Bath Vintage Fair Saturday 22nd March

Come say hello at Lou Lou’s Bath Vintage Fair

Bristol Vintage Fair Saturday 1st March

The Hill Road Market Fair this Sunday

A last minute place at the trendy Hill Road Market has meant that I will be super busy for the next few days getting myself sorted. I have seen some inspiration of how to put my trios to good use which will make excellent Valentines and Mothers Day gifts.

ideas ideas ideas…

                        Lucy’s Tea Party  from 10am – 3pm at Hill Road Market                                61 Hill Road, BS21 7PD Clevedon

A collection of weird and wonderful lamps

I seem to have a fascination with weird but wonderful lamps. This is started when I was at a carboot on New Years Day in Weston-super-Mare a few years back. This is my ‘beautiful lady lamp’. Some of my lovely housemates hated her (Sophie thats you, but I think you secretly love her) and the others took an eventual liking. I had to buy her, she needed a good home, we needed a lamp and she was only £2. Needless to say she is still around somewhere as I can never seem to part with her.

beautiful lady lamp

I found this happy chappy in a garage sale in Milwaukie, OR for only $4. Unfortunately I had very limited space and had to say goodbye.

$4 at a garage sale in Milwaukie Oregon

I will keep adding to this blog post as I find them 🙂 if you have a particularly strange lamp or see one please tweet a picture to me, I would love to see it!

This weeks charity shop and carboot finds in Somerset

Both sets £3.50 for 6 x teacups and saucers

In the past few weeks I have been incredibly busy with my new job, which I am loving. So unfortunately vintage hunting was put on the back burner but now have been getting back on track. I popped to Weston Hospice on Worle Highstreet on my lunch Thursday last week and what treats I found.

Cherry Doily 50p
Two lots of 6 x teacups and saucers for £3.50
Vintage teapot £3
3 pretty blue and gold teacups £1.50
4 Royal Dolton dinner plates 10p each

cute £3 teapot

£1.50 for these three

Today I made a quick visit to Cheddar carboot sale and spent all of £15 on some lovely pieces, in particular my new marble side table. One of my old managers at Dew Gibbons had the best taste and she had a beautiful table in the basement (she never wanted to sell it). I managed to find an almost exact replica but the top is real marble rather than imitation… happy days.

Suitcase £1
Marble side table £5
Weighing scales 50p
Bottles 10p each
French tin 50p
Vintage sign £2
Cocktail book 50p
Plates 10p each

Oh hi new table

Bottles galore

My finds

NYE cocktail inspirations

Rockaway beach, Oregon inspiration

In July I visited Rockaway Beach in Oregon with my extended family for a few days. I was pleasantly surprised with the arts and crafts there and found some lovely inspiration I wanted to share.

Tea cup pin cushion – definitely going to try and make this

I have an obsession with old bottle at the moment

Lovely dressing table

I love the colours and handles on this cupboard

Tea cup storage

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…

Jewellery Crafting Bits

These are some of the pendants I have been collecting to make jewellery when I return to the UK. I am slowly getting better at twisting wire around gems and hope they will be perfect enough to sell soon. I love the stamps at a craft store I found (50% off coupon in the paper, whoop!) I plan to use them for my tags/bags, hopefully it will make it feel more personal. My great aunt also gave me a load of US army/police badges of her husbands so I want to do something really special with them when I have time.

Upcycling. The First Attempt.

I developed a major passion for upcycling furniture within the last year or so. This was my first upcycle attempt and I had a lot to learn. I bought the dressing table from a British Red Cross store it was 100% wood and came with a stool and a great mirror and all for £40, bargain! It was a really dark brown colour and just a bit dreary. I had just moved into my boyfriends house in Battersea and needed a ‘me’ zone (he likes things very tidy). We had some left over paint from the walls called ‘antique cream’ so I just used that. I bought some lovely knobs for the drawers but it was actually impossible to get them off so I just painted over them and they looked good.

Stage 1 – Sanding… lots of sanding! The paint sticks a lot better when everything is sanded down.
Stage 2 – Paint, as I said before antique cream gave it a vintage feel.
Stage 3 – Line the drawers. A great tip for this is to sneak into a department store and get wallpaper samples. This is obviously a bit naughty, but I was on a budget! I got a lovely wood effect in mustard yellow and cream which was really complimentary to the cream.
Stage 4 – Re-upholster the seat cover. I still have not learned how to do this, luckily my mum knows how. Note to self, I must learn!

Things I learned from my first time:

1. I didn’t use a primer. I did not want to spend the extra money/go back to the shop, which was a mistake. It took a lot of coats of paint to get rid of the brown. Always use a primer.
2. Buy paint suitable for wood. The wall paint does work but can chip.
3. Wax Wax Wax! Waxing is so important. The amount of make-up that stained it and had to repaint over before selling it on.
4. I was watching Kirsty’s Vintage Home and they used a tool to scrape of the sides of chairs to make them have more of a vintage feel. It would have been great to do that. I may experiment the next time but use a normal kitchen knife.
5. New knobs – I wish I could have forced these off.

I ended up selling this on ebay for £85. So after using it for a couple of years and then selling it on for a profit of £45 put a big smile on my face.