On my online workbook this week: Cinnamon, to go or for keeps

Dear

This week’s inspiration is cinnamon weather!

My tip for you this week is curling the edges of the cinnamon bark. Leaving the bark to simply dry means it curls back up again. Weighing it down with the heavy bottomed glass budvases means you can keep it open and reset it. Which is great to use… but we can do better than great, right?

Place the bud vases so that about half of each leaf sticks out from under it. Now you can weigh it down to control the curl (see the pictures above) and manipulate it to reset it to curve instead of curl. I used my design room hairdryer to further warm the bark and then create the shape that is more leaf-like instead of simply weighed flat. Smaller bud vases are ideal because the cinnamon bark can curve around the glass shape to form exactly like a fall leaf. But absolutely make sure the cinnamon bark is completely dry before designing with it. The new shape needs to be set so that it won't close up in the design as it continues to dry out.

And… it smells amazing! When I took the pictures I was amazed at how much of the cinnamon fragrance you can actually smell every time I moved my arm. Delicious!

Every good wish,

Christine