Old Windows

Years ago our neighbor replaced her wood sash windows with vinyl windows and she offered to share them with me.  We wanted to put mirrors in them so we found a glass place and they used salvage mirror from old closet doors.   I hung mine on the patio and have never regreted it to this day.  We have a huge blank stucco wall that to me was just plain ugly.  We live in a pretty regular track home with a rather small lot.  When we purchased the house in 1981, the pool was already installed and most of our upper yard was all patio and pool deck which we later bricked.  Those mirrored windows not only break up the plainess of the wall, but they reflect all the trees around us and my baker's rack full of plants.  I just love  them.  They are sheltered under the patio cover, but boy what a difference they make.  If you have a patch of ugliness you want to hide, you might want to try this.

Clock Face CDs

Not too long ago, Kim from Cheap Chic Home did a post on clock face Cd's click here.  I have to admit I got a little giddy when I saw her post.  I am slightly obsessed with vintage clock faces, and I buy old clocks and sell a lot of them at my space at Aubergine Emporium.  I sell them as "prop value only" as so many of them plum don't work anymore or I don't want to warranty that they will work.  Nonetheless, there is something about the old faces that I find charming and reminiscent of times gone by.  Everything today is digital!  I guess other people find them to be equally as charming as I do since I sell every one I bring in.

So you are probably asking why am I copying Kim's idea, and rather blatantly I might add, is because I got everything I needed from her post, but I had a slight problem with the images, and if anyone else had this problem, I thought I would share how I remedied it.  I downloaded the images from Kim's post, and on my screen they looked fine.  When I went to print them, the sides were cut off and I no longer had my circle.  I simply went into my Word Pad on the computer, or whatever word processing system your computer comes with, and I opened a new file and labeled it.  I then went to the top and clicked on the picture icon.  It directed me to insert "picture from file."  I searched my pictures and found the image and imported that.  Once it was in my document, I right clicked on the image and a box appeared around the image.  I put my cursor on the little boxes around the image and adjusted the image in and out until it was the perfect size.  How did I know it was the perfect size?  I simply held the cd up to the screen and voila.  Perfecto!  I did this with each image, saved each file, and now I can set up my printing press and do a ton of these.  I love them scattered about.  Kim has used them in a couple of her vignettes since her post.  Thanks, Kim.

 Although I was sure my image was the "perfect size" I outlined my Cd's with black permanent marker in case I missed a tad attaching them to the cd.  I used re-positional spray glue.  Easy as pie.  I am sure Kim had a link to the original blogger that was kind enough to share the images, but I will include the link here as well click here.

French Clock Face

A couple of days ago I had a request for the graphic that my friend used to make her Parisian style clock face table click here.  She no longer had the image, but by some strange coincidence I did come across it today when I was cleaning things up.  I have no idea where it even came from, but I am pretty sure it's not from Graphics Fairy because I searched her blog site and could not find this particular image.  I hope someone out there can use it on a great project.

Enjoy and thanks for visiting.

 

Societe Generale French Typograpy

Today I am sharing another one of my antique French typography invoices.  I edited the document into three different views.  The document is light due to its age, but nonetheless it is still gorgeous.  This is the document I used to make my homemade script tissue paper click here.  If you cannot print these and you would like to, please let me know so I can figure out what I am doing wrong.  I am new to all this techno stuff.  They are in jpeg format.

Above is just the caption of the invoice.

Here I gave you a little more of the text and following is the complete invoice.   Thanks for stopping by for a visit.

Celluloid Photo Album

When I was getting out my candy boxes to share last week, I came across this old celluloid photo album.  Isn't this exquisite?  The little fairies are just too precious.  They are so delicate and ethereal.  This album is very old and in amazingly good condition.  There are a few scuffs and scrapes, but all in all it's still a beautiful example of Victorian elegance.

French Garden Bench

I was a bad blogger this week and did not take before pictures.  I'll just describe the bench and you will get a clear picture.  Cute pine bench from the 1980's with a little storage space when you lift up the seat.  Now you have a visual.  Cute but needs updating; right?

 My very patient husband painted the bench with Rustoleum American Accents Blossom White.  This is suitable for outdoors should someone really want to make it a garden bench out in the yard.  Next I downloaded an image from the Graphics Fairy.  I used only her frame, not the printed words of the Graphic.  To make it larger than it was, I enlarged it by about 50 percent.  Then I cut the enlarged image in quarters.  I took each quarter and made another copy by enlarging the image 200 percent.  Are you following?  Now I performed my latest technique for the third week in a row.  (I think I'm addicted to wax paper.)  You got it, I did a transfer one quarter at a time with wax paper on my ink jet printer.  That's the perk of using wax paper.  You don't need the laser printer.  It was a little tricky and the original images had the printing on them, but I just couldn't get the letters to match up.  Ergo the extreme sanding in the middle of my frame.  Not to worry.  I love chippy and shabby anyway.  I adjusted the image once again, only smaller, so I could add a little something to the skirt of the bench.  Then I took my beautiful script stencil and stenciled Le Jardin in the middle.  Now the wax paper transfer image looks a little grayish and not black, so I used a medium gray acrylic paint and added a dash of black to darken my paint to do the lettering.  This gave a little contrast between the beautiful frame and the printed word.  For the smaller LJ, for Le Jardin of course, I used Martha Stewart's new script font.  It's a two-inch size.  Worked great.  When it was complete, I sealed it with Valspar Clear Flat which is also suitable for outdoors.

 Ever since I let Cindy be in last week's photo shoot of my Le Chien crate, she thinks she's my professional model.  Who am I to argue?  After all, she works for treats.  Isn't she cute?  She's the love of our lives.

Thanks for stopping by.  You're welcome in the garden any time.

As an afterthought, while this was scheduled to be posted, I forgot to mention that because the Rustoleum paint is a satin, be sure to sand it down before you apply the transfer image.  Just a light sanding will do it.  You don't have to get wild and crazy like I do.

Afternoon Delights

My daughter and I love to do tea.  I have collected beautiful china for years.  You could say I have an obsession for beautiful china, vintage silver pieces and exquisite stemware.  Stephanie wanted to try this sorbet type milkshake her sister told her about so she went down and bought these wonderful pastries in chocolate cups and brought them home for us.  We tried to find fresh flowers that were reasonably priced but even here in Southern California, the pickins were slim this weekend (probably all scarfed up last week for Valentine's Day).  Well, you can't do tea without flowers so I rummaged through the silk pile and look what I found.  These are so pretty, I'm going to leave them out for awhile.  This vase is vintage and I call it my "Lalique" vase.  It's not, but it might as well be.  I LOVE this vase.  My sweet little birds were a recent find at the gift show and I think I'm keeping a couple of these too!

 I pulled out this large silver tray I keep out all the time.  It's a great size for serving tea.  We made the little sorbet smoothies and topped them with fresh berries.  I love how all the colors came together with my chintz china.

 Another thing I obsess over is vintage and antique lace.  This piece is beyond beautiful, and I suspect it is probably a hundred years old.  It's pretty fragile and is rampant with little holes here and there, but I just scrunch it up to hide the imperfections.  Look at the detail of this lace.  There are several crowns and bows and roses.  How romantic can you get?  I wish I knew the history of this piece.  It's truly one of my faves.

 Thanks for joining us for tea.  You are always welcome.