A Little Bit of Vintage White Christmas

This year I don’t have a lot of Christmas decoration to show. With our two sweet kittens Barney and Dottie, who play with everything that hangs down, sparkles or just seems to be interesting enough to get hold of, I decided not to put up a lot and decorated only in the studio a little bit. Additionally I didn’t have a lot of time lately to prepare for Christmas. For some weeks we had been the foster parents for a sick little kitty that had been found in the street. After little Sally got adopted, we took in a street dog with her four puppies. The puppies had started to move and were in danger of getting hit or run over by cars. Since the mother had enough milk, we added three smaller ones from another litter that had been found abandoned without their mother. We’ve also been taking  care of a poor dog named Luna who had been run over by a car two times. She had 17 bone fractures and had needed several surgeries. One back leg couldn’t be fixed properly and is crippled. The other back leg is heavily damaged. We are happy to see that this leg seems to improve and she uses it more and more. In the beginning she couldn’t use it at all and walked on her front legs only. It was very amazing to see how well she could hold her balance. As you can imagine our little zoo kept me quite busy and I haven’t done much more than cleaning up after the puppies, feeding and walking the dogs. Fortunately 3 of the puppies have found new homes already and Luna is supposed to be picked up on Christmas. We hope that the remaining 4 puppies will get adopted soon as well.

Here are some pictures now of my vintage white Christmas decoration. It’s a mixture of things I’ve created, vintage finds and wonderful handmade gifts and cards from several dear blogging friends.

The cute rocking horse savings box in the picture below had been a recent find at a scrap yard.

 

This is one of the puppies who is still available. Isn’t she a cutie?

Merry Christmas to you and

your families!

After Christmas I’ll be back with pictures of a wonderful swap I had with my dear friend Marsha at Tattered Chick a while ago.

I’m linking this post up with Debra’s Vintage Inspiration at Common Ground.

Christmas Hugs,

Julia

 

Wonderful Gifts From Far Away

When I started blogging about 3 years ago, I never expected to make very dear friends in that virtual world but it happened. There is not a single day anymore, that I don’t think about, write to or talk to at least one of these friends. It’s amazing what familiar friendships have developed with some lovely women I have never met in person. We share happy and sad incidents, worries, hopes, everyday occurrences, creative ideas, plans etc. On special occasions or sometimes “just because” we send each other gifts. Opening a package from a blogging friend is always exciting for me and I had that pleasure several times lately. Suzy over at Suziqusthreadworks is one of the sweet ladies who have spoiled me. A lot of you know her gorgeous fabric creations but if you don’t, please hop over to her wonderful blog for lots of eye candies.

I was thrilled when I unwrapped this beautiful collage. I love the neutral colors Suzy has used, the adorable image as well as all the pretty laces, doilies and embellishments.

Suzy had also created this fabulous clutch bag for me. Isn’t it just stunning?

Here is a detail picture of the pretty yo-yo flowers and the layers of lace.

She also sent me this beautiful tag. I felt like a princess receiving all those lovely gifts. Thank you so very much again, dear Suzy!

Another fantastic package came from my dear friend Lisa at Tarnished & Tattered. She knows that I don’t get a lot of vintage treasures and craft items here and had sent me a care package with lots of goodies and one of her gorgeous creations. Isn’t that sweet?

Look at this awesome altered purse. Lisa had turned it inside out and filled it with ephemera, dried flowers and tulle. I love it! The adorable girl’s dress was a gift from Lisa as well.

Let’s see what else I found in Lisa’s package. Pretty laces and old buttons. Lisa knows so well how to make me happy. The metal feather-like piece and the vintage curtain rings are wonderful too.

A silver plated coffee measure, graphics, monograms and a pretty old book cover. In the paper bag I discovered several acrylic shapes to create with. I couldn’t get a reasonable picture of those though.

Lovely bird napkins and images.

Ceramic mushrooms to be altered, wonderful square clock glasses, a rusty ash tray and a monogram stamp.

As you can see, Lisa had spoiled me big time. Thank you so much, sweet friend! Your awesome purse is hanging on the wall here and I’m looking forward to playing with all the great goodies.

I’m very sorry that momentarily I can’t visit you as  frequently as I would like to. The power outages have increased and the electricity drops out 4 – 5 times almost every day. Sometimes for only a few minutes but often enough for some hours. It doesn’t make much sense to reboot the computer every time because the electricity might be gone again some minutes later. Additionally we have internet outages almost every day. I’ll try to stop by as much as possible though.

Have a happy week!

Hugs,

Julia

Everything French – A Box and a Swap

Thank you very much for your kind comments on the loss of our sweet Carlotta. They are very much appreciated. We both are still devastated and I wouldn’t be able yet to write a blog post about some creations but I had this one prepared already and thought, I would post it. Today I’ll try to create something to get some distraction and I’ll start visiting you and catching up with you soon.

When I saw Gail’s beautiful Paris themed image for this month’s Mind Wide Open contest, I was in. Some days before I had bought a cardboard jewelry box with little drawers and the plan to alter that pink thing. You know that I love neutral colors and so I changed the challenge picture into neutral tones. Additionally I used the oil painting feature on Paint.net for a more washed-out look. After I had removed the pink paper, I covered the box with book pages of a vintage German-French dictionary and dry brushed them with white paint. I did the same with the inside and outside of the drawers except for the fronts where I adhered Gail’s image. Finally I added some lace and buttons.

  

Please hop over to

Mind Wide Open

to see the other wonderful creations and to vote for one if you like.

I recently had a wonderful swap with Anneke over at lasize. Anneke sewed this gorgeous corset bag for me. Isn’t it the cutest thing?

Ann as well spoiled me with lots of pretty laces, two lavender bags and some charms. Thank you very much, dear Ann!

These are my gifts for Anneke. A tussie mussie and a jar filled with some lace and fabric flowers and a box with some buttons and charms. All three images I’ve used were provided by the lovely Graphics Fairy. Thank you, Karen!

I’m linking up with

Brag Monday at The Graphics Fairy

Blissful Whites Wednesday at Timewashed

Vintage Inspiration at Common Ground

Hugs,

Julia

CARLOTTA

This morning we found Carlotta, our sweet outdoor cat and the mother of our kittens, dead. I don’t like to go into details. We know that a moment of abstraction had lead to what happened and it didn’t happen on purpose. We are very, very sad.

Good-bye, my sweet friend. You’ll be in our heart forever.

Hugs,

Julia

 

A Lovely White House

When I receive a package, I get a little note in the mail, telling that there is something for me to be picked up in the main post office in Tirana. In the little town where we had lived in Germany, driving to the post office took me 1 minute and there was always a parking spot available. Here it’s a totally different story. Besides the lack of parking lots in the city and the heavy traffic, there are these totally, totally crazy drivers. Not only a few like everywhere but an incredible amount. Whatever they learn in driving school, especially the guys seem to forget it the minute they got their license or maybe they just don’t want to follow any rules because that and driving less reckless would take away from their masculinity. Red lights, stop signs, road markings … those things are obviously not made for machos. I’m not a chicken-hearted driver but here I don’t drive. NO WAY! Sitting on the passenger seat often enough freaks me out. That means, dear hubby has to drive me everywhere I need or would like to go. He doesn’t mind doing that but when he’s got lots to do, it can take a few days until we can make the trip to the post office because it needs some time to get in and out of the city.

On the postal slip I receive, the country of origin is stated, so I often have a guess who is the sender. When I got a message that a package from England had arrived, I was quite sure that my sweet friend Liz over at Lululiz in Lalaland had sent me something. I would have never expected though that it was the gorgeous white shadow box house she had shown on her blog before. The house would have been an awesome gift already, but Liz had filled each compartment with wonderful treasures and even added some more surprises.

To show you the beautiful graphics, Liz had used for the background, I’ve put in only some of the goodies. I LOVE this house. Isn’t it fabulous?

Liz has spoiled me with a lot of her wonderful vintage flea market finds, like pre-wound bobbins, a monogram stencil with my initial, laces, millinery flowers, a frozen charlotte and a needle book.

She added one of her beautiful tags and these cute envelopes that had contained the stencil above as well as the vintage pearls and the little numbers you can see in the next picture.

This is a tiny pot, Liz had found in France. Normally it’s used to serve a snail. I’ve eaten snails once and they tasted good. It was a one-time experience though. Let’s say the night after had been far away from pleasant, lol. A serving of vintage pearls is much more my liking.

When I opened the package, an enchanting scent of lavender escaped. It came from this lovely lace, Liz had perfumed. The beautiful box was full to the brim with creamy white buttons.

This was an amazing package. Thank you so much, dear Liz! The gorgeous house hangs in my studio and I’m looking forward to playing with the lovely goodies.

I’ve received some more great packages lately and will show you them soon. With the following cards I’m much more behind. I wish I could say they came a few weeks ago, but it’s already been some months.

This adorable card was created by my dear friend Martina over at Stempel-Gewerkel.

My dear Danish friend Dorthe over at Den Lille Lade had sent me this lovely card.

From my dear friend Marie over at Lost Bird Studio I had received this beautiful creation.

Thank you very much again, sweet friends! All three cards are displayed in my studio.

I’m off now to take a bath and then I’ll probably play a little bit with fabrics and laces. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

Happy Sunday everybody!

Hugs,

Julia

Rusty and Weathered

Ever since I had heard about the Erosion Bundle Project back in 2010, it was on my to-do list to bundle up some fabrics, laces and metal pieces to be corroded by the elements while hanging outside. It had rained for several days in April,when I looked through my stash, gathered some things, tied up a package and hung it from the balcony. I was hoping for some more rain now and then but except for one tiny rain shower that lasted about 10 minutes, we didn’t see any water coming down from above for the next 5 months. So you might like to consider this idea if you want to have permanent sunshine, lol. After a few weeks dear hubby felt sorry for me and started watering my bundle. However, due to the warm weather it always dried up too fast and there was no impact. Then I got the idea to hang it underneath the drain of our A/C. There it would get constantly irrigated during the day. I opened my bundle 2 months later and that had worked out very well. The fabrics had rusty stains from the metal pieces as well as mildew stains from a couple of fern leaves I had added to the package. Some fabrics were wonderfully eroded. The smell was pretty ugly though but I got rid of that by soaking everything in a mixture of vinegar and baking soda for some hours and then washing by hand carefully.

This is the quilt I created, using the fabrics, laces and metal pieces of my erosion bundle.

To accent the holes, I used a black woolen material as background that had not been part of the bundle.

 

 

You might think that this creation was outside the box for me but it didn’t feel like that at all. Everything fell into place easily, like I had done it a lot of times before. With my next erosion bundle I’ll wait a little bit because for now I enjoy some rainy days after the long hot summer and don’t want to drive the rain away ;-).

Have a happy week!

Hugs,

Julia

A Family Picture – Maybe Just a Little Bit Creepy

I hadn’t planned to create any Halloween decoration this year, but when I saw this month’s challenge image at Mind Wide Open, I just had to. I loved the image that Gail had provided and it just screamed “Halloween” to me.

For a little creepy look I gave the  family members enlarged heads and exchanged most of them among each other.  I sewed a spider web right onto the printed picture, stamped on some images, draw with a fine liner some details here and there and added some text and embellishments. The silver plated tray was the perfect frame for the “Abbott Family”.  If this is your family name, please don’t be offended. The name came up by accident when I looked through some images. I took it from a vintage add just because I liked it.

 

 

The tray was tarnished already but not in a pretty way. With a bit of black patina solution I got the look I wanted.

Please head over to Gail at Mind Wide Open to look at the other entries and vote for your favorite creation. Thank you, Gail for hosting the challenge! I’ve had lots of fun.

Have a great week, dear friends!

HUGS,

Julia