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2010 July / August

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The Secret Garden
by Renee Frank

Embellishing canvases is one of my creative addictions. I live in New York City, and when I take a day to shop till I drop, I hunt for embellishments, miniatures, and all sorts of trimmings that I can incorporate into my designs. While my friends scour the clearance racks at Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf Goodman, I swing into an embellishment shopping frenzy.

Recently my husband asked me the chicken-or-egg question: do I first design the canvas and then search for embellishments or the other way around? No, I almost never work in such a conventional manner. Usually I first fall in love with an embellishment; then I play around with it. I leave it out on the kitchen counter for a few days, or maybe I put it in my stash for future use.

Back to the canvas at hand. Can you guess which embellishment prompted the design? At first glance you may not have noticed that it is indeed an embellishment. Look closely at the rose vines on the top of the gate. Some are stitched directly on the canvas, but others are strands of trim linking variegated ribbon roses. I discovered this trim in an upscale boutique and bought yards of it. It languished in my stash for at least a year until I designed this piece. I added the keyhole and screw heads later.

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