Jeanne Selep's Selep Imaging Blog: tips

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Saturday, January 18, 2025

Cheery Denim Bunting

Image 1: Denim Bunting Banners

I love Denim, the sturdy blue fabric used to fabricate blue jeans. I've crafted multiple projects with denim, but my favorite denim project transforms old blue jeans into decorative bunting.

More on the term bunting below, but I'll briefly define bunting here as a string of triangles (or pennants, or flags) strung in a row to form a decorative garland or banner.

Image 2: Embellished Denim Bunting

Upcycling blue jeans into bunting is satisfyingly fast, and offers lots of options for embellishment. Since I am a fan of vintage laces and linens, I frequently use bits of lace and doilies to decorate individual triangles.

Image 3: Denim Bunting Upcyled from Blue Jeans

I also love plain denim triangles for a simpler look. The details of the blue jeans used and the range of colors stand out when not embellished. Of course, any fabric could be used, but denim has it's own special place in American culture - a love affair resulting in many items created by people reusing this fabric.

Denim Happy Birthday Banner Bunting by Jeanne Selep

Image 4: Happy Birthday Banner (Bunting)

The first bunting I made was for a birthday decoration. I had saved worn out blue jeans for denim projects, and I wanted to upcycle them. Bunting is a satisfying, quick, low tech project (no precision measurements) with a cheery result that has lots of possibilities for embellishment.

Image 5: Denim Bunting

I used white electrical tape to quickly form letters on the banner - this way I can spell out a name, or whatever I want. In the end the words I used most are "WELCOME" and "HAPPY BIRTHDAY". Letters could also be painted or ironed on, or embroidered or appliqued for the ambitious.

Image 6: A Drinking Straw makes the top Sturdy

Bunting is almost intuitive to make, and I will be posting a tutorial soon with tips. (Photos already done! Post started!) But a sneak peak here: for my bunting, I've added one innovation: I put a drinking straw in the top of the bunting to make stringing the triangles fast and easy, and to keep the top of the triangles from sagging.

Image 7: Step #1 Decorated Denim Bunting

I also hope to showcase some other embellishments I have experimented with. Watch for the full tutorial soon, but in the meanwhile I hope this post has inspired you. Up-cycle away!

[Notes: Bunting is a British word for this type of garland made with triangles. Strings of flags, frequently triangular, (called bunting) were used on British Navy ships for centuries. Bunting then found their way into the celebrations of British events as decorations. You might also call them garland, etc.]

[Notes: I stressed for a while to determine the triangle size I wanted. The top of my triangle measures 7.5 inches across, and the top to bottom dimension is 8.5 inches. This allows a template to be printed out on 8.5x11 inch paper, and I have made bunting with paper, which could be a cute project with kids in a class setting.]

Click on the images to see them enlarged.

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Bunting, Awesome bunting flag Birthday bunting

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Blue and White Mosaic Table

I Love Mosaics!

Today I am sharing some "Mosaic Love" in blue and white - crisp colors for winter in Wisconsin.

I was working on a blue and white mosaic table post in February of 2020, before the pandemic "became a distraction". Now, 2 years later, I am finally finishing the post.

Blue and White Mosaic Table

I made the table above several years ago, using an resale find table that I painted white after creating the mosaic. A friend had made a beautiful checkered mosaic on a different project, inspiring me to create my blue and white checkered table. I used Blue Willow plates, damaged flow blue plates and more.

mosaic table top blue and white checkers

Top down view of the table

All of the white squares are commercially available 3/4 inch bathroom tiles. [The 3/4 inch solid white tiles used to be common, but are now harder to find - 1 inch tiles seem to be the new standard. Cutting a more or less flat 1 inch square from the edge of a plate is much harder than cutting a 3/4 of an inch square, so using 3/4 inch tiles is important part of this project.]

Checkered Mosaic table in process blue and white

Initial cuts for making squares from a chipped plate

I cut porcelain plates with a wet tile saw to make the squares that have blue. The photo above shows initial cuts on a chipped plate I reused. Before this project I only used the tile saw significantly on one other project. On this project I didn't use the saw on every edge, and if I do another checkered pattern in the future, I'll cut every tile with the saw.

In Process Making of photo5

Above is another in process photo.

Orphaned plate with Stain

The flow blue plate above was badly stained, scratched and crazed. I love flow blue china and collect these dishes, so I only used very damaged, chipped or stained plates for mosaics. I feel glad I was able to use this plate in this project.

Detail shot of squares before grouting

The table's dimensions are 14.5 inches x 22.5 inches x 20 inches high. The individual squares are 3/4 of an inch. The photo below can be saved as a free desktop image.

Desktop image, detail of Blue and White Mosaic Tabletop

Another project with similar colors created maybe 4-5 years ago was the bocce ball below that I covered with mosaic pieces from blue willow china.

Mosaic Bocce Ball

I mentioned in this note here that I like to learn from my projects.

Some notes:

Next time I do a checkered mosaic, I will draw lines on the table underneath the grid for better alignment, and I will try to use the wet saw for every piece. And I'll grout better - I use this table almost everyday and the grout is a bit sketchy! Maybe someday I will re-grout it.

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 are fine.

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