T Stands for entertaining and pressed flowers

Last Friday I was preparing a get-together with several friends, including my art friend Kathy.

As I was trying to decide on the table decorations, I was also washing my floral inspired plates, cups, and saucers since they hadn't been used in years.

I had just mowed and picked several of the irises for this vase.

Of course, I needed to rearrange the flowers in the vase, but obviously NOT before I took these photos.

I had to open the muffins so I could get a photo of them without the plastic top, and noticed the calories on the bottom of the box.  Each of these muffins, that are nearly the size of the dessert plates I might add, have well over 700 calories.  Not a good incentive if a person is dieting, but filled with lots of healthy blueberries to counter the extra caloric intake.  They were definitely well received by my friends who celebrated the day with me.  We also had tons of coffee and lots of conversations, too.

After the guests left, I took these to the craft room for the recycle part of today's post.

As I mentioned earlier, Kathy picked up her dies for her die cutting machine when she was here.  Since I had no more dies, I thought I would try something different.   I originally considered doing this in my dedicated-for-crafts pasta press, but decided to try something else instead.

Using the thick plate on the bottom, then a plastic plate over that, I laid down one sheet of thick card stock.  Next I added three iris petals and another piece of card stock I'm positioning on top as I prepared to take this photo.

I laid the top plastic piece on top of the cardstock and flower "sandwich" and ran it through the die cutter three times, using it as a press.

My thinking was these petals are VERY juicy, but they didn't squish OR juice as I anticipated.  So much for this experiment.  Sometimes you don't get what you expect because your thinking is flawed, and sometimes you don't get what you expect because the tools didn't perform as you expected.  I wondered if I had used enough thickness (perhaps several more layers of cardstock would have helped), but by this time, my interest in this technique had waned.  Regardless, I tried, and was able to share that this technique doesn't work with my die cutter.

And although this post goes live on Monday the 18th, this is Day 19 of 22 where I auditioned tableware and one possible tablescape when I entertained my friends on Saturday.  I also attempted to press petals from an iris through my die cutter.  However, I have determined I actually need a hammer to accomplish the look I want.

Now it's your turn to share a drink related post.  Your post can include photos, a place you visited, movies, postcards, books, sketches, mixed media, drawings, paintings, tags, scrapbooking, or other art that is digital, hybrid, or traditional, as long as it in some way relates back to a drink, any drink.  Please share your direct link below and Bleubeard and I, along with the rest of the T gang will be by to visit.