked if I could photograph one of the few remaining feathers, they barreled towards me and shouted "NO PICTURES!" Point taken. I was reminded of the Design*Sponge flea market tip: "Don't buy from mean people." Indeed!

I continued on, shaken by the bad attitude of those haughty dealers, but felt better as I approached the main selling area:



The day was hot, and the concessions stands were already busy... nectar-lime rickeys and kettle-popped pollen seemed to be the official refreshments of "Beachfield"!



Some of the earlier tables I saw had fairly pedestrian assortments: feathers, Quahog shells, taxidermy trophy mount (isn't anyone getting tired of that trend?)



But there was plenty more to take in! I was glad to see that this dealer of glassware and early American pottery was in attendance this year, and with a beautifully merchandised table, I might add!



The inventory at this booth was geared towards the fellas: sports memorbilia, architectural salvage, and another trophy mount...



And then, speaking of taxidermy and trophy mounts, I came upon this dealer who had clearly cornered the market:



I had to laugh when I saw that taxidermy horseshoe crab rear-end! A little lowbrow, but funny nevertheless! That will probably end up hanging over someone's bar, but the rest of it? Too much! Judging by the quantities still available, not too many people were buying that stuff this year:



Some dealers had the audacity to show up to Beachfield with contemporary items... ugh. Fortunately I didn't see too much of this junk.



Some common trends throughout the show included nautical items (old rope and lobster buoy pieces):



And industrial design/architectural salvage:



And the usual Beachfield humor/kitsch:



The visual merchandising teams from Ralph Lauren and Anthropologie were fighting over who would get this primitive painted sign; turquoise is the "it" color for 2010!



Meanwhile, the J. Crew visual team tagged this primitive wooden piece (look for it in a window display later in the year!):



Gothic Revival furnishings just weren't selling:



But shabby chic is still quite popular; this booth was mostly sold out:



I saw alot of people buying these spongey corals-- the neutral coloring goes well with the shabby chic/Scandinavian farmhouse/French country trends, and adds a nice touch of natural history/cabinet of curiosity flair:



One final taxidermy piece, not very well preserved at all, by the looks of it. Isn't it illegal to sell a stuffed Seal in the U.S.? One can never predict what strange things will turn up at Beachfield!



O.K. that was pretty disturbing. And scary. I thought it was a big dog taking a nap at first glance (yes, dogs scare me). Then I realized it was a big dog taking a permanent nap. Then I noticed that this dog had flippers and remembered that dogs don't have flippers. Yikes! It shook me right out of my sun and sea soaked reverie and sent me hoofing it back to the parking lot, pronto. But I scored some great items! Check out my haul from Beachfield 2010!:



Feathers (they look a little ratty but after a gentle washing they will look great), some of those spongey coral tufts, glass, Quahog shells. Ok, I'm a hypocrite, but that Horseshoe Crab was too good a deal to pass up... a steal, really. Thanks for joining me on this 2010 tour of "Beachfield"!!! I hope to see ya there next time!!!

Dispatch from Brimfield: A Report on the Final Hours of the May 2010 Antiques Market!

Browsing tables of African artifacts, beads and textiles at Brimfield

Halloooo FinderMakers!!!

If you enjoy antiquing and scouring flea markets for dusty treasures, chances are you've heard the name "Brimfield" tossed around before. I first heard the name a dozen or so years ago while working at an antiques store in Houston; the store's owners (retired pharmacists turned antiquing power couple!) routinely regaled me with tales of an enchanted New England town that transformed, as if by magic, from sleepy hamlet to bustling antiques metropolis during three precious weeks out of every year. For one of those weeks each year, the couple secured passage by air from Houston to Boston, then rented a small moving truck once they arrived. Each day saw the pair up before sunrise, flashlights and rolls of cash in hand, frantically hustling through acres and acres of dealer tents, elbowing past crowds of fellow enthusiasts to hone in on the pieces they knew their customers back in Houston would pay top dollar for. At the end of the week, they drove the truck, packed to the roof with the week's accumulation of period furnishings and bric-a-brac, back home, where I waited eagerly to help unload and begin the exciting task of sorting, cleaning (but not too clean!) and pricing the deluge of treasures.

Anne and I have lived about an hour and a half away from Brimfield for nearly two years now and each May, July, and September (the months during which the shows operate) we have said "Hey! Let's go to Brimfield!" and then the very mention of that name gives me a little shudder as I recall those old tales of dark, dew-soaked mornings, the tension hanging over the fields as hordes of professional antiques sharks race to claim the choicest morsels from the biggest stash of antiques the east coast, and possibly all of America, has to offer. I don't have the steel nerves and iron will that Brimfield demands, I decide, and the conversation invariably fizzles with a fickle "How 'bout let's go to Brimfield next time?" This time, however, a powerful curiosity did gnaw at me, and though we weren't able to go during the week (the shows run Tuesday - Sunday) our Sunday was wide open, so at 6:00 this morning we set out on our Brimfield adventure.

The antiques shows at Brimfield consist of some 20-odd fields on either side of a mile-long stretch of Route 20. Each field has a different name, and the "opening" of the fields is staggered throughout the week; much of the action takes place earlier in the week, and the real excitement (read: anxiety) occurs just as a field is opened and the crowds rush in to buy buy BUY. Knowing this, my biggest concern about going on a Sunday was whether there would even be anything left to buy, though that concern was tempered somewhat by the broadly held opinion among Brimfield veterans that whatever is left on a Sunday may be had at tremendous discounts since dealers are loathe to haul away unsold merchandise.

We pulled into town around 7:15, and I puzzled at the lack of traffic, the absence of crowds, the bounty of free parking:

(Route 20 at 7:15: One person and a lone truck)

This was certainly not the Brimfield of my imagination. Baffled, we parked and wandered into a field where a few dealers nursed steaming cups of coffee and exchanged battle stories from earlier in the week. Sunday, it turns out, is not the day to show up early; the dealers know that the families, casual antiquers, Harley enthusiasts and "lookie-loos" that comprise the Sunday crowd are not early-risers, and so they adjust their own schedules accordingly. We were thus afforded an opportunity to wander about and get the lay of the land before things really opened; we also worked up a mild air of melancholy and regret about not being able to get in on the action earlier in the week. This passed rather quickly, however, as the tents started opening up and wares (yes! there were still wares!) were set out for the steadily growing groups of browsers to ogle.

(Route 20 around 9:15: Starting to see more folks)




While those Victorian-era stuffed songbird displays set a promising tone early on in our adventure (no, we couldn't afford them, but still... Oh, and we got sternly admonished for taking this photo!), it was pretty apparent that the merchandise throughout the market was the "leftovers." It was also clear that a great number of dealers had already packed up and left:



I started noticing all sorts of little bits and pieces left on the ground in those empty spots, and wondered if there were people who paced back and forth across the fields in the days after the show, perhaps even with metal detectors, looking for little things of value that may have been left behind:

I picked up this little grouping in about 30 seconds-- plastic soldiers, watch parts, keys-- then left them for someone else to find. What else will be left behind?

If one was in the market for wooden lobster traps, lobster buoys, ship's wheels, and other nautical-themed items, one would certainly not have been disappointed. Portly gentlemen sporting wildly overgrown handlebar mustaches seemed to enjoy the abundant dealers trafficking in "mantiques," that curious melange of old tools, old toys, and military items, with the odd Native American artifact thrown in for good measure. Their wives sauntered off towards the equally abundant and meticulously arranged "shabby chic" tents featuring an array of wood furnishings freshly painted white, mint green, or pink, upon which might be arranged tidy stacks of vintage linens and aprons or baskets of antique ribbons and buttons. The collector of postcards would not be disappointed, and Fiesta Ware and Fire King Jadeite were, as might be expected, readily available. Savvy New Yorkers may have been enamored of the dealer specializing in rustic Swedish farm antiques, a more rarified and minimalist genre of shabby chic featuring well-worn wooden farm tables, steamer trunks and banks of wooden apothecary drawers in varying shades of white and dove, mostly featuring "sold" stickers (that latter piece was purchased by an antique dealer from Brooklyn).

If there had been serious dealers of mid-century modern furnishings, they must have sold out and gone home early on. There were still mounted antler sets to be had, if one is still embracing that trend (one pair is enough for me) and those old (or newly screenprinted, and scrubbed to appear old) linen grain sacks that everyone is turning into pillows and re-upholstering their wing-back chairs with could still be found. I'm a sucker for those fellows who unload shipping crates full of menacing (or sometimes just goofy) looking African statues and masks ... they always have an adjacent table piled with strings of old African trade beads that I just go nuts over. I didn't buy any, but I sure do like to pick through all those dirty old beads!

In regards to those mythical last-day price-slashed bargains, well, we didn't actually see many items that begged further inquiry. Anne found a violin that she liked, but the dealer's price reduction from $275 down to $225 wasn't enough to entice. As things wound down and dealers were packing up, there were plenty of tables heavy with merchandise priced at just $1.00, but these were the type of things you wouldn't bother looking twice at in a thrift store, and you really had to wonder why anyone would bother hauling that kind of junk to Brimfield.

My big purchase? I bought a book, $5.00 (was marked $12.00), and I think it might be about me, but I'll have to read it and get back to you on that...



Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning, though I certainly can't claim to have had the full Brimfield experience. The next show happens July 13th - 18th; if I go again, it will definitely be early in the week, and very early in the morning. The gals over at Design*Sponge went earlier this week, and have some great posts and pictures on the experience here, here, and here. The housemartin blog also has some great Brimfield posts and eye candy-- click through her links to see posts on shows past as well!

I may not have the tenacity and single-minded determination of the hardened career antiquer, but neither I am I content to shop from the leftovers; now that I'm more familiar with the way things work, I'm looking forward to getting in early and seeing first hand what all the buzz is about! Maybe I'll see you there?


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Mashantucket Pequot Museum Visit and the Hunt for Purple Wampum!

On Easter sunday, Anne and I took a vigorous ramble along the rocky coastline of Beavertail State Park in picturesque Jamestown, RI, hoping to find some interesting ocean curiosities washed up by the recent storms (below):



I was excited to find a lobster buoy and a "mermaids purse" (an empty skate egg sac), though there wasn't much else to speak of. Driving back to Providence, we pulled over to examine Mackerel Cove beach and Sheffield Cove, where we became enamored of the rich, purple-hued pieces of quahog clam shell that dotted the shoreline at low tide. We eagerly picked up as many specimens as we could hold before hunger and fatigue forced us back along our journey home.



I didn't have any particular project in mind for those lovely purple quahog shells, though I was aware that some of the coastal Native American tribes fashioned the shells into tubular purple beads that became valued as a form of currency often referred to as "wampum". Well, as luck would have it, I was treated to all sorts of great information on wampum, and every other aspect of the lives and culture of the local Mashantucket Pequot Indians at the amazing Mashantucket Pequot Museum yesterday!

I had heard great things about the museum, and was excited to finally make the one hour drive down to the Pequot reservation in Connecticut to visit; boy, were we surprised and delighted with what we found! Opened in 1998, the museum is huge, with beautifully designed exhibits, dioramas, films, interactive elements and immersive environments that cover seemingly every aspect of life as a Pequot from the ice age to modern times. By the time we had taken in the ice-age caribou hunt, the life-sized mastadon, woodland foraging displays and a peek at life under the Mashantucket rock shelter, we were starting to feel some serious museum fatigue. A stroll through the gift shop and subsequent cookie break rejuvenated us nicely, though, and it's a good thing, because the most astonishing experience was still to come!

(image courtesy of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum)

The Pequot Village is a stunning, immersive environment that recreates, down to the minutest detail, life in a Pequot village. A hand-held audio phone allows the participant to punch in numbers to access spoken descriptions of some 35 different scenes or activities while wandering through the village. I always love those miniature dioramas of life in Native American villages you see at some museums; this is kind of like one of those, except it is all life-sized and totally realistic: there is steam billowing out of the top of the sweat lodge, you can walk right inside and explore the sachem's (chief's) wigwam, or peer into the medicine man's wigwam, where a healing ceremony is taking place! Oh, and I know what to do with my purple quahog shells now... make wampum!

(image courtesy of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum)

In one part of the village, a family sat around a fire enjoying a meal of succotash and mussels, while dad cut up quahog shells to make purple wampum beads!!!

above: strings of wampum beads from the collection of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Anthropology.

There was only an hour and a half left until closing time; we could easily have spent twice that exploring the village! Beyond the village are films depicting various aspects of the Pequot experience, and exhibits detailing the changes that Pequots faced after the arrival of the europeans. Although we made one last stop at the gift shop to pick up some well crafted beaded items, the best souvenir of all was the newly learned appreciation for the local Pequot history and culture that we took away from our visit to this fine museum!

I will do a follow-up post if I manage to produce some wampum beads from my quahog shells (I say "if" because it doesn't look easy to do)! I'm really glad to have learned more about quahog wampum... I hope you will click here to learn more about the role that wampum played in Pequot life! Below is an image of some wampum beads in a partially finished state, courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian:


Time to go make some wampum! Thanks for joining me!

Piranha Attack! (The Natural History Museum Inspired This! Part Five)

Welcome aboard, voyagers! Sit back and enjoy our lazy journey up the mighty Amazon river while our trusty old diesel engine does all the work, chug-chug-chugging our little river boat past picturesque ribereño settlements...



alongside other riverboats all loaded up for a journey from the deep forest to the colorful market in Iquitos...



This fellow certainly looks imposing, but that blowgun is no threat to us; he is just out hunting for a meal... wild jungle chicken, perhaps?



There are far greater threats in these parts: I implore you, friend, despite the heat, do not dangle those tender toes into the murky water lest you pull them out stripped to the bone by our hungry, razor-toothed scavenger, the fearsome PIRANHA!

Charley Harper's illustration of a cow being devoured by piranhas.


Some fifteen years ago, I found myself on just such a journey, chugging up the Amazon river from Iquitos into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to learn about the plants that the indigenous people use as medicine. It was a picture perfect trip: I learned alot from the local shaman, saw all manner of fantastic jungle flora and fauna, paddled a dugout canoe up a tiny tributary to explore an overgrown medicinal plant garden, traded for some lovely indigenous crafts made by the Yagua Indians, witnessed the distillation of the local rum-like spirit (aguardiente) from sugarcane (then enjoyed some tasty aguardiente and sugarcane juice cocktails!), and even baited some tiny fishhooks with bits of raw chicken and caught several piranhas! We cleaned, cooked and ate those piranhas... they are awfully bony, and had a slightly "muddy" flavor, but they are still a popular source of sustenance for the local people. I also learned that the piranha's widespread reputation as an aggressive man (and livestock) eater has been greatly exaggerated, and even felt comfortable taking a leisurely morning swim in the same cove from which I had pulled the toothy little beasties the evening prior!



These dried, shellacked piranhas are popular tourist items in almost every populated area that abuts the Amazon, and while I didn't buy one on my trip, I did admire them, and thought that a school of them arranged in a case of some sort would make a rather fetching display.

Several years later, while taking a scientific illustration course that met within Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, I made use of the museum's fabulous library of "Exhibit Case Dioramas" available on loan through the Harris Educational Loan Center. The cases are self contained dioramas, 24" high, 22" wide , and 7" deep, that depict actual preserved plants, fish, birds and mammals in natural settings. Upon seeing these, I immediately thought back to those preserved piranhas, and knew that I should craft my own piranha diorama!

Well, oftentimes these ideas take some time to incubate; I have been collecting materials and thinking about how my diorama should look over the past few years, and when I finally found a good source for those dried piranhas, I took the plunge and got to work on a small scale, one-fish version of my piranha diorama (larger version to follow soon)!



The wooden shadowbox I am constructing this in comes from Ikea, and is called "Bas" though in searching the online catalog, I could not locate them. I purchased several last time I was at Ikea, but find them so useful that I would be rather disappointed if it turns out they have been discontinued. In the photo above, I am painting the interior and back panel of the box a deep aquamarine "underwater" sort of color.



Next, I carefully pulled my piranha off of its base, drilled a new hole in its belly, and used epoxy to secure a length of brass rod through the hole and into the body of the fish. Once the epoxy had cured, I determined where within the box the piranha should be mounted, then drilled a hole the same diameter as the brass rod into the base of the box. After plugging the hole with a piece of scrap rod to keep it clear of glue and gravel, I carefully poured about 1/8" of thick white craft glue into the base of the box, and sprinkled a layer of gravel into the layer of glue. In the photos above and below you can see that I put a piece of blue tape across the lower back of the box so that the glue and gravel wouldn't spill out the back before drying. After the gravel had settled into the wet glue, I sprinkled sand over the top so that no shiny glue spots would be visible where it seeped up between the gravel bits.





Next I set out several plastic aquarium plants I had picked up at the pet store, and decided which ones would look best in the display. Of course these aren't accurate representations of actual Amazon river aquatic plants, but I'm not really concerned about that. Because the plants are too large for the box in their original state, I trimmed off appropriately sized tufts, then fused the bases together by holding them briefly over a candle flame (in a well ventilated area!) until the plastic softened just enough that the stems could be pressed permanently together. The plastic seems to soften at a fairly low temperature, rather like the material used to make some of the lower-temperature hot glue gun sticks.

Then I stood each little fused plant clump upright on a sheet of thin scrap paper in a little, nickel-sized puddle of epoxy, and sprinkled gravel into the puddle. When the epoxy hardened, I had plant clusters firmly embedded in little, natural looking mounds of gravel that I could then tear off of the paper and transfer onto the gravel base in the box. I secured each cluster in the box with more epoxy (again sprinkling in some extra gravel and sand so that no shiny glue spots show through).







I also prepared a few plant sprigs to attach to the back panel of the diorama (above) by carefully slicing off a plane of leaves so that the plant would lay flat against the panel. Then I determined the placement of the sprigs, and drilled a few tiny holes through the panel on each side of the stems through which I could pass a piece of thin wire up through the back, over the stem, and back through the other hole, tying securely behind the panel:



As purchased from a curio shop, these mounted piranhas all have a characteristic high-gloss shellac finish that I find somewhat distracting. I was able to take the shine away very nicely by spraying on a few coats of clear matte-finish enamel. The fish on the left, below, is untreated, while the one on the right has been sprayed with the matte coating:



One of the little grassy clusters in the gravel base of the box is strategically placed to hide the brass rod that will secure the piranha within the box. I went ahead and painted the rod to match the tuft of grass:



Then I finally mounted the piranha securely inside by adding some epoxy to the hole I had drilled earlier, then inserting the brass rod (again, sprinkling a little gravel and sand in to cover up any glue that was pushed out of the hole!) and leaving the whole thing undisturbed overnight while the epoxy cured completely.



I was so excited to start on the inside of the diorama that I hadn't given much thought to how the outside would look, but at this point I decided I wanted the outside to be painted white, so I used blue masking tape to cover the front glass, and sealed up the back, and sprayed a few layers of primer and flat white paint on.





Painted! While the paint was drying I started one of my favorite parts of the project: writing the informative text and designing an appropriately scientific-looking label! In the photo above I've printed out four versions and I'm deciding which one I like the best. They are sized to fit onto the side of the display box. After picking one, I inspected it one last time for typographical errors, then printed out a high resolution copy on photo paper. Inkjet prints don't hold up well, though, so I took the print to a photocopy shop and made a black and white photocopy of the label onto a nice, cream colored paper, then trimmed out the label and glued it to the side of the box:







Done! My, what a voyage this has been, and we've managed to return with our tender toes intact! I Thank You most sincerely for joining me on this Amazon adventure and look forward to our next journey together!



(That's me on the riverboat heading back to Iquitos after twelve days in the jungle. My hands and face are stained with the juice of the unripe Genipa fruit. The local Indians decorate themselves by applying the clear juice to their skin. Over the course of several hours a deep, blue-black tint develops. The juice stains the top few layers of skin, and stays vibrant until those layers of skin are naturally shed. I sure got some quizzical looks back home!)

Ceremonial Bachelorette Party Headdress!!!

While I wasn't permitted to attend this talented friend's festive bachelorette party (girls only!), I jumped at the chance to craft the crown that would be placed on her head during her "abduction" and subsequent rituals and ceremonies performed throughout the evening to honor the bride-to-be!

I tend to be bad about documenting projects from start to finish; many of the details of making things seem so mundane to me that I can't bring myself to stop what I'm doing to photograph them, and before I know it I have a completed craft project and no photos of the creative process (which is pretty much what happened with this one)! I realize this is a problem, and I'm really going to work on this in the future!

For this project I decided pretty quickly that the crown was really going to be more of a headdress, and from there, I began to visualize the various elements that make up a headdress and how I could personalize those elements for the bride-to-be. In keeping with the original request for a crown, I started by cutting a foundation strap of silver leather to resemble a crown that terminated on either end in long, thin strips that would be used to tie the headdress on:



Once I had that foundation figured out, I decided on a dark turquoise leather strip (aqua/turquoise was a dominant color in the wedding) that would serve as the backdrop for a strip of beadwork I was envisioning that would feature the bride and groom's initials. I cut the scalloped upper edge of the strip (with some difficulty) using pinking shears. Although I've been doing quite a bit of lazy stitch beadwork lately, the turquoise leather wasn't well suited for that technique (the surface of the leather is very dense, not "pillowy" and easily pierced like the deerskin I had been beading directly onto previously), so I set up my little bead loom, and proceeded to bead a decorative strip (while listening to the entire new Joanna Newsom album for free on NPR!). This is the pattern I came up with beforehand that I worked from while I was beading:



Once finished, I tied off the ends of the beadwork strip, and whipstitched through the outermost warp thread on the top and bottom edge of the bead strip and into the turquoise leather. Now that the beadwork was attached to the turquoise strip, I wanted to attach that to the silver crown foundation; this I accomplished by punching pairs of evenly spaced holes through both layers of leather with an awl, then poking strips of imitation sinew up through through the holes from the back of the headdress. Each strip of sinew passes through both layers of leather and a vintage mirrored turquoise glass bead on the front of the headdress, then back down through the second hole where it is secured by a knot in back, so while the row of 15 glass beads across the lower edge of the headdress appears decorative (it is pretty!) it is also structural, serving to hold everything together! I wanted to resort to using glue as little as possible; on this particular project, I felt like the process of stitching different materials together was representative of the union of my two friends, so I stitched alot, and wished for their happiness with each stitch!



I had a grand time plundering my craft bins for materials to use on this project! On either side of the beadwork strip hang two tin-cone and horsehair (a reference to Horsefingers, the bride-to-be's brilliant short film trilogy) drops that pass through a decorative abalone disk... again, these items are all affixed with the imitation sinew... no glue (yet!). The turquoise bells were then stitched on.



Now it was time to affix the feathers, and that is where the glue came into play. First I glued the little arrangement of colored feathers onto the inner surface of the silver leather crown with flexible craft glue and let that dry. Then I glued the long strip of white feathers (they are sold on a ribbon strip by the yard at M&J Trimming in Manhattan) onto the interior surface of the silver leather crown and let that dry. Finally, I glued a strip of wide cotton twill tape over the entire interior portion of the headdress to cover up any knots or feather bits that might poke out and feel uncomfortable against the head.



This was a really fun and meaningful project for me that culminated in the attendance of a super-duper fun and meaningful wedding! Thank You, Congratulations, and Best Wishes to you Both, Kirsten and Bill!!!

And Thank You for joining me, Kind Reader!!! I hope you will join me again soon-ish for the fun and scary next installment in my "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" series!

Following are a few images of headdresses in the collection of The National Museum of the American Indian that served as inspiration: