An afternoon in the craftavan and day 6 of the family visit

This week's theme over at the Tag Tuesday blog is Jewellery and I immediately thought of diamonds and the saying ' diamonds are a girl's best friend '. This is my tag -

While I was looking through my ephemera stash, I thought it would be nice to put together some really good ephemera packs. I selected papers spanning 100 years, 1840s to 1940s and added some small embellishments bits and pieces as well. I'll be showing the full pack details on the vintageland blog, I'll just show you one pic here -

Day 6 of the family visit - didn't get to take many photographs. We did the usual things in the morning, brekkie, garden games, and then went to a restaurant for lunch. The girls were amazing, especially Grace, the 6 year old, who tucked into proper French food with relish. What a fine children's menu, tomato salad to start with, then she had some of my country pate which she loved, then she had a small steak and mashed potatoes, and ice cream for dessert. No chicken nuggets and chips here, lol!

No photos of the delicious foods, we were too busy eating it, lol.

In the afternoon, the grown-ups went karting at a rather good circuit about 3/4 hour drive from us. I stayed home with the granddaughters, which I thoroughly enjoyed. They wanted to use the very old swing set, but they had to clean it first, tehehe. Kept them busy for ages :-) -

I only have a couple of pics from the karting which one of my sons took -

The eventual winner - my daughter in law Ashley!!! Yeah, girl power!

Toodlepip xxx

Blissful Whites Wednesday - Beautiful Handwriting

I adore old letters and documents, the handwriting is always so beautiful. I was going through my stash this morning, trying to find a background for a customer tag, and thought that these lovely pieces would be nice to show for this week's BLISSFUL WHITES WEDNESDAY.

This sweet poem was written inside a 19th Century book -

French 18th Century document -

 Love this signature -

Letter dated  April 1886, Grenoble -

French document dated 31st October, 1842 -

If you would like to drool over lots of gorgeous whites, then head over to TIMEWASHED, where the wonderful Becky is hosting the BLISSFUL WHITES WEDNESDAY party.

Thank  you all so much for visiting. Toodlepip xxx

Trash or Treasure?

When you have a look at the first photo, you probably won't be very impressed. What on earth is that tatty ratty looking old thing, I hear you ask? Well, it is a book cover, the front bit of it, the back was probably lost ages ago. Now, if you don't like ephemera, you won't be too impressed with whats under the cover either, lol, but ephemera lovers will realise why I am so excited about this. At least I hope so, I sure fell in love with it.


On the inside cover, I found this beautiful old seal -


And this page will give away the reason why I love this so much -



All you need to do is translate the Roman numerals ................

Done it yet? Lol, if you don't know Roman numerals, let me tell you that they translate to.......
1713!!! Yep, this is a wonderful old Italian book, just about 300 years old. The typescript is absolutely gorgeous, the printers graphics delightful, and the paper just feels amazing. The author is one Carlo Gregorio Rosignoli, who lived from 1631 to 1707. How I wish I spoke Italian! I would love to be able to read this.



The book is a wreck, no back, no spine, coming apart in sections, and a little bit of water damage to the pages, but heck, it is 300 years old! And just look at the wonderful printing! I am smitten.
The good thing about buying a wreck is that I don't feel too guilty about taking pages and using them. I think of it as giving a new and interesting life to something which would have probably ended up being thrown away one of these days.




I wish you could see the paper properly in the pics, but I couldn't get a good close up of it. The colour of the pages is gorgeous and you can see so many little bits of fibre in the paper. You just can't describe the feel of it.

There you go, doesn't take much to make me happy, lol, just a few tattered pages, and I am blissfully happy. I might take some pages and put them in an ephemera bundle for my Etsy shop if anybody else is interested in these. Maybe.

Tomorrow is Pink Saturday, and I have something perfectly pink and totally gorgeous to show you. Until then, toodlepip xxx

How time flies

I seems that since Nick and I took up geocaching, the days just fly by. We have been enjoying some much needed sunshine for the odd hour or two over the last few days and we have been out and about enjoying the blue sky, Spring greens appearing everywhere and flowers poking their heads through the grass by the roadsides. Geocaching is even better when the birds are singing and the sunshine puts a spring in your step!

But it also appears that I haven't posted for ages, lol, I have been so busy enjoying the outdoor life. I hadn't realised how many days I had missed. So, not only do I have to catch up on last week's Tag Tuesday challenge ( which thankfully is a 2-week one, phew, so I have a few days more to think about it ), but I also need to get cracking on this week's Every Inchie Monday, AND I want to show you a few bits and pieces I have brought home from a couple of jumble sales and a little antiques and collectors fair JJ and I went to on Sunday.

It was sunny earlier today, so I took some quick photos of my finds. Not very much in the way of lovely antiques, but useful stuff nonetheless. Doilies, of course, and a large crocheted table runner -


A piece of fairly modern lace fabric, but great for cutting out lots of different motifs like flowers, leaves, etc -


Beautiful beaded fringeing -


which very neatly brings me to lots of beady jewellery bits. They are mostly modern, apart from the earrings, but perfect for taking apart and using in different projects. Lots of mother of pearl pieces, crystals, which will be fab for embellishing fabric collages -






A cross, useful for a mixed media collage -


A couple of brooches, this gorgeous seahorse one -


and this sweet little horse -


Staying with the animal theme, I found this cute little teddy keyring, which I'll give to my granddaughter once it has been cleaned properly -


Three Limoges gilded swans -


This absolutely gorgeous 1940s/50s Bambi -


I adore these vintage trays, which come in all shapes and sizes, and I can never pass them up when come across them -


A retractable brush, I think it is a hearth brush -


Silver plated dressing table set, which is in dire need of a clean, but so sweet -


A little silver plated dish -


A delicate little porcelain dish decorated with sweet little flowers -


And two little round china boxes, which are a perfect size to put into a couple of geocaches for swaps! -



All the above bits were from a couple of jumble sales. As I said earlier, JJ and I went to an antiques and collectors fair on Sunday and unfortunately my worst fears were confirmed - everything was sooooooooooooo expensive! But, and there is always a but, lol, isn't there, I did find some books. I love books, always have done, and when I saw these gorgeous books, dated 1871, I really couldn't resist, they had such lovely engravings in them -






Apart from the books, I only bought a few postcards, but I totally forgot to photograph them, arrggh. I'll scan them in tomorrow and share them with you instead.

We left the antiques and collectors fair at lunchtime and went to Brighton Marina to visit a bookshop, when we saw a bootfair! Well, the very tail end of one, lol, we had about 10 mins to have a quick walk round the few stalls which were left. Oh, if only we had known about it earlier, lol, we would have given the expensive antiques fair a miss altogether and gone to the boot sale instead! I did manage to find a few things in those few mins, this fabulous tome was first-


It was missing its cover and didn't look much, but the pages, oh those pages are crammed full of lovely old stuff and will make great backgrounds for collages -


On the same stall I found these old Estate papers, lovely crackly old parchment and the most beautiful handwriting -



I couldn't get the darned thing to stay flat, as it had been folded and tied up, probably for the last 90 years or so, so I only photographed a couple of little snippets.

I bought a handful of teeny bits and pieces from another stall as well, but of course, I forgot to photograph those as well, sigh. Tomorrow, lol, along with the postcards!

Hopefully tomorrow morning I will have time to get cracking on the tag and inchie. I'll try. I will.
Until tomorrow then, toodlepip xxx