Travelling Butterflies.

It's great to be on holidays and able to finally dig out the vintage paper and scissors! It's been a while....a little too long, in fact.

I found an early 1960's Readers Digest Atlas at a Fete several months ago, and put it aside for a rainy day! It's not the only 'old' atlas I have, but this one has beautiful soft muted colours, perfect for my butterflies. I wanted to create something a little different to the formality of my usual 6 butterfly shadow frames, with the idea that the butterflies needed to 'fly' across the frame.

This is what I ended up with:









This one is already for sale in a shop on the Mornington Peninsula, so I made another for me. This time using vintage sheet music and it will reside above our bed. No pics yet, though. Maybe once it's up so I can photograph it with my new bedside lamps.

The next version may require a little tweaking, but that's part of the fun of it! There are 3 different sizes of butterflies, but I may make the smaller ones even smaller.

I have an idea for my collection of vintage stamps, too, so watch out for that one (provided it works!!!).

Merry (belated) Christmas!

Once again, blogging took a back seat in my life over the past 3 months. I did have a few moments each day to read my favourites, but not much time to comment, let alone take photos of my place, process them and post. It all got a little difficult, as it does with 2 young children and all the end of year events they attend!

I am now beginning to relax, but I have so much to catch up on it's hard to know where to start! Christmas, I guess? I vowed last Christmas, having hosted twice in 2 years, that I wasn't going to host for another 2 years, so this Christmas I didn't! I managed to decorate when time permitted, but I completely ran out of time to finish, despite starting in late November! This year I'll start in late October and have more chance of finishing (as well as beginning the Christmas cards!).

This Christmas I had a 'blue' room and a 'red' room! The Christmas tree resided in the lounge room in front of the large window, and was decorated in predominately blue and silver, which matched in perfectly with the decor of the room:



My kids were under strict instructions on what colours to use at the front of the tree, and what to put at the back! It's quite 'middle heavy' at their arm level, but (again) I ran out of time to adjust it!



My antique table in the lounge (which usually sits in front of the window) had the blue treatment too (love the blue feathered birds from Domayne):



On the 19th of December, we finally picked up the dining table, which had been on order since early September. I received the chairs the day before my party (see previous post), and they waited very patiently for their companion:



I can't tell you how good it is to have another horizontal surface to put pretties on:



The 'red' room:



Love the pair of mercury glass candle holders, $24 for both (thanks Target).....





...not to forget the little glass cloche with a bird on top, sitting on the grey/brown stand (one of my Christmas presents):



My 'Tree of Life' didn't escape the Christmas treatment, either:



(thanks to IKEA for the tiny red glass baubles)

The stairs 'mostly' completed:



I over decorated the entrance hall table and didn't get a chance to re-arrange it all, so the dog's breakfast won't be shown in full, but you can see this snippet of the mirror above:



Last, but not least, the front doors were decorated in the big red bow again, only after 2 years it had faded considerably, so I had to make another, double this time:



So what else have I done and haven't blogged about? Another butterfly frame way back in September, the other book shelf in the family room has been painted (umm...that was back in September too!), I've bought a few little bits and pieces, there are new pictures up on the wall, and I am seriously considering repainting the whole of our bedroom suite...white, of course!

But all that is for another time...and soon, I hope!

Best wishes for 2012!!