A nice day's market shopping

Last week at the trash and treasure market, I bought a box of mixed coloured pencils. Look what I got out of it! A whole tin of (about) 90 Albrecht Durer coloured pencils. That's the fancy kind. And I already had a cute Lindt tin just the right size. The couple of short pencils were already in my collection.

Nice day's trash and treasuring

I had a pleasant morning at a church fete today. The loot includes a Twinings tin, a Wade cottage, and a real grapefruit knife!

Oh look, another flea market

I found the web site where local trash and treasure style markets are advertised. This one as near us. Well. THIS end of it was pretty far from our apartment. It was HUGE.

Delicious yoghurt in terra cotta pots

I get very excited about these yoghurts. Not only are the yummy, but the pots are nice to keep. We visited Le Grand Epicierie, a food department in a department store, Le Bon Marche. As well as a wall of yoghurts, we saw butter, chocolate, jams, and so many other things we like.

Flea market day in Paris

It was Sunday, and some things are shut, so we went to Marche Aligre, the flea market/food market. Starting to regret not buying this gendarme's hat. I did buy a pretty plate though, and some postcards.

Rather a lot of PSX Rubber Stamps for sale

So, what is your latest project, Mrs Laing?

I'm glad you asked.

I recently agreed to help a friend move on the last of her HUGE stamp collection. I decided that on line selling would work best for me, so that's where you will find the sale. Here is the link to my actual items. If you don't see any items when you click, that probably just means I'm preparing more.

So, how huge is HUGE? Well, here's a photo of the boxes in my garage. As you can see, there's a bunch of boxes, and each box contains, let's say, quite a few stamps. So a bunch times quite a few is ... umm... lots.

The boxes are roughly themed. The boxes I have already listed are :
- Botanical
- Garden
- Halloween

and boxes still to come include Floral, Fruit and Vegies, Trees, Roses, Frames, Bears (oh my goodness, then there's still more).

And here's one example to whet your appetite. It's a gorgeous PSX rose garden scene, code number K2521. It's a rare and beautiful stamp (I have had my own copy of this one for some years, and it's one of my treasures).
















And I went looking to see if I had a photo of a card I'd made with it. Couldn't find one, but here's a similar one! How nice.

Here's the link to the blog about the sale...

And here's the link to the sale itself ...

Pretty flowers for Christmas

Many, many months ago I bought a little trinket from a trash and treasure market. It's a little flower pot with wires coming out of it. I don't know any more about it, except that it's marked "Japan" on the base. I thought at the time, that's an art project! I will art it! I will make it amazing!

And then it sat on the shelf for months.

So this week, I got out some pretty flower punches, some cardstock and glue, and make it Quite Pretty.

See, it's quite OK for me to keep buying weird stuff and not using it for ages.

Radish, anyone?

Catriona and I went to a church fete this morning. We had a nice visit, bought a lucky jar, some spare Tupperware lids, a set of 12 Prismacolor pencils, and this gorgeous Johnson Brothers bowl with a radish design. I told the lovely lady, it's the last thing I need, but she offered it to me for 50c!

Oh, and we had Sudanese donuts too. Multiculturalism completely rocks!

Come to my Stamp Sale

My stamp club is hosting an awesome rubber stamp sale on 29 September. I mean awesome. The eminent stamper, Ellen Eadie, has decided to part with her magnificent collection. She has mostly classic PSX stamps. As a sample, here's a birthday card I made recently, using a PSX stamp from my own collection:

This is a great opportunity to collect some amazing stamps. I've put all the details on this new blog, which I'll be updating through the month.

http://greatsouthernstampsale.blogspot.com.au/

Do be a love and share that link, will you?

Also, Happy Birthday Poppy Plum!

Oh no, my tea pot's broken!

If you know me, you'll know how much I rely on my teapot to keep me sane.

When things get stressful out in the world, I always want to go-home-have-a-cup-of-tea. That's one word.

My pretty little teapot (bought from Robert Gordon out in Pakenham, an awesome place because you can paint your own stuff there!) lost a substantial chip from the inside rim. It was substantial because it landed in my finger when I was rinsing the pot out! I had to call Catriona (who aspires to study medicine one day) to bandage it up. Now the pot is to sharp and dangerous to use. I've already broken the lid and substituted a non-matching one, so I guess it's time.

Here's a picture of the old pot in its heydey.

So I'm looking for a new teapot. I have a temporary one, bought from the op shop near work (a good place to get stuff with some character, and also donate a few buck to charity). But the temporary one has a bad case of drip-all-over-the-counter, so it's not going to stay. May have to give it to Lizzie for her ornamental collection.

The new pot has to be small, has to be gorgeous, has to keep the tea hot, has to pour really well, and has to be gorgeous. So I'm looking.

All about my Torso

The lastest arty news is that Cathy (of My Stamps) has worked on a terrific new torso mould. She's offering quality plaster torsos in a just-right size and classic design.

She got me to decorate one - my choice of styles. Well, I gathered up a few trinkets from around the house...

There was this toy swan, which spent the day on the workbench with me at a Michael DeMeng workshop in 2008. It emerged unscathed, but since then, it hasn't been so lucky...

Its head got chopped off in 2011 to get added to an altered Barbie doll (still named Mrs Swan-for-a-Head).

There was this baby doll (the smaller one) who wandered into the scene of action and got rather caught up. The big one is still living on the windowsill.

Then there was this little pie tin, featured in a blog post from 2010 - bought already rusty, it was no longer fit for culinary purposes, so I used it to soak up a little spare paint one day.

And the end result of all of this has been : this! Here's the torso (see how I resisted the urge to attach the wings conventionally).

Here we have the baby doll, strapped safely into her pie tin ...


















Nice back tattoo! This was the very last bit I added.

















And here's some for you to decorate!

Ponies, they are the latest thing

So, I went Trash and Treasuring the other day, and came home with, amongst other things, a bag of toys. Some My Little Ponies, and other gear.

Then later in the day I was at stamp club ... we rusted one of the ponies. At least, we started to. It's a time consuming process, and it's quite possible this particular pony wasn't properly primed.

We had to remind ourselves that stamp club is meant for rubber stamping. But hey. Read more about SERS here .

Creative weekend!

Well, it was Trash and Treasure at the scout hall. $3 bought me a bag of goodies, including some bulldog clips, a working fountain pen with ink, three excellent artists pencils, and some ratty old crayons. Which I recycled into pretty new crayons! A fun project, but a little messy, might not do that one again...

Oh, and a creepy giraffe toy with removable head. Hmmm.

Paris flea markets

Here's a sight from the very elegant part of the famous Paris Flea Markets. We used the market map, and made a point of visiting the different parts - there are a number of "marches". The one people usually send home photos of is full of gorgeous frou-frou stuff. Then we found the more quirky and recent vintage stuff. Then we found the the junk-y mixed old stuff. Then we found (along the street, and not actually in the market) an illegal market! As we passed through, the word went around, and all the vendors picked up their blankets of stuff and disappeared. Well. That was a nice mix of markets.
Didn't buy anything at any of them though. For me, Sunday at Marche Aligre was a proper treasure market.

Cool coffee cups!

Seen the very cool porcelain crumpled cups from Revol? Go look them up now if you haven't. We bought some seven years ago here, because they were so ... unique. Now they are in all the posh shops, so not all that unique, but since they come in gorgeous colours and finishes now, they are still highly desirable.
Then we discovered this. McDonalds have commissioned their own line, and are giving then away if you buy enough food!

I'm in my element!

It's the Camberwell market! No, it isn't, it's Marche Aligre in eastern Paris. All this lovely junk to look at, and a complete food market too. The boxes of bric a brac had old remote controls and broken mobile phones, all jumbled in with bits of china, fountain pens, advertising key rings, nifty things.

Hard Rubbish Day in Vermont South

I know, I know, when it's hard rubbish day, I'm supposed to rave about the awful junk we got rid of, and the awesome treasures we saw outside other people's houses. Well, our junk was prettymundane (even some excess cardboard boxes - now that's mundane).

But one thing has rescued the suburb from mundanity. SOMEBODY (no, not me, and not anyone I know) has dragged lots of mattresses from various hard rubbish piles, and had a giant game of dominoes!

Now that is cool! Probably naughty in a lot of ways too, but marvellous anyway.

If you are quick you can see them in Billabong Park, Vermont South. Before someone rolls up their sleeves and carts the lot away.

Creature Features in a book!

Well, it's not a book yet, but that diary with all the excellent animal illustrations is going to good use. I made up a set of A5 sized pages, and did a starter collage on each one (punched or torn bits of old text pages, then gesso and paint).

Then I started adding creatures, and whatever else the pages seem to need. Haven't finished any yet, but here's some interesting progress.

The edge of a foam block (one of those ones you can heat form and make a stamp - we get them from Reverse Art Truck, and now from Resource Rescue) makes a great paint smearer. I was really liking it there. And also just right as a "stamp pad" for when you want to stamp with paint. Which of course you must wash up right after!

Creature Features

The other find at the Trash and Treasure sale (this was the one at the local scout hall) was this old diary. What awesome pictures! It's from Taschen, who are famous for their arty diaries.

What fabulous collage material on every page!

Handyman Tips

Our screen door started slamming, instead of sighing shut like it's supposed to. Hmm, probably that tube-thingy connected to it. Honey, can you go to the hardware shop and get another tube-thingy?

Nope. Didn't see anything like it - it's probably too old to still be made.

So, at a local Trash and Treasure sale, I rummaged through a box of hoarded hardware that somebody's wife MADE him give away. Wow, a Warlan No. 1a Pneumatic Door Closer, exactly what I wanted. It had instructions and all the screws in a sealed envelope. $5 please, including all that other stuff you are buying.

And today Jeff and I installed the new door closer. Sigh!