Behind the Scenes of the Pistachio Shell Flower Brooch

As one of my signature pieces the Pistachio Shell Flower Brooch has always been one of my favorites. This past week I discovered I had unwittingly signed myself up for a craft show that took place this past Saturday. So I had less than five days to make new items as my stock was running low.

I managed to generate 10 Pistachio Shell Flower Brooches in what added up to be less than 24 hours… I was a machine!

needless to say I’m a bit put-off pistachios for the next few weeks. However I thought I’s share with you some of the behind the scenes pictures of the process.

As you can imagine to start off I need a whole lot of pistachio shells. This involves reigning in friends and family to buy and eat bags upon bags of the things (no arm twisting was involved believe me) however the “please don’t throw those in the trash” part proves to be more challenging.
Then I have to clean, rinse, and sort them. Fun Times!

Then comes the GLUE! This little gun is a dear old friend!
I make the bases by cutting out circles from super sturdy boxboard. Can you figure out where this circle’s from?

After ages of gluing and gluing and gluing we have
FLOWERS!

Then if the weather’s permitting I head outside armed to the teeth with old newspapers and cans of spray paint. I often wonder what the cashiers think when I go through the line with fabric softener, anti-acids, soy-milk and 10 cans of multi-colored spray paint.
I like to keep people guessing.