Collecting, Upcycling, Repurposing vintage

Almost end of the year. I've been really into vintage this past year and collected a lot of it for various purposes: repurposing for home, arts and crafts, upcycling, restoring and simply collecting vintage for the sake of loving it. That included painting and upholstering, sowing, fixing, mending and creating. I bought this antique cabinet, painted it red and inserted floral curtains to give it a cottage look. Then filled it with my massive collection of vintage doilies, hankies, embroideries, tray cloths, tea cosies and aprons:

Upcycled chairs in my studio, painted them red and reupholstered, adding a cute touch of sewn hearts. This one was truly a fun projects and easier than it seems! This is my vintage sowing machine cover on the background: red and white, decorated with flamboyant lace, found it in a charity shop:

Bought few old travelling suitcases, to create some kind of side tables out of them, and filled them with my getting huge collection of hand embroidered table cloths:

From my collection of hand embroidered vintage table cloths. I find them in charity shops or order online from vintage dealers. I adore hand made things of olden days, especially embroideries, this is a dying art, many hours of work and love went into it, these days we have no time, nor patience to do things like that:

Converted old metal bench into a day bed filled with vintage cushions from charity shops:

Added vintage touch to various parts of my house: lounge, kitchen, bedroom. Collected many vintage tripods and several framed bird tapestries:

I did a fair amount of sowing projects with my acquired vintage textiles: here is red and white doily blanket, redesigned and repurposed. I finished it right on time for Christmas. I basically took two old blankets, sandwiched batting in between of them and sowed vintage doilies on top of one side:

I feel I was really blessed this past year with discovering passion for vintage, everything handmade and full of history. I have so many more findings and will share them in my other blog posts. Thank you for coming by, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Rags & Lace - Fabric & Paper Book

Recently I acquired a big bunch of vintage doilies, lace, fabric and paper from various charity shops. It took me 4 days to make this 150 page "Rags & Lace" book (if count both sides), 50 pages are vintage fabrics, 50 pages are craft and vintage paper and 50 pages of 200 gsm quality watercolor paper. I am quite pleased with the way it came out - a rough and tender shabby chic... It's filled with numerous pockets hiding vintage paper treasures and cute tags inside of them. For a binding I used as a reference a lovely book of Jeannine Stein "Adventures in Bookbinding". Burned hessian was rescued from a pile left after our garden tool house burned down last winter. I will be selling this book in my Etsy shop.

Index Card Challenge – Week 3 & 4

I had some lost camera battery issue for two weeks, now that it's resolved, I am posting 2 weeks ICADs - index card challenge happening now on Daisy Yellow blog:

Chocolate Lovers Book - Art Journal

When I travelled in US 3 years ago, I tasted a large variety of dark chocolate there and especially loved Godiva and Trader's Joe. I found all the covers lying in my junk box recently and decided to make a book or a journal out of them. I added some Lindt and Cote D'Or to the bunch, tied 11 of them into coptic binding with a red yarn, sowed lace, added beads and other ephemera - and voila - I have a cute 22 page Chocolate Lover's book, that still smells of chocolates and invites you to write you notes or create your art in it. I wanted to eat it up, but on a second thought decided to list it in my Etsy shop. Let someone else enjoy the book, with a cup of coffee and a chocolate bar in their hands.

Index Card Challenge - Week 2

I must say I am madly in love with collage, for many years. Sometimes to the point, that I refuse to paint, only cut and glue. I do however add pen, stitching and paint in the end, as it integrates collage better. But nothing makes me happier than a bunch of paper junk, scissors and a glue stick. Here are 6 more index cards, altered for the Daisy Yellow ICAD challenge 2013: List of Favourites & Paisley:

Camera & City

Rubber Stump & Junk Mail: