Hey, here's something that is actually vintage clothing related in this week's blog post! It's a very cool item that I bought in with a load of vintage last month, and I decided to keep it for myself because I liked it so much. It's a little moire silk bag with rayon cord strap and tassels. But I want you to look closely at the design in the moire below, what do you see? It's the sphinx and 2 pyramids! It's on the front and back and on the two inside panels when you open the sides. Click on the images for larger views.
To the left here is a closer view of the strap cord which runs down each side and ends with a tassel. The cord runs through metal rings at the top and bottom on both sides of the bags. The rings have tiny marcasites on them.
The bag is open in the middle, and each side unsnaps and lifts up to reveal inner compartments lined in ivory silk. Below you can see another sphinx on the black area and a heavy mirror attached to the top of the ivory lining. Inside is an old make-up powder puff and a little silk bag with snap closure and a small piece of nail file paper is on the front of the little bag, in case of broken nail emergencies!
Ah Spring! The rhododendrons out front are blooming. There are 13 big bushes, and here are a few pictures of them. They don't look very tall in the photos though, I need someone to stand by them to give you an idea of the size. They're like 8 to 10 feet tall. There is a clearing in the front yard, and the bushes are planted around the one side of the clearing. There is also a very cool looking pine tree with droopy needles in the middle that I really like. We've had a lot of rain this past week, so everything in the woods looks very green and pretty. The Laurel is starting to get tiny pink buds, so those will be blooming prettily in a week or so.
This is the beach at the end of our road 
I don't know why, but I love the picket-y beach fences. They're really made to hold sand and form dunes rather than look pretty though.
This is out on the beach looking north.
And a view looking south down the beach.
This week's project was scraping, patching and painting the upstairs pink bedroom in Strathmere. Now, this fabulous old house is 104 years old and it still has it's original plaster walls, complete with layers of peeling paper on it. It had the potential to turn into a huge nightmare project, but I kept the scraping and patching to a minimum. I only scraped the areas that had obvious peeling because I just didn't want to get into scraping the whole room down to the plaster. To the left is a not-totally-before shot, more like a halfway shot. I've got the walls scraped, patched and covered with a white basecoat. Ah, yes, that is a box of Cheez-its on the chest. Don't you know that is the food of hard workers? I pushed all the furniture to the center of the room and covered them with some tarps. The door in the background was painted dark pink too, but that will go back to being white when I'm done.
The next image is the other side of the room, you can see the original dark pink that I am trying to cover and some of my patching. The new color is Tea Room Cream by American Tradition. It is a pale creamy yellow. I used that color in my hallways and stairway during my brief time as a homeowner. It's a very pretty neutral color with just a soft hint of yellow. It looks nice with alot of things. The white door in this photo is a closet. Oh, I also painted 14 doors in the house this week too! I'm really tired of painting!
Vintage Clothing Themed Altered book update - My theme this month was 'Fantastical Frocks' So for my two page layout, I decided to feature some fantastic frocks by Adrian. He was THE designer for MGM in the late 1930s to very early 40s. He designed for Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, Hepburn in the Philadelphia Story and many others. He dressed the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz too. Anyway, once I pasted in photos of those pretty gowns, I didn't want to do anything too artsey to cover them, so my creativity was very minimal on this page I'm afraid. The book had great photos of Normandy, fields and castles etc. It made me think of fair maidens. So I did a 2nd two page layout with a picture in the book of a building surrounded by water. Then I made little doors and put in photos of some John Waterhouse painting of pretty ladies. Kind of a stretch for vintage fashion, but they are wearing pretty dresses!
Here's a fun weekend bag that I use to haul my stuff around. Made of straw, with green yarn designs, it's big too. Enough room for clothing, food, work stuff etc.
Below is a closer view of that bear that you see setting behind the bag. I made him about 10 years ago I guess. Pale yellow terrycloth courtesy of the Rag Shop, which is where I worked for 5 years before I got into selling vintage. He's holding his honey pot. I wanted him to look kind of like the very early Winnie the Pooh. I still have some grey terry boxed up somewhere that I wanted to use to make an Eeyore. My Mom made me an Eeyore when I was very little, he's packed up somewhere around here too. I had been trying to find the old pattern for him and someone on a sewing messageboard had it and sent me a copy several years ago. But now I don't know where the pattern is of course!
I'll be glad when I can move into my bigger room and get re-organized and then I'll be able to get into all my things that have been packed up for the past year. Most of my craft and sewing things are packed up and shoved back in the crawlspace or in the tops of closets. I miss them. I want to set up a little craft area in my room, near a nice bright window.
Bye for now, Carol