Coup de Coeur

I saw her from a long way away, and it was love at first sight. She was destined to come home with me. Such a beautiful face, so serene yet compassionate. She stands over half a metre tall. She put a smile on my face as soon as I held her, and the smile is still there. My beautiful Vierge -

I can display sweet French rosaries on her, like this shimmery glass pearl one -

And because this made me so happy, I am adding another couple of bits to the weekend giveaway, 2metres of this gorgeous metallic gold and copper trim which I found today, and a vintage French postcard of a family group -

Add a comment on the original post HERE if you would like a chance to win.

Happy Sunday! Toodlepip xxx

The Little White Shoebox

It sat on a side table, not on the large stand where all the desirable objects vied for customers. It looked tatty and very ordinary. Just a battered white shoebox. And then I saw the writing on the box, the magic word - DENTELLES -

Thats when my heart started beating faster and when I made a bee line for the stand, hoping for all those long seconds that there really would be some lace inside that little box.

And there was!

It took ages looking through the box to see what was hiding inside, and then negotiating with the stall holder, but in the end it was mine :-)

I found some gorgeous salesman samples in the box, with their original little labels, so special -

My favourite piece,  RESERVED for North America

Fabulous metallic lace -























The first layer in the box was pieces of the finest, daintiest Napoleon III era black lace, so very delicate and somewhat ravaged by time, but beautiful nonetheless -

Amongst the black lace was this beautiful black floral piece, perhaps for millinery -

And then there was the white/ecru/ivory lace ...

And that was not all, there were also many pieces of the most beautifully hand worked broderie anglaise, which I absolutely adore -

I can't imagine how anybody could produce such beautiful, neat, tiny stitches by candlelight. 

I hope you have enjoyed looking through the little white shoebox. Wishing you a beautiful new week wherever you are, toodlepip xxx

Whirlwind Days

Since we got back from France, it has been a whirlwind of appointments. Hospital, dentist, doctor, optician, vet, you name it, we had an appointment for it, lol. We tried to cram as much as possible into the 2 1/2 weeks we planned to stay in the UK. In between all the appointments for both of us, I am trying to get some of the brocante finds listed so that my darling son can post them from the UK when they sell. I looked at some of the photos I took in France, and realised that I hadn't even posted the last few brocante pics I took in the garden! Doh! So here are the finds from, errm, probably one Sunday 3 weeks ago, lol -

There are many more things I didn't get to photograph in France, and I probably won't have time to photograph them all this time round in the UK, so they might have to wait until September. But at least some of the items in these pics will make it into the shop :-).

Wishing you all a wonderful week and good news for all of you waiting for news of some kind. 

Toodlepip xxx