A wedding and DIY potpourri

Ah I have been silent for many, many months. It's not because I haven't wanted to write. No, not at all! In fact I got married just over two weeks ago and so every last drop of my attention was focussed on planning for it, crafting wedding favours and hunting down little random bits and bobs to give a personal touch to the venue on the day. Sadly this left me with very little time to write (or to do anything more than cast a longing glance around the doorframe of my sewing room! Poor neglected sewing machine...) 

So with the wedding theme in mind, what better way to make a return to the blog than with a short and sweet wedding-related craft project?

Our venue on the day was a 15th century merchant's hall and as it was a Grade 1 listed building, no confetti was allowed inside. Many of our guests had brought boxes upon boxes of the stuff and were most dismayed to discover that they would not be able to fling it at us as we left the hall. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste so I brought the boxes home with me and began to think of creative uses for it...

Potpourri seemed a good option. Half of the confetti was made from dried flower petals so this formed a natural base for the potpourri. I also decided to add a box of rice paper confetti to the flower petals, breaking up the colour a bit and adding a little "twist" to the mix!

It was really easy and quick to make - I just tipped all the confetti into a plastic freezer bag and added about eight drops of lavendar essential oils to the bag (time will tell whether this is too strong but hey - a little experimentation never hurt!), before tying the bag and giving the whole thing a good shake.

 I left everything in the bag for two or three hours so the petals could get well and truly covered in lavendar oil. The potpourri was then ready to go into a bowl I picked up from a local charity shop for the princely sum of £1! A total bargain.

The finished product

Some friends gave us a wedding card with charms inside - a wooden heart, butterfly and (randomly) a starfish so I put these on top for safe keeping ;)


Not only do we have a beautiful reminder of our wedding but our sitting room sure smells nice!*

*The potpourri has been out of its bag now for about an hour and contrary to previous fears, I can confirm that we have not been choked by lavendar fumes!

Charity Shop Charleston: Victorian Easter

I like nothing more than a good rummage around a charity shop. (I reckon my childhood love of jumble sales is to blame for this. Which reminds me-I really must apologise to my mum for all those hideous ornaments I bought her between the ages of five and ten..)

There is something ridiculously exciting about hunting through the rails and baskets in the pursuit of "hidden treasure"- I mean, who knows when you might find that perfect vintage swimsuit or a set of Babycham glasses? (and yes, this has happened to me..all on the same day. It was wonderful.)

I am lucky enough to live near a town that hosts no less than five good-quality shops so charity shopping is a bit of a regular occurrence as you can imagine! My fiance and I are getting married in a few months time, though, so I've been under a shopping ban for a while now. But last weekend, I broke...and this is why:

I basically bought the shop's entire collection of vintage stockings - the colours were just irresistible. Silver (seems to have been a particular favourite in this town - I found no less than four pairs in two different shops!), pink, blue and a very unusual burnt orange colour. With Easter just around the corner, I couldn't pass up this little Easter postcard:

The stamps were intact and the postcard even had a manfucturer name "Tuck's Postcard". After a bit of research, I was able to date the postcard to the early 1900s and also discovered that Raphael Tuck and Sons was a very famous postcard distributer from the mid 1800s to the middle of last century. 

A history of the company and a database of their postcards can be found here: http://tuckdb.org I could browse this archive for hours - the "Tennis Tournament" set in particular is just lovely: http://tuckdb.org/sets/11602

Another interesting find was this old French postcard, dating from around about the same time:

Both postcards have messages on the back - I love finding old postcards that have actually been used. It's such a personal reminder of the past and I often find myself wondering who the people were and where the rest of their family is now..

I wanted to find a way of displaying these postcards, rather than resigning them to a drawer somewhere, so they have become part of the Easter basket on our fireplace. The basket also contains a handmade bird cushion that I finished a few weeks ago. It was part of a cushion set my Mum bought me for Christmas last yea, a very welcome and unexpected gift!

The snow has put paid to any charity shop hunts for this weekend but then again....there's always next weekend (or the weekend after!)