A little bit of colour

I do love whites and creams when I am crafting, but every now and then I need a little bit of colour, nothing bright, just soft and muted, but colour nonetheless. Blues and greens with all their different shades and hues are my favourites, so when I was in my craftavan the other day, I made a little tag with those colours -

Toodlepip xxx

ATCs for ArtJoyStuff's PRETTY swap

Kimberly from ArtJoyStuff is hosting another ATC swap. I do love her swaps, so I couldn't miss out on this one. The theme is PRETTY, and I thought that even with my limited supplies in the craftavan I should be able to make 3 pretty ATCs. Here they are -

I used metal embellishments and of course some sparklies, matching the pretty lady's dress, for the first one -

For the second one I used pretty French lace from my stash and a lovely velvety hydrangea flower with a very sparkly vintage Swarovski trim at the bottom -

And this is the third one, lots of pretty pink this time, pink velvet leaves, a morceau of pink trim, lots of ribbon flowers (cut outs ) and of course lots of pink sparklies -

Are they pretty enough? Which one is your favourite?

Busy weekend ahead, fete de voisins tomorrow, brocante on Sunday, visiting friends, aah, it is a hard life ;-).

Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope your weekend is going to be wonderful, wherever you are.

Toodlepip xxx

It has been such a long time

I don't know where the days and weeks have gone. It had been ages since I have spent some time in the craftavan. I really couldn't delay any longer, I was so behind with the weekly challenges, I had to try and catch up. Two tags and three inchies later, here I am with a few photos of the completed challenges.

Last week's theme at Tag Tuesday was WEDDING. Such a lovely theme, I should have jumped on that straight away, but I just wasn't in the right frame of mind. But yesterday, I finally made the tag with hours to spare before the new challenge was up.

I had this beautiful image of a very sad looking young bride and of course my imagination went into overdrive. Was she forced to marry somebody she didn't love? Was her beloved called away to war on the day of their wedding? What made her so sad? So instead of a happy couple I chose the sad young bride for the tag -

This week's theme is COMPLEMENTARY COLOURS and that had me way outside my comfort zone. I don't often use bright colours. What to choose? Green and red? No, I don't like primary red. Blue and orange? Yikes, no, I dislike orange a lot. That left yellow and purple. I managed to find a few purple and yellow bits in my stash in the craftavan -

A yellow bird, a purple butterfly, a yellow ribbon and purple flowers, all on a stamped purple background with deep purple swirlies.

And these are the inchies I should have made over the last three weeks -

For WILD I chose wild hair ( I do know somebody who had dyed her hair this fabulous shade of bluey green ) -

Next was EVIL, and the first thing which sprang to mind was this saying -

And yesterday's theme was GRAY. We are not having grey/gray day days at the moment, but I do remember them from a little while ago when we had plenty of thunderstorms. So the inchie had to be a gray day inchie with a dark grey cotton wool cloud and rain pouring out of it onto a grey landscape-

Just the photo for the Sunday photo word prompt to go, but I haven't done that one yet, bad me.

I am linking the first part of this post to the much loved Blissful Whites Wednesday party at Becky's TIMEWASHED blog. Do visit, you'll love all the gorgeous WHITE posts.

Thanks you all for stopping by, and I hope you have a wonderful week.
Toodlepip xxx

Blissful Whites Wednesday brocante finds

We went to a little brocante on Saturday. It was hot, and there weren't very many stalls, perhaps 25 or thereabouts, but I still managed to find a few little bits and pieces. And apart from some absolutely stunning 19th Century carved jet buttons and a fragment of blace lace with ribbon embroidery, the bits I found were perfect for a Blissful Whites Wednesday post. For the first time in France, I found some gorgeous vintage millinery. Oh boy, you should have seen the smile on my face when I walked away with those gorgeous little velvet and silk flowers! Here they are along with a few pieces of lace, some vintage gloves, and a sweet little child's or pram pillow hand embroidered with silk -

Have a wonderful Wednesday wherever you are, and if you can spare a few minutes, check out all the other beautiful whites over at TIMEWASHED.

Toodlepip xxx

Our Beautiful World - AUGUST

The world prompt over at the Our Beautiful World blog today is AUGUST. To me, August at our cottage in France is all about harvesting from our little veggie patch ( brocantes are important as well of course ;-) ). At the moment we are harvesting potatoes, peas, green beans, yellow courgettes, white round courgettes, beetroot and lettuces. The tomatoes are very late this year, they are only just beginning to turn red, and the sweetcorn for corn on the cob won't be ready for another couple of weeks yet either. As the tomatoes weren't ready for a pic, I picked a few raspberries for a splash of red in the pics. My favourite veg at the moment are the round white courgettes, love them just sliced and fried in butter with a little salt and pepper. Great stuffed as well when they are quite big. So I am starting the pics with a white courgette -

Why don't you take a pic of what August means to you and link it over at the Our Beautiful World blog as well? It would be great to see your thoughts in pics.

Toodlepip xxx

Our beautiful world - WAITING

I have so little to show you this week, it is so very hot and my craftavan is like an oven, so I haven't made anything. And I think the heat has affected my memory as well, lol, how come I am almost a week behind with my photo for Our Beautiful World? I thought I had done this week's but it was last week's I was thinking about. Anyhoo, the word prompt was WAITING, and it just had to be a photo of our two dogs. They are the most pathetic creatures when they are made to wait for their scoobiesnacks. They drool buckets, they focus on your hand with such incredible concentration as if there is nothing else in the world more important, and you can tell that the waiting is almost painful for them. But usually they behave well, sit down, and wait fairly patiently -

Gotta love those sweet darlings.

Keep your fingers crossed for the brocante tomorrow. I am on the hunt for a few specific items for a couple of people.

Toodlepip xxx

A little surprise for one of you!

I had such a lot of lovely people dropping in to see my little craftavan during the Where Bloggers Create visits, I decided to give one of my visitors a little surprise - I held a secret giveaway! I collected bits and pieces from around the craftavan, lace of course, braids, a cabinet card, a button card, MOP buttons and sequins, a scrap of ticking fabric, a tiny key, vintage French seam binding, oh just look at the pics, and you'll see all the things I put together for one visitor -

And then I sat down and picked a winner the good old fashioned way. Whose name came out of the draw?

MAY, from May's Happy Daze blog!

I hope you can use the pretty little things I have put together, May.

Well, that was it really, I just wanted to once again say thank you for all the wonderful comments the visitors left on that post, it was such a delight to read them all.

Toodlepip xxx