Mermaids

I enjoyed this month's watery themes over at Tag Tuesday so much, I had oodles of fun creating the tags. This week's tag theme of MERMAIDS AND WATERBABIES is the perfect end to a lovely series. I chose an image which I had used before in collages and cards. It is one of my favourite mermaid images - 

I filled the mermaid's shell with jewels found by her in shipwrecks on the ocean floor, rubies, diamonds, aquamarines and saphires as well as many gold and silver coins -

( micro beads and tiny sparklies )


The image is framed with a small piece of dyed scrim on one side and a tiny bit of silk sari ribbon on the other side -

There are more jewels lying on the ocean floor amongst the sea shells, just waiting to be picked up by the mermaids -

I finished the tag off with a bit of lace, which Kimberly had used to wrap her package of ATCs in ( mermaid swap, see this post ), and a little silver seahorse charm.

Toodlepip xxx


PS - I'll have a looooooooooong post on my Vintageland blog later on today to show you some more vide greniers finds. Darn, I am so behind with photos.

Glass

Okay, so I am a wee bit late again for my Every Inchie Monday challenge this week. LOL, nothing new there then. Finally got it made yesterday though. The theme for this week is GLASS, and I decided to use sea glass for my little inchie. Must have had sea on my brain, probably because the Tag Tuesday challenges for this month have all been sea related.


GLASS inchie -

I used a couple of different light blue inks on the background, and then used the very edge of a dark blue one to create the waves. A white pen and a silver glittery gel pen were used for the crests of the waves, with a teeny fish gliding through them. The beach is made from    Distress stickles ( makes such good sand, I think, sparkling in the sun ). Couple of tiny shell images left over from tag projects, and of course the main thing, the piece of sea glass. I don't often find sea glass on the beach, so this one is tiny but precious.

Thats all for today, it is mightily hot here, 36C when I looked just now, and it is lunchtime. Gotta get stuck into my tomato and mozarella salad.

Toodlepip xxx

Do you love lace?

Silly question really, I know most of you adore antique lace. Handmade lace is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to find, but......... at Sunday's brocante, I found a small plastic box full of lace. You know when you are walking along stalls, and you can see something in the distance which makes your heart beat faster and you make a beeline for it, trying not to run, lol? That was me. I could see some of the bits in the plastic container. I grabbed it, asked the price, didn't open the container, didn't even haggle, paid the woman and walked off. Once I had recovered, I told my DH about my gorgeous find. He couldn't believe I didn't even haggle, but hey, this was lace, and I wanted it, and I had to stop myself from salivating somehow, lol, and paying the woman as quickly as I possibly could was the only thing to prevent a pitiful display of the drools.


This is the box I spotted from miles away -

Almost everything in the box was antique handmade needle lace, filet lace or crochet lace, made with the finest threads, some in linen threads, some in cotton. Ooooh, boy. Some of the individual motifs were alls crunched up and held together in a bundle with a few stitches of coloured thread, I had no idea what they would look like once they were ironed. Wanna see? Tehehehe, I guess if you love lace, then you do. 


I'll start with the long lengths of lace, big and beautiful and made with such fine thread. I wish I had a better lens to show  you proper close ups -


Lace 1 - 

Lace 2 -

Compared to the first two very wide laces, this is is quite narrow -

This is a most delightful filet lace panel, showing two cherubs holding a large flower garland, with a lyre above-

More filet lace pieces -

Next are some of the gorgeous lace motifs.

Motif 1 -

No.2 -

No. 3 -

No. 4 -

No. 5 -

No. 6 -

No. 7 -

Oh, and there was also a long strip of these beautiful lace motifs sewn together -

Are you drooling as well? You can probably imagine that I am EXTREMELY happy with my find.

Thank you all so much for stopping by and indulging me and my love of lace. Bit picture heavy, wasn't it? I know I get carried away where lace is concerned.

Happy White Wednesday, lace lovers and friends! I am linking this post to Kathleen's blog Faded Charm for White Wednesday No. 162.

Toodlepip xxx

Woohoo, SUMMER !!!

Yep, summer has finally arrived here in our little corner of Burgundy, France. Its been a long time coming, but at long last we have sunshine, and warmth, and we can spend time outside. I just had to take a few pics of the cottage -

I know a lot of you have already seen tons of very similar pics, lol, but those lovely new followers are a good excuse to post some new ones.

The crickets are out in full force, their evening concerts are quite deafening at times, but it can also be quite a soothing sound. Look at these two, jumping about on the old barn door -

I am so glad that most of the veggies and potted flowers survived the really bad weather and especially the wicked hailstorm while we were still in England. We have harvested peas, mange tout, french beans, radishes, lettuce, courgettes, broad beans are almost ready and the butternut squash plants are doing well.

Peas growing against the sun drenched wall of the four au pain ( bread oven ) -

It is so nice to be able to eat outside again, either at this table near the house, under trees

or just above the lower field at the little table, because we can see the little valley right below us as well as the large valley with our village -

We were sitting at that little table the other day, having lunch and drinking some absolutely delicious non alcoholic sparkling cider. It had come all the way from the States, via Germany, courtesy of a wonderful lady called Lanette. She started out a customer and soon turned into a lovely dear friend, who sent me two bottles of this gorgeous stuff ( and other little treasures ). She and her family own a cider making company in the States, Sheffield Cider. Darn, that stuff tastes good -

And after lunch, we were finally able to spend a little while in our loungers, soaking up the warm sunshine and reading for a bit -

Hector insists on having his very own lounger of course, lol. He is a funny thing, he loves climbing up on stuff, he often sits on top of the wooden picnic table and bench.

You know that I love wild flowers, and always pick a big bunch for the table in the garden. I always have them in a VERY heavy big old crystal glass vase - 

The last couple of days it has been incredibly windy up here on our hill top. The wind knocked this really vase right off the table. The washing was flapping about so much, I thought the line would break and my washing would end up in the top field, lol -

It was much too windy to take photographs of my latest brocante finds outside, and the cottage is too dark really to take decent photos of them. I hope that by tomorrow the winds will have calmed down and then I can get on with taking pics. Fingers crossed.

Thats all for now. Toodlepip xxx