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| Beaux Pet holiday crackers |
Mad inventions are born in the most quotidian moments. The idea for these Beaux Pet pillows inspired by a mild spat between the ten-year-old and 12-year-old grandnieces during one of our weekly zoom maker sessions. The younger sister was allegedly repeatedly farting while sitting on her older sister's bed, leading to accusations of malicious contamination.
It got me thinking...and the Beaux Pet pillow was born. Beaux pet translates from the French into "beautiful farts." The idea is that by quilting herbs into small, approximately 6" x7" pillows, the person enjoying excess gas can take this foldable, compact little pillow from pocket or purse, discretely tuck it under their bottom, and utterly relax. Instead of tensing up or fighting Mother Nature, the aim becomes to go happily and enthusiastically with Mother Nature and do your best to force a blast of air through the pillow, producing a beautiful, rich herbal scent. Thus the Beaux Pet slogan: "Each fart a fragrant bouquet."
I produced one pillow for each of the other members of the maker session, the styles varying depending on fabric scraps from my stash. I also played with different techniques for getting the Beaux Pet label on each pillow, from hand-printing directly onto the pillow, to stitching a hand-printed label on, to embroidering onto the pillow fabric.
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| The Empress model |
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| Close-up of Empress label |
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| The Gingko |
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| The Provence |
Each little square in the cross-hatched stitching pattern has a loose teaspoonful or so of a combination of herbs: rosemary, thyme and lavender. Harkening back to a project I did decades ago that involved researching Medieval beliefs regarding the power of herbs, this particular combo should enable those who smell it to see fairies.
As noted, the pillows are quite portable and flexible, and I decided to roll them up and tuck them into recycled paper towel cardboard cores along with a strip from an English traditional Christmas cracker store that actually explodes when the strip is grabbed by the opposite ends sticking out of the cracker and pulled. The final package, shipped off before New Year 2022, is shown below.
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| The Beaux Pet holiday cracker |
