Inspiration: Old photo albums

I found these old photo-albums and an ink plotter a while ago. These were all from the twenties and thirties I think. Not in the best condition but still beautiful! So strange to imagine that these albums once belonged to someone, were part of someone's history. And the journey they must have made to end up in my studio.
I bought them initially to do something crafty, but I still couldn't bring myself to use them yet. For now I just look at them occasionally and wonder about the people on the photographs, who they were and what they were doing. One album is from Hungary, from a family called Winkler Karoly. Which Google tells me is quite a common name in Budapest. The other is from an English family spending some time abroad, somewhere in Europe. So wonderful to get a glimpse of an era I've never been part of.

inspiration: glass slides from the sixties

I've found these glass slides from the sixties a while ago at a thriftshop. All pictures were taken in Italy. Love how you get a sense of that era while looking at those slides. We'll be spending our holidays in Italy aswell this summer, so looking forward to our holidays!

Inspiration: a paper flower tutorial.

Believe it or not, but here is my first ever tutorial! How to make a paper flower out of tissue paper. Yes even you can do it! Give it a try!

Inspiration: fleamarket

When summer arrives, also do the local fleamarkets. They are always somewhere on a small square in a small village, and benefits always go to the restoration fund of the local church. Amongst a lot of terrible and broken stuff, there are always some treasures to be found. Like these seventies plastic pots, or the porcelain dolls arms, doilies or cigarbands. Great stuff for small prizes!

Inspiration: thriftshopping

Sometimes when I have a day off without the kids around (that seldom happens), I love to do some thriftshopping. Every thriftshop is different. In the one you can find loads of books, in the other vintage sewing supplies. This sign is in one of my favourite thriftshops. I really love this sign, unfortunately it's not for sale, I might have bought it otherwise. It would be a great sign for our bathroom! Just imagine it hanging above our bath! (I keep on dreaming though).

Some random treasures I found at random thriftshops. I do love a good treasurehunt!

Inspiration: porcelain drawing

I came across this porcelain paint marker and I thought I would give that a go. My daughter wanted to have a try aswell. Unfortunately the marker is awfull to draw with, or I was unlucky with this one. Next time I might use real porcelain paint (if I ever come across it that is).

Inspiration: old drawings

While sorting out the studio, I came across a box full of my old drawings. I decided to go through them all and to get rid of my most horrid ones. Here is a selection of the ones I decided to keep. I'm no great master in the art of drawing, When I was in art school studying sculpture, drawing was always something that was done on the side, or for sketching or something. It's only later on, that I started to enjoy it really. My favourite drawing tools were a simple pen and ink. I think they still are my favourite to be honest.

Inspiration: Mail storage

When moving in my studio, I was looking for an easy way to store my incoming mail. While visiting IKEA, I came across this lid holder in the kitchen section. Perfect!

Inspiration: Thrifting treasures

I just love a bit of thrifting, especially nice stuff I can use for mail, decoration for my studio or just because I think it's lovely. On Kingsday (I still have to get used to it being called that instead of Queensday) I found this vintage tin full of vintage letters. I was seeing these letters popping up everywhere on blogs and Instagram, but they were all really newish. Never had I seen a vintage one, until I stumbled across it on the Kingsday market. Yay!

How about these thrifted posh handkerchiefs that were once bought in Austria as a posh souvenir, but never been used though. I do have a thing for vintage handkerchiefs, especially when they are embroidered and in a box. God knows why, but I really love this stuff.

Normally I go to thriftshops for some treasure hunting, but this time I went to a flea market they call a free market. Well, it wasn't free, I had to pay some Euro's to get in, and once there I was really disappointed. Even thriftshops have better stuff, and of better quality and prices were ridiculous. I did buy this vintage toy car though, just because it is colourful, but the woman charged me a ridiculous price for it. 5 Euro, which I managed to negotiate to 4,50 with great difficulty. A small book, just because I liked the cover and the typo and some postagemark stamps! A great addition to my collection!

Inspiration: Vintage sewingthings

I have an accidental small collection of sewing things! I just love my thrifted buttoncard, the other stuff I found in my own sewing box, and the small card with fasteners was sent to me by Janien from Leuke Post. Isn't this vintage sewing stuff just lovely! My accidental collection is a little seventies with all that orange. Some of them I bought (and used ofcourse) in the UK while I was living there (in the nineties).

inspiration: stamp carving

Something that was still on my bucketlist, was learning how to do stampcarving. Via Instagram I met my new penpal Mirjam, and she is like my stampcarving hero! Turned out she didn't live to far away from me (well, just under an hour away). She invited me over for an evening, to learn tricks and trades from the stampmaster her self. And how much fun we had! It's always a bit scary to meet someone you have never met before and only now through the digital world and snailmail. But I put on my brave shoes and went on my way. And boy I didn't regret that at all! What a wonderful evening full of laughter and joy we had. In between chatting I also learned some stampcarving. Since I brought Mirjam a little gift, a tin full of plasters with a vintage nurse on it, thought that was appropriate since we both work in healthcare. I had wrapped this in a sort of purple pattern paper with a vintage postagestamp of vintage nurses.
And I decided to give that a go, a vintage nurse (it had to be a bit of a challenge ofcourse). And this is what I came up with: a vintage nursing stamp.

Inspiration: Babyshower decoration

My bestie was heavenly pregnant of her third child, so my other bestie friend and I decided that it would be great fun to organise a babyhower! I got a bit carried away with seeing all these beautiful decorations all over Pinterest and I infected my friend with enthusiasm for the idea. So we checked out busy schedules and planned a date. We spent a day shopping for stuff with no big idea in mind except that it would be a boy. And we splashed out! We got totally carried away. Bearing in mind that I would do the decorating part and she would do the baking/cooking part (she is like a fabulous cook, put her in just any kitchen and she will splash out something delicious from a stove). We did spent a bit to much money in the end on pressies (so many lovely babyclothes).
After visiting the first shop we went into, we decided on really corny blue and white, but because we found a lot of turquoise colours aswell, the combinations of the colours were bright and happy instead of dull and boring.
We found great pompoms for nearly nothing that would make a bold statement just hanging there, garlands, tablecloths, plastic tablewear, etc. We didn't spent a lot of money on expensive decoration but just bought a lot of cheaper stuff, since we wanted to a full table that was decorated to the max!. My friend made lots of nice food and canopes (she even made chocolate hearts and stuff!!!) (they were yummie). I tried to make a diapercake, that was harder then I thought it would be, but made two in the end. It looked like a "welcome to your big fat gypsy babyshower" diapercake but it fitted the whole decoration nicely. Before the babyshower we raided our besties house and sent her shopping for an hour or so while we quickly decorated everything. She was blindfolded while coming back (and being really anxious with what we had come up with) and surprised her when she saw all this! It was a great succes! Mummy to be got really spoiled with all the pressies and had to spent all afternoon just unpacking and eating scrumptious cakes and chocolates. And last week she gave birth to a lovely little healthy boy, ofcourse totally due to our babyshower.