Design & Style

DIY Spring Blooms! Hanging Camellia Tutorial from Amaranthus Paper & Flora

- April Maglothin

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Like so many great things, we found the duo of Amaranthus Paper & Flora on Instagram. But we didn’t expect them to be in our own backyard. I love Nashville and how our hub of creativity takes so many forms. I just knew we needed to get Meredith & Cherie to share a peek behind the scenes on our blog, and they so graciously gave us a whole tutorial just for you! Enjoy making these beautiful blooms & check out their gorgeous work at http://www.amaranthuspaperflora.com, Etsy and Instagram!

Have a great weekend!

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Happy spring! We are Cherie and Meredith Eastburn, the mother-daughter team behind Amaranthus Paper & Flora, and we specialize in handcrafted crepe-paper flowers. While fresh flowers are a lovely gift or addition to your home or workspace, they soon wilt and die even with the best intentions and care. Our paper blooms are always bright, lively, and lasting, which make them an excellent token of love, appreciation, hope, celebration, or remembrance.

While we love building bouquets out of our loose stem flowers, we have found that flat-backed blooms make great ornaments, gift-toppers, or wine-bottle charms. They could even be turned into a brooch or hairpiece! With that in mind, we are going to share the steps we follow to create our paper interpretation of a camellia bloom.

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Here are the supplies you’ll need:

  • A small circular disc, about 2” in diameter (cut out of cardboard, or we use little cork discs from the craft store)
  • Glue gun and hot glue sticks
  • Twine (one piece about 6” long)
  • Crepe Paper (we prefer the 180 gm crepe paper from Carte Fini and Paper Mart)
  • Scissors
  • Petal template (Click the link to print straight from your browser, or you can control-click to save the downloaded link to your computer)

Let’s get started!

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1. Begin by cutting out your petals. You will need 4 small, 8 medium, and 6 large petals. While you can cut each petal out one at a time, we find that folding over the crepe to cut through several layers at once is more efficient. Six layers is about the thickest we like to cut at a time. Read more

The cure for the common resolution & a free printable

- April Maglothin

Blog-Extra_toEdit-6It’s an age old tradition to make resolutions each year. I’ve done it more years than I can count. This year, I’m trying something different. I’m letting myself be human. I’m letting myself not call out a specific set of goals. So if you want to say my resolution is to have no resolution… you’re right.

As a small business owner, parent, wife, daughter, sister, friend, etc., there are so many pressures & goals to go with the love in our lives. Yet I’ve found myself mainly focusing on the pressures, not the love. I know that I am always going to fight to reach Read more

10 questions with Joshua Phillips, Illustrator: Small Business Stories

- April Maglothin 1 Comment

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It seems fitting that our first Small Business Story (#SBS) would be about the person who helped this little blog get started. Joshua Phillips is one of our favorite illustrators and like many wonderful things, we found him through Instagram. I reached out to talk about getting a logo created for Mix Match Pop because, even though I’m a designer, I know full well I’m not skilled at hand lettering. I believe a jack of all trades is a master of none. If you’re good at one thing, do that one thing well & support the people skilled in areas where you need help.

We’re grateful to have had Joshua’s talent in creating Mix Match Pop. If you’re interested in seeing more of Joshua’s work check him out at http://www.joshuaphillipsdesign.com/, his Instagram or on Facebook. You can also buy his artwork on Crated.

1) We’ll start with the norm: name, hometown & current city.
My name is Joshua Phillips. I was born (and still live) in Jonesboro, Arkansas. It’s the largest city in Northeast Arkansas, and it’s about an hour away from Memphis, TN.

2) When you were 10, what did you want to be “when you grew up”?
I wanted to draw. That’s basically all I had figured out. I drew for years and years and while I wasn’t sure what that meant for a career, I knew I never wanted to stop.

3) If a kid walked up to you asking for advice and you only had a few minutes to give one life tip, what would it be?
If you really love something, to the point where it consumes you and it’s the only thing you care about, don’t give up on it. Find a way to work it into you life everyday. The more time you put in to whatever it is, the more you’ll see it pay off. 

4) What’s your favorite project to date? (other than the obvious… Mix Match Pop 😉
Mix Match Pop was a great one! I’ve been blessed with countless amazing opportunities to work with all of these great people. Some of my favorites would have to be designing logos and lettering for surfboards and surf shirts or my “Volume” lyric-lettering & photography series with friend and photographer Matthew Walton.  Read more

Room Tour: Faith’s Nursery

- April Maglothin

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If you read our first post on the blog you got some insight into my little family. My daughter Faith is just over two and a half years old. As time has flown by, I can’t believe we moved her to a big girl bed just last week. Switching her room around with more toys, getting rid of the changing table, etc. is only a few weeks away! But before that changeover happens I wanted to share her tiny nursery because it was a labor of love. With my five months of bedrest, planning it became an obsession. Thankfully I have childhood friends, family & an amazing husband who did the heavy lifting, painting and sewing when I couldn’t.

Looking through these old photos reminds me of how quickly they grow up. I’m lucky to have these precious photos from the talented Kelsey Freeman Creative. Enjoy the tour and please let me know if there are projects or items you want to know more about! I’m excited to share more details and how-tos in the next few months.

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I always start with one main inspiration piece. It can be a style, color or vibe you want to design the room around. For me, it was the Seb Lester Dreams print “We Shape Our Destiny If We Believe in the Beauty of our Dreams”. This main piece was gifted to me by my best friend Sarah and her wife Lea. She knew I was drooling over this beautiful white screenprint on silver paper & surprised me
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