Sunny Saturday

It sure was a beautiful day. The early morning was surprisingly cold, but within a couple of hours the sun broke through the clouds, and it warmed up so quickly. Paige and I checked on the seeds we sowed yesterday, as she was sure that she had seen one growing last night. Right, hmmm. Surprisingly, nothing was poking through the soil yet, lol.

I had promised her to take her along to a boot sale at lunchtime, so we talked Nick into taking us there. He is such an adoring uncle, he didn't mind wombling about with us. She was so happy when we found what we had been looking for, a lovely big Polly Pocket set. No figures, but that was ok, we have a few, so that was not a problem. AND....... she found a gorgeous pure white Kitty with a waggly tail and a crown and she talked! Oh to be a child. She giggled so happily whenever she pressed Kitty's paw and Kitty talked to her.

It wasn't a very successful one for me though, all I managed to find was a large darning mushroom, lol! Not to worry, tomorrow is another day, and hopefully ( please keep your fingers crossed ) the man with the ledgers will be there and will have kept one back for me.

After we took Paige back to mummy, I spend a couple of blissfully peaceful hours in the garden, sewing flowers to my knitted square blanket. I won't bore you with picture of it today, as it is still not finished, sigh, but it won't be long now, and then I'll show you the final pics.

I also made a few more tags, which was fun. Two sets of three, and I think they are quite sweet. The background is stamped in copper, I used some pretty vintage girl images, old music sheet, a bit of ric rac, buttons etc.

This is set 1 -





And this is set 2 -




I am ready for a cup of tea now. Have a great Sunday. Toodlepip xxx

Seaside tags

I mentioned yesterday that I had scanned some small fish images from an old encyclopaedia. I love those little engravings, I had some bird ones the other day for birdie tags. Perhaps I'll find some nice small butterfly engravings next time I look through the book.

Anyway, The fish put the idea of seaside tags in my mind again. Originally, I had planned to use some bathing beauties, but couldn't find any. Darling Anne from Birdcages and Butterflies has now come to the rescue and emailed me some, woohoo! Thank you so much, Annie, you are a star! Dang, I do get sidetracked, lol. Back to the fish and the seaside tags, lol.

I had some white tags, but I wanted them to be blue really, so I nicked my granddaughter's watercolour box ( shame on me ) and did a very gentle blue wash over the white tags. Worked ok. Aged the little printouts of the fish, added a bit of a song called The Crystal Sea, a couple of shells, a little fish and some stickles glitter glue which looked like golden sand to me. Tadaa, seaside gift tags -





Oh yes, forgot to mention, there are lighthouse pictures as well, lol.

Didn't have much time for anything else today, we have our granddaughter Paige with us at today and tomorrow.

Fingers crossed for the weekend, weather should be great, which means a couple of boot sales, a bit of gardening, and lots of feeling great in the sunshine, yay!

Have a wonderful weekend wherever you are. Toodlepip, xx

What did I achieve today?

Well, not an awful lot in the way of crafting. I have been fardledardling about with scanning little images of fish from a 100 year encyclopaedia, spent ages sorting images on the computer, got hopelessly bogged down trying to tidy my shelves, and the things which I should have been doing are still waiting to be done.

So really, I don't have anything to show for my day, lol. But, I do have some more images for you, which you may be able to use in your art projects. I had planned to post them during our France visit, with scheduled posts, but that failed miserably, lol, as you may remember.

First, a couple of school prize book labels -


Just look at the tiny waist on this lady -



Aaah, a smiley face, thats better


Hopefully, I'll be somewhat more productive tomorrow. I'll leave you with some pics of some more wildflowers, France of course -


Toodlepip, xxx

Just Tagging Along

I had promised a blogging friend to scan some pictures from a very old dictionary, just little engravings to use on tags. I had a lovely time going through the many pages and finding images which I thought were suitable. In the end I decided on bird images, they were just too irresistible.
I loved them all, so I printed them out for myself as well and started messing around with them -


Of course I spent so much time searching through the dictionary that I ended up having to take photos with flash, which I really dislike intensely. Still, it will have to do for tonight.

I only made a couple of the birdie tags, but I am going to make some more tomorrow morning, promise, lol! This picture is probably closest to the proper colours and shows that lovely gold metallic " Emperor's Gold " so nicely -


You'll have to ignore the flash reflections etc in the other pics , like in this one, for example, with the tags on a sweet little silver plated flat basket which I picked up a little while ago ( and haven't polished yet, lol )-




I also made one other tag today, to go with a lovely customer's purchase -


Thats it, a very short post for me, lol, and yes, I heard that sigh of relief!!!!

Toodlepip, xxx

Landscape engravings

I mentioned yesterday that I found the most wonderful book last week - "Landscape Illustrations of the Bible, consisting of Views of the most Remarkable Places mentioned in the Old and New Testament". What a mouthful, eh?

Such amazing illustrations though. Some of the original paintings/sketches were produced by rather famous artists, like Turner for example, and were then engraved by the Finden Brothers. I wanted to find out a little bit more about the book, googled it and found a book site which was selling the individual engravings from a broken copy of the book. I nearly fell of my chair. They were selling at $90 and $100 dollars each! Well, the two I looked at, I was too shocked after that to look for more, lol. I loved the book as soon as I saw it, but had no idea it was that valuable.

Anyway, I promised to scan some images for you, so here you go.


And now I had better get back to doing something productive, lol. I have been thinking about making seaside themed tags for a while and been trying to find some nice images, but didn't have much luck. Was looking for some bathing beauties, couldn't find the right ones, so in the end I went with sea creatures instead. I found some fabulous stamps in the local antiques market and scanned those in. Really want to do those today. Also have to do some packaging up, my lovely lovely oh so French inkstand is going overseas along with some of those fabulous antique French keys! AND I still have to finish the apron for Sarah's apron swap! Will it leave me with enough doggie cuddle time??? OF COURSE, nothing can stop that, lol.

Toodlepip xxx

Simple pleasures, and a few images for you

When we are in France, one of the things I enjoy most is just wombling down the lane and looking at all the lovely wild flowers and critters. Actually, to see some wildflowers I don't even have to go as far as the front gate, lol, our so called garden really is more like a meadow/field. We found one corner of it covered in dandelions, a see of bright yellow!

If only they didn't all turn into this -

Now these little daisies are so sweet, and when we finally bring our granddaughters over to France, I'll be making lots of daisy chains with them -

Big patches of tiny little flowers carpet the sides of the little lane which runs past our cottage -
They are really really tiny, but so very pretty -

And these beautiful blue ones are the teeniest weeniest ones -

The wild rose in our garden/meadow/field was just about to flower. This bud was almost sparking with dew -

Finding dew covered spider webs -

Simple pleasures indeed, but they make me so happy.

This also makes me happy, seeing my DH and our doggies sitting in the grass and watching life go by in the valley below -

Or watching Hector pretending to be a little lap dog -

He doesn't always look so silly, he is really quite the most handsome dog in the whole wide world, and we are not biased at all, LOLOL -

Oh I must stop looking at the photos from last week in France, lol, otherwise I'll never get this post finished.

I have found some very pretty books recently so I thought I scan them in, in case some of you can use the images for your collages, as backgrounds perhaps -

I love this green!!!

The images are quite a good size, click on them to get the larger size, and then click on them again to get the biggest size.

I also found a wonderful book called Landscape Illustrations of the Bible. Published 1836 and full of the most beautiful engravings. You don't have to be religious to enjoy those engravings, they really are quite wonderful landscapes. I'll try and scan some of them during the week.

I hope you all have a wonderful evening/morning wherever you are. Toodlepip xxx

A few more France pics

Digital cameras make it so easy to take hundreds of photos, too easy really. It takes so long to go through them and decide which ones to keep, which ones to discard, which ones to share with you gals. Sometimes when I look through the photos I find myself minutes later still gazing at the same picture with a dreamy smile on my face, remembering the moment the photo was taken. That doesn't help when one is trying to get a blog post together, lol.

I did say yesterday that I managed to get to a couple of vide greniers and that I bought a few things. I wanted to photograph them in France, you know, authentic flavour and all that, but the weather was so fickle, I only managed to photograph a few things outside, and the natural light inside the cottage just wasn't good enough when it was peeing down outside.

One of my favourite finds was this fabulous Art Deco vase complete with flower frog insert. The colour is amazing and the rose border is just so pretty. But have a look for yourselves -

Such a fabulous shape. Can you see that filled with big orange and yellow blossoms? Or a big bunch of pearly, creamy white ones? It is destined for Vintageland though, I cannot fit anymore coloured glassware into our yellow bedroom in the cottage.

Now this next item is definitely staying at the cottage. It is a vintage wash basin. There would normally be a little water tank with a teeny tap above it, both fixed to a piece of wood and placed in the bedroom. I just love that fabulous blue! Next time we go to the cottage, I am going to plant it with deep red geraniums and fix it to the bread oven wall in the garden. I think that will look quite stunning -


This gorgeous lidded copper bowl is also staying at the cottage and joining my copper collection. I love the hammered body and the beautiful leafy design on the lid. It also has an immensely tactile shape, very strokable, lol -


I was so eager to get things photographed before the rain came down again, that I didn't clean anything. So the next two items look in a bit of a state, but believe me, with a bit of elbow grease and copper cleaning stuff, they will come up really beautifully. The design of the oval copper tray and the crumb tray is so incredibly intricate, I find it very beautiful indeed


They will also be listed in Vintageland, because I already have a similar set, but I just couldn't resist buying these. They called to me, they did.

Just look at this, can it get any more French than this? I just had to buy this oh so Parisian ink stand, even though I don't have a lovely desk to put it on ( going to Vintageland, yep ). The Tour Eiffel and the L'Arc de Triomphe pictures are on the actual ink well covers. The ink wells still have their original tiny ink containers, which are removable -


There are more French treasures of course, I photographed some of them today in between all the other mundane things one has to do, including some really quite fabulous antique monogrammed linen sheets, the most amazing antique pillow cases, and some rather interesting music sheets from the 1920s and 30s. I haven't edited them yet though, so will have to post those tomorrow.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the wisteria which I planted three years ago, a tiny little thing it was. And look at it now, it has grown so much -


Fingers crossed for good weather tomorrow so that I can photograph some more finds, I really don't like flash.

Have a great weekend! xxx