A Holiday Table Project

I found a number of these small metal wreaths at an antiques and collectibles market the Saturday after Thanksgiving. No one was quite sure what their original purpose had been. I loved their white-washed gold, and I puchased five, immediately knowing how I would use them. The day before had been a holiday for me and instead of spending the early morning hours among shoppers, I had lounged in bed with a cup of coffee, watching HGTV Christmas decorating specials. It seemed that every holiday vignette had the chairs decorated as beautifully as the tabletop, and this was my inspiration when I saw the wreaths.

I gathered sparkly ribbon, a cream-colored cardstock and a damask print scrapbook paper, alphabet stamps from a vintage set, gold metallic ink, gold DMC thread and a circle die cutter. I punched out cardstock circles, stamped them with each family member's initial, and glued them to the scrapbook paper circles. I rubbed the edges over the gold stamp pad to gild them. I puched a hole in the circles with a large needle, threaded them and brought that thread up through the ribbon and knotted it. The metallic thread did not hold the knots well, so I put a drop of glue on each knot to secure it. The wreaths were suspended by the ribbon. I tied the ribbon into a bow and kept it from slipping when the chairs were moved by placing a small peel-and-stick glue dot underneath.

The wreath place markers were a pretty new addition to our holiday table, and even the three guys admired them!

It's Christmastime!

Happy Holidays!

Long Time Gone

My poor

blog has

been sorely

neglected

of late because

somehow, in this terrible

economy, I have been blessed with a full-time job. For the first time in nearly 20 years, I am not a stay-at-home mom or a mom with a part-time job chosen to fit around her children's schedules, but a full-time, salaried employee with all the responsibilities that go with that, and it has been a bit overwhelming. Between the 40+ hours a week, the need to play catch-up with my computer skills after hours, and to find a professional wardrobe, many other things have been pushed into the background, including my blog. I am back to blogging, however, and I will learn to balance everything as so many others do. Gone are my thrift store Wednesdays, but I will never completely abandon the vintage treasure hunt. I found this rusty tin and Czechoslovakian bracelet for a couple of dollars each at a great new Goodwill store.

This elegantly chippy Italian magazine holder was a curbside find. It will make a nice place for scrapbook paper or perhaps all those wonderful Somerset publications that keep appearing at my bookstore. The first issue of Where Women Create was stunning and inspiring. Congratualtions to everyone who had a hand in creating it, and to everyone who was featured there.

And, I did take a minute or two to drape Madame with a beribboned lace piece that someone must have begun putting together as part of a camisole or nightgown, but never finished. It was stuffed in a $2 bag of lace at a thrift store. I think this bit of frippery makes her look more like a Mademoiselle, don't you? I also picked up the latest issue of Artful Blogging and was so happy to see Tiffany's Show Me Your Form featured there. I had a great time participating in that blog challenge. And now I'm off with my real life dress form, my daugher, who has a fitting for a dress she will be modeling in a charity fashion show.

Isn't She Lovely?

For the past few months, I've been admiring the antique fashion plates featured in various magazine articles. When I ran across this 1842 hand-colored plate from a publication called The Artist on a recent trip to Minnesota I couldn't resist starting my own collection. Her wistful expression, pearl-draped hair and pretty pink dress were all wonderful, but the blue paisley shawl draped over the railing was the detail I couldn't resist. (Click on any of my photos to see more detail.) I found my fashion plate at Auntie M's (how perfect for a Kansas girl!) in Hopkins, Minnesota. In a previous blog I raved about another shop in Hopkins called Blake Antiques, and this town has definitely become a destination for me as we go back and forth to my son's college town. Hopkins' main street has some great old architecture and wonderful antique stores. If you have the chance to visit Auntie M's don't miss the lower lever. The basement booth where I bought this image (and several other items) was wonderful--full of vintage items perfect for collage, crafting and collecting. Here are the covers of a little French fashion book I'm working on. I was inspired to start it after reading Sandra Evertson's article Album d' enchantillon in the Summer 2008 issue of Somerset Life. I don't have an extensive collection of vintage textiles, but I was intrigued by the idea of playing with vintage fashion images, snips of old trim and lace and bits of ephemera. I have a few pages started, but as I'm new to collage, I'm in a "hunting and gathering" mode for this project so I can layer each page with as many pretty things as possible. While I was working in my studio this afternoon, I had the pleasure of listening online to a live radio broadcast of my son doing color commentary for his university's women's soccer game. This was a wonderful broadcasting opportunity for a freshman, and that kind of opportunity is why he's attending a school so far away from home. We miss him a lot, but we're so proud he has the courage to follow his dreams.

Scarlet Letters

This is the latest addition to my small sampler collection. I usually don't even look at samplers on ebay because my budget is pretty small and I hate being outbid! This one had a very low starting bid and no one else even bid against me. What luck! The really old samplers are silk on linen. After 1840, the number of samplers being stitched and their quality declined. Later samplers were more likely to be stitched like this one, with wool on a coarse open weave canvas. Many wool samplers fell victim to moths, but this one seems to have fared well. My new sampler, with its ornate letters, is similar to one in the book that got me interested in collecting samplers. It's called a Sampler of Alphabets and I just happened across it on a remainder table one day years ago. I found the samplers so breathtaking that I bought the book and began my study of this form of needlework. At one time, I maintained a website about samplers and co-founded a sampler guild here in Kansas City. I have also been lucky enough to study samplers in the archives of several museums and to attend a sampler symposium in Colonial Williamsburg. I'm not as active with them now, but I still love samplers. Here's a French sampler I own. The red and white combination was quite popular in that country. Unfortunately, someone washed this and the red binding bled, causing the linen to be stained. It's always ill-advised to wash old needlework because the dyes were not colorfast. Here's the sampler with a similar one in the book. And here's a different kind of red and white sampler--a knitting sampler. M really put herself through the paces practicing all kinds of techniques. (You can click on any photo to see more detail.) In a previous post, I showed you my favorite sampler which I thought had been stitched by a girl named Martha Lord. Now I know much more about it thanks to Susan at Miss Maddie's. Susan is a vintage textile appraiser in Canada. She did some research and was so kind to share it with me. A twelve-year old Martha Rod appears in the 1841 census of Raleigh Parish, Essex , England. This is exactly the right age for a samplermaker-- so her name was probably Martha Elen Rod and the word Lord was a religious reference which was very common in samplers. Susan also found a listing for a Hanker's Hall that was a branch of the Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire Banking Company listed in 1852. So now I know more about the stitcher and the building she chose to memorialize. Thanks, Susan!

These are the days...

I'm a Saturday's child and, as predicted by the old rhyme, you'll find me working hard for a living many days of the week, but recently Wednesdays became a set day off for me. I couldn't be happier, because Wednesday also happens to be one of the days the retirement home thrift store is open. Unfortunately, it's a popular day with the antique dealers, too. Don't get me wrong, I really like antique dealers. I sold vintage wares once and I'd love to again. It's just that, unlike the residents who are looking for a nice blouse or the employees who seem to favor kitchen items, the dealers are like me--they're looking for the old stuff. I have realized, though, that now that I'm not buying for resale, we aren't really competing that much. Now, I mostly buy for my little vignettes and for collage, and I'm sure the nice volunteer ladies who bag my purchases find some of my choices curious. These are some of my recent finds. Even at $2.75, it's a pretty ugly pile isn't it? But look closer. Oh sure, the button jar had lots of big, brown and boring and a good number of gold and gaudies, but all of these beauties were in there too. I waited until I got home to sort through them, but while I was waiting in the drive-thru at Starbuck's I amused myself just turning the jar round and round to try to see what was inside. Those mother of pearl buttons are so tiny they must be baby buttons and those funky green ones remind me of Tic-Tacs (Go ahead and tease me, Cami--I know colored buttons always seen to remind me of candy). The pages of the old watercolor paper pad were very yellowed-- just perfect for me! Look how beautifully these images from Sandra Evertson's Les Mode Francaises tag and sachet project printed up (Somerset Life, Spring 2008, pages 96 and 97). Sandra also used brads as an embellishment and gave a recipe for tarnishing them. For a quarter, I got a box of brads already darkened with age and perfect for the project. Now I just need the right fabric to make the sachet bags. (For now, you'll just have to trust me that the green file box will look better when I get done with it. ) I do buy some things that are pretty from the start. You can see I already turned the little gold and white tiered stand into a ribbon holder. This grouping (without the ribbon) was just $5.50 (and there's a second set of the blue and white dishes not shown.) According to the old rhyme, Wednesday's child is full of woe--maybe she should come shopping with me!

Show Me Your Form Party

Tiffany at Shabby Scraps came up with the wonderful idea of a party to show off our dress forms. I love the button she designed for the event, too. You can see it on my sidebar, but be sure to stop by her blog to see the original as well as the list of the 50 or so bloggers participating. Wonder who's under the lovely lace in my photo? She'll remove her wrap and join the party when you click {here}.