Homegrown Happy Valley

WREATHS AND FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS

What do you get when a keen interest in gardening and flowers goes wild? Greensleeves Dried Flowers.

Mary Stanley, owner of Greensleeves, a small, family-run operation located just outside of Bloomsburg, Pa.,  always romanticized the work of florists. “All those flowers!” she says, “And the fragrance, so delightful.” But Stanley managed to top her dream of working in a flower shop by owning it, too.

Stanley, who is at the People’s Choice Festival this weekend, starts her wreaths and flower arrangements with seedlings in her greenhouse, which she then transplants into her gardens. The flowers are harvested when they reach the right stage of development and then hung to dry in her 150-year old barn. The flowers dry quickly in the heat and dark, thereby retaining their color and form.

Stanley transforms armloads of flowers into wreaths and arrangements created in the traditional and English garden styles. Inspiration for her designs comes from observing nature. “A wreath may have a woodsy feel to it, as if you just stepped off the path and found a mossy refuge hidden deep in the woods,” she says. “Another invites you into a spring meadow bursting with color and freshness.”

She has been in business for more than 20 years and has been honored with first place at the Philadelphia Flower Show for the last 4 years.  For Stanley, driving a tractor and picking flowers is the ideal way to earn a living. “Isn’t it true that when you love what you do,” she says, “it is not work?” 

Where to find her: People’s Choice Festival

JEWELRY

Simply Sterling Designs by Suzette

With names like “Sea Breeze” and “Sea Treasure,” Suzette Mason’s jewelry evokes one of her favorite places: the beach. The necklaces, bracelets and earrings of  Simply Sterling Designs by Suzette favor geometric shapes and are made with sterling silver, gemstones, and freshwater pearls. The intricate process includes stamping, sawing, oxidizing, filing, soldering (a process in which two or more metal items are fused), wire wrapping and stringing.

Mason is participating in the People’s Choice Festival for the second time this year and has been making jewelry full-time since 1999.  ”Nothing beats sitting down at my work table and just playing,” she says. ” I never know what I am going to make each day or how the piece will turn out until I am completely done with it.”

Where to find her: People’s Choice Festival

FIBER

Art Quilts by Sandi Garris

These aren’t your grandmother’s quilts. 

Sandi Garris’ passion is color and she creates an amazing variety of hues by dyeing cotton fabric. “Often I create a color inspired by nature, such as an exotic coral I have seen while scuba diving,” says Garris, a Penn State grad. “Other times the shades I dye become the inspiration for a piece.”  Garris, who has been making art quilts for 20 years, mentally drafts each design, then cuts and sews thousands of pieces of fabric to create the image.  The results are exciting and imaginative. Her art quilts have appeared in several magazines and have earned numerous awards at art fairs around the country.

Where to find her: Arts Fest, booth A-46 on Allen Street (between Nittany and Fairmount Avenues).

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am and is filed under 2009 Arts Festivals, Art, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.