The Lavender Shelf - and missing violets

I’ve been trying to find a way to display some of my favorite treasures in my office/dressing room, and this weekend I decided to paint and “set” a little shelf I bought recently at a thrift store. Here’s the project:

Starting with a small wooden shelf, I spray painted it in a gloss ivory tone and hung it on the wall. (Note: the previous sentence does not even begin to capture my complete and utter ineptitude in the two tasks described.) I was certain that over the years I had collected more than a few items with lavender hues, so this was going to be my Lavender Shelf. I started by softening things up with a pillowcase hung on the rod. This pillowcase had been embroidered by my great-grandmother. I also added a pretty floral hanky to the shelf:

Next, I spent some time looking for a teacup I have around here that has a really pretty pattern of violets on it - I’ve been saving it for just such a project as the Lavender Shelf. So naturally, I couldn’t find it. I settled for this teacup instead, which is just as pretty (if not as violety) and has my own hand-poured soy candle in it. I also added two vintage postcards as part of the backdrop:

Next up, while looking for my violet teacup I found this 3-paned photo frame and decided to use that on the shelf as well. I sought out fun favorite photos of my hubby, myself and our daughter, printed them out, and then cut them to fit the frame:

Finally, I decided that instead of the teacup I would use one of my favorite pieces from my clay project collection - you can read a little more about him on my clay project website, but the short version is that he is a flea-market find and certainly falls into the “lavender” category:

The finished project looks like this:

What I love about creating a little vignette like this is that every item here is either special to me personally, or is something I bought simply for its beauty and the faith that someday I would be able to make something enjoyable out of it.

More soon!