What have I been up to?

Well, not much crafting unfortunately. I have made stacks of tags to go with customer orders, but thats about it. I  have been busy busy busy trying to sort out all the many little treasures I have brought back from France. I wish I could say the end is in sight, but heck, no, I have many days of work ahead of me still. I also promised myself that I would list a couple of things in my Etsy shop every day, and so far I have managed to keep that up for 4 or 5 days, yay! For example, today I listed a fabulous authentic French street sign, Rue de la Pepiniere, and some matching enamel kitchenware. I am going to do my best to keep this daily listing up. Keep your fingers crossed for me, lol.

As I don't have anything crafty to show you, I thought I'll give you a few scans to play with. I wanted to try out my son's new scanner on the printer/scanner combo anyway -

Feel free to use them in your artwork.

Have a lovely weekend my dear friends,
toodlepip xxx

Woah, that was scary!

Yesterday morning I logged on to Blogger, only to find that I had no blogs. They weren't just not showing up, apparently according to Blogger, I just didn't have any. PANIC! It was only a couple of hours later that my blogs were back again, I can't tell you what a relief that was.

So, when I turned on the pc this morning and logged on to Blogger, I wasn't really that surprised to see that Blogger was unavailable. I don't know how long it had been gone, but it has taken all day for me to be able to access it again. Just now. For the first time since last night. THAT REALLY WAS SCARY! I happen to like my blogs, they are my diary of sorts, and it lets my friends know what I am up to.

I just hope this sort of thing won't happen too often, I can't cope with scares like that, lol!

Hopefully I will be back to normal posting a bit later on, gotta go cook dinner right now.

Toodlepip, xxx

Oh, I had better put some pics on here, I don't like picless posts on my blog! Feel free to use these in your work.

A very mixed bag

As I said yesterday, I forgot to photograph a handful of teeny treasures I found during the 10mins or so we got to spend at the bootfair on Sunday. They'll be great to use in collages I think, but see for yourselves -


Some shanked mother of pearl buttons, a sparkly L brooch ( L for Liz of course ), and a pair of really pretty floral buttons -


A tiny beaded flower spray -


A handsome gent, who had lost one of his arms unfortunately, but too handsome to leave behind -


And these "coins", they look very similar to coins I had on some of my belly dance costumes. They are stitched to very old silk ribbon -


I have also scanned in the postcards I bought, as promised, and I'll share them with you at the end of the post.

First though, I have to post my Every Inchie Monday challenge. This week's prompt was "Endless" and it had me tearing my hair out! I wanted to put a Moebius strip on my inchie, but Madam Fumblefingers here couldn't get it together, lol, that tiny strip of paper defeated me! I had to give in eventually and go with my second choice, the endless circle -


I do love working on such a tiny scale, but it really is a challenge sometimes.

I should have made my Tag Tuesday challenge tag as well, but instead, I created this tag, just for the fun of it -


And finally, the promised scanned postcards, I hope you can use them in your artwork -


Toodlepip xxx

Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather

When I posted my almost last minute contribution to the wonderful OWOH event, I never expected to see over 100 comments on the post! Flipping heck, it really is quite overwhelming to read all the comments. They made my heart sing, my eyes twinkle and put a huge smile on my face. Thank you so much to all you lovely people who said such lovely things about my blog and my giveaway.

I have spent so much time visiting other blogs today, I didn't even think about the inchie and the tag which I haven't yet made for this week's challenges. ARRGHHH. That has got to be on my to-do list for first thing tomorrow morning.

I haven't made anything else today either, but as we can't have a pictureless post, I am posting a few images which I had scanned in from my own collection. I hope you can make use of them.

I found this one in an old hymn book. Aaah, Spring flowers, I cannot wait to see them popping up in the garden -


This one is a very old Easter card, which I like a lot -



Is this Spanish or Portuguese?


Just look at this gorgeous, chubby little darling! His name is Olivier, he was 3 1/2 months old when the photo was taken, and probably lived in Montceau - Les - Mines in France ( thats where the photo was taken ). I love the lace cushion he is sitting on -


I adore this one, a card in the shape of a (chocolate? ) box filled with flowers -


The reverse of the card is just as sweet, it has this delicate little blue satin ribbon with a deep red seal on it -


Now, the next two images will probably mean a bit more to my German friends. I found these two cards here in England at a boot fair, who knows how they got there. I think they are fabulous, Kaiserin Auguste Viktoria und Kaiser Wilhelm II -



Bedtime for me now, so have a lovely day/evening wherever you are, and I'll carry on with my OWOH blog hopping tomorrow. It is sooooooooo much fun. If you haven't done so yet, what are you waiting for? Go hop, hop, hop!

Toodlepip xxx

Free Images and new Blogshop Listings

I haven't really created anything in the last week or so. I've just been mulling over a few things, planning things ( great at planning, I am, not so good at actually doing ), and buying a few bits and pieces for the mulled over projects, lol. I so want to make a couple of the things the lovely Karla and Beth have come up with so far in the Romantic White Christmas workshop, especially a really gorgeous and dead simple Christmas Tree ornament, which I want to make into a garland for the fireplace. If you haven't heard about this online workshop yet, have a look HERE. You can still join in.

Well, the long and short of it is, I haven't really got much to show, so I have scanned in a few more images for you. The first three images are late Victorian Christmas cards, they came out of a Victorian scrap book. Rather unusual in that they don't show Nativity scenes, Santas, snowy scenes, angels, or Christmas trees with heaps of presents, but I love them -


This gorgeous writing is from a very old German postcard -


And two beautiful young French ladies -


When I took the last one out of the scanner, I realised how very pretty the writing on the back of the card was. So I scanned that in as well. I think it will make a great background -


There you go. I hope you can use some of the images in your projects.

I have also listed some more antique French ticking fabric packs in the blogshop, as well as some nice fat ephemera packs -

I have 4 packs of the fabulous 'neutrals', shades of creams, white and grey -


and these vintage ephemera packs, a mixture of French and English pieces -


If you fancy a look, you can find the blogshop HERE.

I am off to print out the template for the Christmas Tree garland which I determined to make over the weekend and get everything ready for an early start tomorrow. Thats hopeful thinking, lol. Ah well, we'll see how it goes.

Until the next time, toodlepip xxx

Some more images for you

I have been so caught up in the swap I am doing with Alexandra in Germany, quite often just daydreaming, lol, thinking about what I could put into my little swap package. That didn't leave much room for anything else, reading your blogs of course, cooking dinners, doing the laundry etc., but nothing much crafting wise. There were no boot fairs on the weekend in our area either, so nothing to report there.

Instead, I am going to post a few more pics of lovely old cards I found recently, and a couple of other bits. Hopefully, you'll be able to use them in one of your projects.




This plan of the Louvre is from a 1922 Blue Guide, Muirhead's Paris -



My DH and DS3 have deserted me and gone to the cottage in France to get it ready for the winter, you know, cutting the grass one last time, pruning bushes and trees etc., so I had time to list a few more things in the blogshop. BUTTONS! Vintage French buttons on their original cards :-)

Thats all folks, toodlepip xxx

I am a wee bit excited

Well, quite a lot excited, actually. The lovely Alexandra, whose blog Cottage Dreams I adore, suggested a swap a little while ago, and I jumped at the chance of course. I have just about finished putting my bits and pieces together, ready to be posted, and I couldn't help myself, I so wanted to share a few little snippets of whats going inside the package. I am just too excited about the swap not to show a teeny bit at least. It won't give anything away, I should think, but Alexandra, if you don't want to see anything at all, then stop right here, lol. And what theme did Alexandra come up with? Why, FRENCH of course!

Hmm, I'll just put a pic of something totally irrelevant here first, so that she doesn't see any swap pics by accident. I could share a couple of those postcards I found last weekend, couldn't I? That should do the trick and you may be able to use them for something in your projects.


And a beautiful illustration from one of the books I picked up recently, isn't it ever so romantic?


Right, now on to the little snippets of some of the swap things -






I'll post proper photos when I know that Alexandra has received her swap package.

No boot fairs today, sob sob, so I am just pootling about, doing this, that and the other. Not much of anything really, lol, I seem to be just shifting stuff from one room to another. Might settle down with my crocheting and put a movie on. Or perhaps I ought to be a bit more of a housewife and do some dusting and hoovering and all that nasty stuff........

Toodlepip xxx