silver cup, buttons and books

silver egg cup and vintage buttons

I have been in a bit better mood the last week. The sun has returned on an off and we have had some lovely walks. I even managed a few thrifty trips to various charity shops. And I won't get in trouble for what i bought as Matt was with me both times, and he bought a few cds and some hamma beads with Harrison. *quitely swears*

On a trip into Nottingham to grab lunch we went into the Oxfam books shop and I bought a vintage Doctor Who annual from 1978, and a vintage ladybird telephone book. I bought them for card and pin badge making if I can bare to cut into them. Yesterday I bought the little silver cup, I think it must be silver plate. I love the patina of age on it and I plan to turn it into a little pincushion when I sit down to do some sewing a little bit later. I also found a dozen or so white buttons and a vintage pressed glass button that will used for doll making.

Dr Who annual and ladybird telephone book

please check out Apron Thrift Girl for Thrift Share Monday. Where some proper thrifting has been done by some lovely bloggers. Also please have a look at the little doll Harrison and I have made and listed in my etsy shop, the profits for the doll will all go to the Red Cross Earthquake Tsunami Japan fund.

Lattes, Ikea jars, and hidden mushrooms

another toadstool painting

M did take me for a Starbuck's we sat together happily at the new one by Ikea Nottingham, sipping from wintery red cups and listening to Christmas music while looking out over the half empty car park pretending we were in America. I had a red cup with a latte (extra shot please)in it, and I was happy. Then we dragged ourselves around Ikea in search of a desk for the bedroom and I wanted some of the little glass gars with lids ( canning jars) for some Christmas crafting.

The desk ended up being a full serve item so we must have waited twenty minutes or more for them to bring two small flat packed boxes while I sat there being thankful that I don't still work there. M will be spending the rest of the day reading flat pack instructions and grizzling at said instructions, while i carry on playing with beads for a stall I have over the weekend.

my little seahorse

The toadstool painting and the seahorse are from a few days ago, I misplaced them and forgot about them until this morning. I used to doodle seahorses all the time when I was little, that and erm unicorns. But anyway I have been really busy stocking up on bracelets and beaded pendants, with a few key chains and mobile phone charms mixed in. Pictures soon I promise. I best go as I'm being shouted to sort something out.

Toadstool in Teal

teal toadstool

The last toadstool I did went for a custom order so it dissapeared before I could take a semi-decent picture of it so what's a girl to do? Why paint another one of course. Its really simple but I love it, I only wish I could take a picture to show how pretty these painted pages really are.

A little Cheer

little owl is a bit previous on Christmas

My computer is fixed, as least for now! I don't know where I picked up some nasty virus from but I have managed to fix it myself... well RegCure did all the work, I'm just happy I could run it because I couldn't turn my computer on for three days! Now I have literally tens e-mails to reply to....so I have been missed, though mostly by amazon apparently.

little robin

Here are a few of the painted pages that I finished off over the weekend, so at least I had something to do while unable to be on my poorly little laptop. I'm not happy with the reindeer, he turned out somewhat menacing, which I'm pretty sure reindeer aren't supposed to be. I love how the robin turned out though, and little owl decked out in his Christmas hat. They have been painted on pages from a vintage 1950 copy of Alice in Wonderland.

one slightly demented looking reindeer

A Chair, a Book, and some Paintings

chapel chair

A few weeks ago in our wanderings H and I went to Arkwright's Mill in Cromford, Derbyshire, for little lunch in the cafe and so H could have a wander around the exterior of the Mill. There is a small Charity shop for the mill, a tiny little room filled with books, bric-a-brac, a little thrifting was called for. Sitting forlorn and dusty in a corner behind some truly hideous pottery was this little chapel chair. It was love at first sight, and a bargain at £15. I have seen others for anywhere between £50 and £100 so it was definitely a keeper.

1950 copy of Alice in Wonderland

My Mother in Law helped me clean it with some wire wool and oil it down and it sits happily beside the fireplace. M isn't entirely convinced, but I think its fits perfectly into the house it just needs a little cushion on it to make it perfect. Along with the chair I bought a copy of Alice in Wonderland from 1950, its battered and torn in places, so it was the perfect to tear up and stain for my vintage book page paintings.

pages from the above book stained and painted

Which as you can see above is exactly what I did, painting some toadstools for a custom order. They turned out brilliantly especially the teal one, though for some reason I can never seem to photograph the book page paintings to do them any justice. I stained another dozen or so pages in the same tea staining sitting so might attempt to sketch out some doodles to paint on the pages. I really want to paint more toadstools though, no particular reason I just really like them, I definitely need to do some more teal ones, I love teal and mixing toadstools, teal, and tea stained book pages just seems to fit together so well.

Don't Fear the Reaper

Death and Instructions

Vintage Book Treasures

vintage book finds

Last Tuesday M took me and H to my favourite book store in the world, or at least in Derbyshire. Scarthin Books in Cromford, Derbyshire is a fantastic book shop, it was at one time a house, but the collections of books grew and grew so that it is now a labyrinth of written words. Books are crammed in every corner, including the bathroom, yes a bathroom not a toilet, because an old bath sits hulking in the corner, and there is an alcove where vintage, and damaged books are kept. I sat myself down in a corner of the room and delved into a huge stack of musty books. The smell of old books has got to be among the best smells, better than bread baking in the oven, and almost as good as freshly brewed coffee in my opinion.

great thoughts from 1885

I spent over 40 minutes all to myself, as M took H off for a wander around Cromford digging through crumbling books. A few of which were too precious to tear apart for future art work. The treasures I brought home with me included the Great Thoughts book from a periodical dated from 1885 for £2, it have some lovely fonts and pages that will look fantastic paired with my illustrations. And the beautiful Rhetorical Dictionary that has a note scribbled on the front page saying that it dates roughly from 1755 or 1780, it is beautiful and heavily damaged with missing pages but I fell in love with its tattered cover less pages and for only £3. M said its too nice to tear up for my art as he leafed through it, and then the back cover fell off in his hands and he stared at it quietly for a moment.

music sheets

As I was about to leave the shop I had a quick look at the shelves just outside the door, with a note saying all books on the outside shelves are 50p and to place the money through the mail slot when the shop is closed! I mean how fantastic is that? I rifled through a few books and found Brahms sheet music, some sheet music for children's songs which I have neglected to picture. And a School Friend Annual from 1955 that M and M's mother both want to read before I'm allowed to use for any art work. The Requiem title page from the Brahms music sheets I have stained with black tea and M says he wants it framed as is for when we move house.

school friend from 1955

Did you catch that bit about moving house? We are in the process of getting things sorted out to move to a nicer slightly larger house on a beautiful street on the other side of town. Its all in the hands of the lawyers/solicitors at the moment so none of it seems real at the moment. I will let you know more when we know more. The house is lovely, it needs work, but the best ones do, the kitchen and kitchen floor need ripping out right away, and the garden is an absolute jungle. Where is Indian Jones with a machete when you need him? The best part is there is a third bedroom so that means space for an office/crafts room!

dictionary circa 1755 or 1780

Follow the White Rabbit Neo!

Neo the rabbit

I first drew Neo a few months ago and have kept him on his little pice of scrap paper in one of my many notebooks. Today in my crafting time I serched through my notebook for inspiration and I found Neo, so here he is in painted page form.

Illustrator at large

Strawberries

I am so proud this morning H and I picked the first two strawberries of the year from the little strawberry plant in its little pot in the green house! I'm so pleased becuse the ones we tried last year didn't grow very well and seemed to go rotten before they ever got ripe. I didn't get to taste them as H dissapeared with the strawberries in a bowl with a tiny sprinkle of sugar and then re-appeared with an empty bowl 2 minutes later. I have been assured that they were very nice.

This morning after seeing M and H off to work and pre-school, I has a quick tidy and dragged my little paint box out and some book pages. Armed with a cup of very strong black tea, with the bar still in I stained about a dozen pages then proceeded to paint a few that were dry and a few that were still damp with tea. I really can seem to tear myself away from painting these little pages. There is something so romantic and bookish about painting on stained book pages, I love the effect. The only painting that didn't turn out the way I wanted is the tree one, it didn't turn out even vaguely similar to what my intentions were when I set out to paint it. I''m not sure about it yet, I will let in grow on me a bit and see what happens.

Lily

Little White School House

Anne

Defiance Tree

And to prove that I am not all together a coward I have added 4 painted page originals to my etsy shop we shall see if anyone out there likes them as much as I do. Oh and apparently I'm now an Illustrator, thats what Etsy says these paintings are called, Mixed Media Illustrations, very nice.

Vintage Swap

Here are the things that I posted off to my Vintage Swap Partner, so if you are looking Mel and haven't received my package yet DON'T LOOK!

My swap partner is Mel from Sky Rocket Sews who likes the colours red and turquoise. I ran out of time to have the painted page put into a mount or a frame but I hope that Mel likes it, Its one of my favourite painted pages that I have done so far. What me obsessed? probably but I cant help it its just so much fun to paint these little pictures on pages from a broken and battered book, my kind of recycling. I hope she finds some use of the key chain, the red agate, and the turquoise/teal glass bead look amazing together. The books were in a bag of books that came from a relatives attic, they were lovely and I thought that Mel would appreciate them, plus I thought they really fulfilled the Vintage Craft Swap.

red agate and teal glass bead keychain

Painted Page flapper with red necklace

vintage ladybird children's craft books

The Poison Apple Tree

The Poison Apple Tree

Is there ever an evil queen around when you have some poison apples to sell?

I can't seem to leave these vintage story book pages alone. And as I have a special fondness for drawing trees I really couldn't resist combining the two. As for the apples the tree just needed a splash of colour, there for some blood red poison apples on black tree limbs. The tree calls to me, its dying leaves whisper when the breeze is still. It says it needs a mount and a frame and I'm inclined to agree.

I have also been dabbling in a bit of monochromatic bead work, The bracelet below is Black agate, white jade (or possibly white quartz as they look pretty much identical), and silver, I am so tempted to keep it for myself, I have a lovely black blouse it would go great with. I am in dire need of some more silver beads so I have come up with a diabolical plan to drag M and H to Lichfield for the day tomorrow and disappear to Spellbound Beads for just a little while... honest.

Then I really must get to work on the garden, the poor little bean plants and pepper plants in the green house are desperate for re-potting, but at least I have some beautiful lilacs to sniff.

monochrome bracelet

lilacs

Toadstools and Tea

toadstools, tea, and printed words

I really was going to do the housework honest but I just had this idea in my head inspired by the plushie toadstool that LucyKate has done a beautiful tutorial for, alas my skills with a needle are quite lacking so instead I painted one. Well actually its slightly more complicated than that, I had a vintage children's book that was in very poor condition so I cut out the pages and stained a page with a tea bag, let it dry then painted it with watered down acrylics. Technically its black tea-ed down as I used the left over bit of black tea from staining the page as my water cup. I'm not sure if that is lazy or not but it was fun and I think the fun bit is what crafting is all about.