Found and treasured.

So here is a small selection of my finds from my treasure hunt holiday. The above shelf was found for £1 at a car boot sale, previously a drawer that I painted white to store useful things in my studio. The flying ducks were my most expensive but treasured item from the Toot As in Foot stall at Old Spitalfields at £14. I also found many a Kilner jar on my travels, I went a bit crazy and bought five, but they were a cheeky £2.50 each which is a steal. And sadly I now refuse to drink out of anything but my set of six Charles and Diana glasses, which I found for £10 in Hunkydory-24.

I found many other random treasures, an A4 Victorian book paper press, many, many ceramic and enamel bowls for my kitchen, and of course about twenty Royal Coronation mugs ready to make candles.

I thought I would show you bits of my studio with all the flimflammery I've collected. Below shows some of my favourite souvenirs from artists I love such as Lizzie Stewart, Lucy Jane Batchelor, Helen Friel and Jessie Chorley.

The bottom picture shows my tiny shrine to the Royals where I keep the mugs I've clumsily smashed but still love and have made into candles. And of course a picture of my dream dog, the Pembroke Corgi.....

Props for Rokit.

Last week I made a couple of props for The Science of Style's feature windows in Rokit's Covent Garden vintage store. If you look closely there is a birdcage and a giant gingerbread man hiding in there. I have bought many an item of clothing from trusty old Rokit, so I am chuffed to have been involved- I especially like that my website is printed on the window.....Huzzah.

Vintage Adventures and Other Tales of Margate.

One of my favouritest favourite things to do, is wander around car boot sales and peruse junk and vintage shops. I could do it all day and forever, treasure hunting my way to a house full of wonderful things. So when I moved to London a year ago, I was very excited to have such easy access to wonderful vintage shops. (All time favourites: Old Spitalfields market on a Thursday, Rospo, and The Shop, Vintage Heaven).

However, these wonderful things come at a price, a very fair price might I add, for such marvellous shops, but not the prices that I long to discover again from squirrelling in charity shops and car boot fairs and house clearance shops. London, I'm afraid in my opinion, you fail in this department.

Thus, the idea was born, to take a week off work, borrow a car, and scour the South for vintage treasures. I'm pretty sure we must have averaged fifteen shops a day...we were on a mission to kit our houses out with lovely things, at a very low cost. Lymington served us well, and Brockenhurst surprised us with Pineapple Retro, a fabulous charity shop in Milford on Sea, Highcliffe had many many charity shops and Pokesdown blew us away with an amazing number of vintage clothing shops.

The real surprise however, was our final trip to Margate. It had everything we could have ever dreamed of. Some of the very finest vintage shops I have ever come across at very reasonable prices. Incredibly low prices at the British Heart Foundation furniture shop, we were almost crying that we didn't have a van with us. There were so, so many great vintage/junk/antique shops but the best were Showtime Retro Furniture, Junk Deluxe, Hunkydory-24, and the very best charity shop EVER on Market Street in between Madam Popoff and 20th Century Frocks. I shall be revisiting Margate frequently just to visit these shops, they were that good.

I picked up some absolute steals that I shall cherish forever, filled my car boot to the brim of secondhand/vintage homewares and came back with change from £50. When most things are under £1, my money went a very long way. We finished our trip with an ice cream sundae at the art deco Morelli's Icecream Parlour and returned, very cramped back to London.

Hooray for other peoples things, and hooray for all the lovely shop owners who we chatted to and helped us along the way!