Jeanne Selep's Selep Imaging Blog

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Autumn Hutch

Image 1: Autumn hutch arrangement

When autumn arrives each year at my house, a new autumn hutch display follows. Autumn's palette of colors are more subdued than my normal arrangements, and used to consist of mostly brown transfer ware and some Bavarian plates featuring fruit. Over time I have been picking china and glass items to expand my choices, and now my autumn hutch is more colorful.

Image 2: Autumn Hutch Detail

The (Welch dresser) hutch allows me to display cherished odd-ball finds like these above. The mugs above, for example, are antique Villeroy and Boch.

Image 3: Vintage Pear Plate, 10 inches

I love my vintage pear plate. I believe it's a turn of the century or early 1900's art design. I like the artist's decision to include faint shadows of the branches and leaves on the white section. I consider it innovative design from around 100 years ago.

Image 4: Rim of Vintage platter

Behind the pear plate in the hutch is an extravagant platter that has an amazing border of thick raised gold edging, with an inner border of poppies covered with an elaborate and thin gold filigree etching. Is this border a little over the top or a lot? I love it's exuberant detail.

Image 5: Williams Sonoma Apple plates

I often mix contemporary, vintage, and antiques items in my hutch arrangements, and I was happy to find ten contemporary Williams Sonoma apple plates (in 4 different designs) at a resale shop. I love the "botanical drawing" look on the apple plates.

Image 6 : Williams Sonoma Apple plates

Someone's collection of nine different amber stemmed and footed goblets became mine when I bought them at an estate sale. They definitely brighten up the color in the hutch!

Image 7: Amber Glass Water goblets

[I had fun trying to identify the patterns -
From left to right:
1. LE Smith Stars and Moon pattern goblet;
2. LG Wright Wildflower pattern goblet;
3. Madonna Inn Wild Rose pattern goblet;
4. Diamond point ribbed pattern goblet;
5. Unknown;
6. Westmoreland Paneled Grape pattern goblet]

Image 8: Meissen plate from Germany

The German Meissen plate above has oak leaves and acorns trimmed with gold - definitely one of my favorites plates in my collection! It's also a fall plate. Acorns appear in fall and are all over my driveway!

I hope you enjoyed my fall hutch. I look forward to looking at other fall decor posts. I hope you have a great fall season - summer here went by too quickly!

Click on the images to see them enlarged.

I blog for fun and my blog is ad free. Comments encourage me, and I sometimes need encouragement. Please leave a comment if you have time! Anonymous comments and comments months/years later are welcome!_____________________________________

Click here to see my Hutch Arrangements!

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Sunday, August 31, 2025

Fantasy Flowering Tree Mosiac

Trees and flowering trees appeal to me. So as a mosaic artist, I decided to create a stepping stone that combines multiple loves and interests - trees, flowering trees, chintz china, and mosaics.

Image 1: Flowering Tree Mosaic Stepping Stone

As I looked around for a mosaic project inspiration, I found brown mugs with dimensional bark, of all things. That mug needed to be broken! Whimsical, but dare I say, ugly? Maybe ugly is the wrong word, perhaps unique would be better. (Maybe OK for hobbits?) Let's just say using the mugs daily would be a strong choice.

Image 2: Mosaic Flowering Tree Detail

I also had a large circular stepping stone mold (18 inches in diameter) that I had purchased full price ($93) around 2008, and never used. It bothered my that years later I was making mosaics, wishing I had bigger stepping stones, and yet had never used my large mold.

With the help and encouragement of my concrete unafraid and unfazed mosaic artist friend, and after watching her encourage other friends to use concrete (concrete pumpkins, anyone?), I mixed the concrete (in her basement!), adding chicken wire in the middle of the concrete for support. I used the mold! (Which I then gave to her, but have used twice more since, making that mold cost only $31 each use.)

Image real 3: Mosaic Stepping Stone Detail

I also had many floral dishes I wanted to use. There is a style of china called chintz, which I love, that has inspired me in multiple mosaics. Using small bits of floral patterns mimics the chintz look. See bunny mosaic here.

Image 4: Flowering Tree Mosaic Stepping Stone

My Flowering Tree mosaic stepping stone No. 1 was the result. I hope you like it!

Unrelated, but... for our USA Labor Day holiday weekend, (Monday off, 3 day weekend!) we (the family and I) planned to grill out. But my area in Wisconsin, USA had flooding about 2 weeks ago. The extra water everywhere resulted in an exponential quantity of hungry mosquitos per acre. So we didn't grill out, we cooked inside and used the stove top and the oven, because we didn't want to be eaten alive while cooking our dinner, and I didn't want to use a ton of bug spray just to cook outside. First world problems, I know.

I hope you had a good weekend, and if in the USA, Holiday weekend!

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Totally skippable Notes (for those with more time):

Ah, blogging!. I photographed my stepping stone on the lawn, thinking the flowers in the grass would add to the spring like image. Instead, the grass photographs really dark and the lawn looks weedy. (I used photoshop to lighten the grass. So much work.) Do magazine photographers avoid using grass as a background? Do you have lots of color correction problems?

So then I took the photo on my front step against concrete, but my concrete is in terrible shape, snow and winter and salt having eroded the surface, and it's expensive to fix. (And not a priority, either. My travel budget would take a hit.) And guess what - I don't really enjoy concrete work! My Dad re-surfaced the concrete more than 15 years ago, but that has worn considerably.

A recent plumber fixed some plumbing for less than an hour and charged me $358. Given that, what do you think new steps, or concrete repair, will cost? I'm not getting a quote any time soon. (Still paying off the plumber...)

Mosaic Notes:

Mosiac work using broken china is sometimes called Pique Assiette, or picassiette. It's my favorite style, and the one I work in the most.

Mosaic Project Notes: Reflecting on the results of achieved when a project is completed, I try to answer these 3 questions.

1. What went well,
2. What could have gone better, and
3. What would I do differently if I could re-do it.

Applying these questions to my stepping stone:

What went well:
I used my large mold.
I made my own concrete stepping stone base.
I'm happy with the materials used - clear silicon caulk, sanded grout, grout sealer!

What could have gone better:
The project took so long. The results could be better.

What would I do differently if I could have a do-over?
I'll show you in another post.

Answering these questions for completed projects is something I encourage people to contemplate. Skills are improved by practice and reflection!