Beautiful Things...

Hello friends,

First let me say that I got to spend the day handling beautiful things which is always a pleasure.  But why am I so tired???  I don't know about you, but photographing and editing and measuring and listing just take it out of me.  Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!  Anyway, after looking at all of the beautiful photos I had just taken for items due to land in my Etsy shop The French Laundry, I decided I'd love to make a beautiful collage since I like making those and haven't done so in a while.  THEN, lucky you, I decided to share with you as I do a drive by post (my nickname for a quickie-definitely NOT done while driving though).  Some of these treasures are already in the shop and some will get there this week, but even if you don't stop by the shop, you can get some eye candy right from your armchair.  YOU'RE WELCOME... LOL!

I've also been busy listing some pieces from one of my favorite artists/designers, Robin Brown who created the Magnolia Pearl line of romantic wear.  These can be found on eBay if you're interested.  If not, do feel free to feel the love right here anyway.

These beautiful pieces can be seen for auction here.

Gotta run...those things won't list themselves!

Until next time,

Time in the Studio...

Hi Bloggie Friends,

Christmas time is almost upon us.  Yikes!  I am so incredibly behind.  One reason is I've been spending more time in my studio which is a good thing.  I made these pretty little altered boxes which hold what I am calling prayer ribbons/bookmarks.

Each one is different.  I altered the boxes which were vintage pharmacy boxes with vintage wallpaper and antique paper, lace on some, ribbons on others, a beautiful image of either Mary or Mary and Jesus, and, of course, a little glitter. Finally, a special word was added.

The medals came from France and the beads are all vintage from my stock of treasures.

The crinkle on the ribbon part is intentional.  Hope people "get" that. WINK...

These little pretties are available in my Etsy shop Elegant Farmhouse and would make a great gift for either yourself or someone else.  Hope all is merry and bright wherever you are.

Sharing with Feathered Nest Friday.

Until next time,

The Trouble with Finding Your Passion...

Hello Bloggie Friends,

First of all, it has been an astonishing first two weeks of business at my Etsy shop, The French Laundry.  YAY!  Sooooooo good for my psyche and good for my soul.  This being said, I must comment on the dangers of finding your passion, living your bliss, and selling only that which you would love to have in your own home (my words from my Etsy shop "mission statement" if you will).  I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE IT IN MY OWN HOME.  This means, each and every time, each and every purchase I make for the shop, I have to go through what I am embarrassed to admit is a somewhat GUT-WRENCHING-prying-this-stuff-out-of-my-chubby-little-hands-you-bought-it-to-sell-it little disco dance.  Really?  It's stuff.  Stuff I don't need cause I've already got plenty of my own stuff thank you very much.  Sigh...but it's SO pretty.  And when it is in piles, waiting to be photographed and described, it makes such a beautiful mess.  Yes, it does.  Mr. French Laundry, in this case, your opinion does not count.  You call it my piles, I call it a beautiful mess.  Half empty, half full...who is the happier one here, huh?  HUH?  Can you tell I'm having a bit of a dilemma?  I visited with a dear friend of mine one afternoon this past week (yes Sharon, I'm talking about you), and we commented on what kindred spirits we are.  We absolutely love the same things and her "work room" is a room I could enter, shut the door, and stay in for DAYS just looking and marveling at all of the beauty just piled up around me.  I kid you not, it is THAT good.  Maybe one of these days I'll do a photo shoot of her pretty piles.  But seriously, she can buy something amazing and turn right around and sell it, just like that, no fuss, no muss.  But not me.  No, I have to love on it for a while.  Put it somewhere and gaze upon it for a bit until I feel I've absorbed it's beauty and can let it go to a new home (some things have to marinate longer than others, I must admit).  That's just how I roll I guess.  But, once I let something go, I have to say, I've never actually had any regrets.  In fact, I can't say I've ever missed a thing.  Oh well, worse problems to have for sure.

I made this powder box out of old materials, even the box itself.

More from the beautiful mess pile.  Swoon...

I added a couple more vintage wallpapers to my wallpaper store on my blog sidebar.  Here's a peek at them:

1940's liles on soft green and white background

1940-50 Sears Harmony House floral clusters on neutral taupe background

I have also been adding new items to Elegant Farmhouse like this pretty Edwardian Motto Pillow:

Well, it is getting late and my laundry basket calls.  Hate that...

Until next time,

A Sunny Sunday and Time to Get Back to Work

Hello all and happy Sunny Sunday!  We had the most glorious warm June day today.  The kind of day that made you want to go walk barefoot through the garden sipping an iced tea or something like that.  But did I get to do that?  Not really...I have desperately needed to get back to my poor neglected little Etsy shop, Elegant Farmhouse and do some restocking.  I also had a shift at the hospital today (24/7, 365, you know how that goes), giving me limited time to do ANYTHING.  So, instead of whiling away the hours conferring with the flowers (any Wizard of Oz fans out there to get my humor???), I stayed indoors and got some much overdue shop keeping done.  I hope you'll forgive me the shameless self-promotion, but I do have some dandy offerings and they make a pretty picture as well.  That and I don't have much of anything else to blog about.  INSERT SHEEPISH GRIN HERE... Hey, I'm nothing if not honest...

The beautiful clock face above is a recent find.  It is Seth Thomas and get a load of the cool shape.  It is paint over zinc.  LOVE it!

The little bobbins you all were so complimentary of a few weeks back finally made their way to the shop as well as the cute cast iron urn.

Any Nebraska fans out there?  I found this awesome silk embroidered pillow a couple of weeks ago.  I just can't resist the old motto pillows and state pillows.  Such care was taken to embroider them.  If only I had some Nebraska connection...

Can't seem to resist picking up old photos.  These aren't in great shape but they'd been awesome incorporated in artwork, don't you think?  I have a couple of sets of them...

I got busy cutting and ironing some more wallpapers yesterday.  It is amazingly time consuming, but I just love playing with the pretty papers, even if it is just so I can sell them.

There are 10 sheets of different wallpapers, one large page from an old French dictionary, a vintage Bingo card, and a little romantic card all tied up with a yard of pink crinkled seam binding.

I also put together some wallpaper scrap packs of smaller pieces of a bunch of my favorite papers and packed them up in these cute little envelopes I made out of antique ledger paper.  OK, yes, I had fun playing so it wasn't all work!

I hope you all had a good weekend and are gearing up for a great week.  I have a boatload more goodies to add to the shop, so I'll get it done little by little. It's summer!  Woo! Hoo!  I don't want to get so busy that I miss it!

Until next time,

So what do you do with all that vintage wallpaper?

Happy April Bloggie Friends,

After my post about my vintage wallpaper for sale last week, I thought maybe it would be fun to show you some of the things you can do with it.  Of course, you can use it for the walls, but you knew that from the name WALL-PAPER, so let's step out of the box, shall we?

As you have already seen, you can cover boxes with it and have a very pretty storage container reminiscent of the circa 1940's hat boxes...

Heather from Pretty Petals covered some new boxes from Michael's with beautiful results:

Speaking of Heather, she offered an awesome online class for an art journal called "A Beautiful Life".  She steps you through lots of fun but pretty easy techniques to make a lovely piece of art using some of your hoarded saved treasures.  She uses lots of vintage wallpaper in her art and I also used it for my journal on the inside, I didn't use any on the cover, but I wanted to do a show and tell since I never got around to showing you the finished product after I talked about it a few months ago.

This page features a transparency picture of my grandmother.  Lots of vintage wallpaper peeking out from these pages.

Her name was Cecilia, so I made a little tag with her name on it.

There's lots more pages in the journal, but we must press on with the subject at hand. Now back to other uses for vintage wallpaper...I had this plain pad of paper, I think it was a refill for some notebook that I no longer had.  It was functional, but not pretty.  I covered the front and back cover with some wallpaper scraps and added a little bit of paper lace that I had.  Much better now.  It took about 10 minutes start to finish, easy peasy.  Love projects like that.

If you recall my lace organization cards from a few posts back, you might remember I said I finished them off with vintage wallpaper on the back, but I didn't show you the backs.  Oops!

I figure if I want a change from looking at the pretty graphic fronts, I can just turn them over and love me some wallpaper florals.

I also used wallpaper to cover my 1920's rosette trims which I ended up putting in a clear glass container so I can look at them as well as store them.

Speaking of storage, why not paint some plain old tin cans which you were going to throw away anyway (hopefully in the recycle bin), and upcycle them instead into pretty storage for your paintbrushes, glue sticks, etc.?

Can  you tell I REALLY got into the pretty factor for my studio storage?  If you use Kilz spray on primer, it will cover up the paint on coffee cans and things that are not just covered in paper labels.  Since I wanted white cans, I don't think I even bothered to paint over the primer. 

I was working on these cute tags yesterday and chose to cover the backs with...

Why yes, you got it!  Vintage wallpaper.  Naturally, you could make some killer tags using the paper as the front, but I just happened to have this work in progress handy, so lucky you, you get to see photos before they are done with the wallpaper gracing the back.

I love using wallpaper to back cupboards.

Source

You can get a new storage unit and jazz it up with wallpaper...

Source unknown-if photo is yours, please let me know and I'll link back

Carol at Boxwood Cottage made this amazing holder for wallpaper using a cereal box and...vintage wallpaper.  LOVE IT!

Niki from Nostalgia at the Stone House is an amazingly talented blogger and shopowner in the U.K. and she finds all sorts of uses for vintage wallpaper.  Did you know it looks pretty wrapping up handmade soap?  Now you do...

She has also used borders (or perhaps she handcut them from larger paper, not sure) for kitchen shelves.

Lastly, one of my favorites I've seen Niki do, embellished shoes using wallpaper for lining the inside...how cute is that?

So, my friends, these are just some of the fun things you can do to pretty up your world with vintage wallpaper.  There are many more uses out there?  Do tell, what do YOU use your vintage wallpapers for?

Until next time,

Linking up with:
White Wednesday
Knick of Time Tuesday 
Home Sweet Home
Fridays Unfolded 
Pearls and Lace Thursday 
Redoux 
Feathered Nest Friday
Creative Things Thursday
Simple and Sweet Fridays
Wow Us Wednesdays
Inspiration Friday at the Picket Fence
Pink Saturday