Craft Night

One of the advantages of living in a hippy commune is the shared evenings. Its much easier to commit to a creative evening each week when there is someone else in your home doing the same. Kathryn and I have been sewing together every monday for a while now, while the boys go and exert themselves on the football field. Evenings usually involve sprawling ourselves across the kitchen table with multiple half-finished projects in the hope of them turning into three-quarter finished projects. This week i was making cards – not quite a sewing project but the aim of the evening is creativity in general.I have recently been going through a birdy phase, as noted in previous posts. I got these bird stampers for Christmas from Cox & Cox and they have come in very handy for card making, something i have up until recently not been finding much inspiration in.

I have experimented with a few different designs, combining colour and texture (hand-made paper, recycled brown card, paper doilies) with various bird images.

This doilie/stamper combo works well, apart from the squashed up lettering (done with individual letter stampers).

Raise a Glass

We have learned the Salvage sisters like to collect in themes, it’s a way of justifying our aquisitions, as they come together in some kind of library of usefulness! I have realised that Lucy is much more professional both in her aquiring, her knowledge and research, and her diligent repurposing of items to justify their existence in her home! I would go as far as to label myself as minimal in comparison, right sis?!

However here is one of my collection fettishes, ‘Coupe’ champagne and cocktail glasses..

Coupe champagne glasses

They are highly practical in their making of any moment worth celebrating!

mojito cupcakes

Featured here, are some Mojito cupcakes I recently made for a friends birthday breakfast, and I reckon this was the perfect vessel for serving them up!

And here they are making a Birthday Bubbly moment for my good friend Vicki, complete with retro tray I’m quite attached to! There is a family famed champagne cocktail recipe I must share with you that has made many an occasion.. anyone who has ever tried it always gets back to me for the recipe at some stage!

Birthday Bubbly

You will need: 1 sugar cube, Angostura Bitters, Brandy of any type – I use Cointreau for a little orange twist, Champagne/ Cava

Place sugar cube in bottom of glass. Place a drop or two of bitters on cube.. add a shot of Brandy, top with Champagne for the ultimate Classic Champagne Cocktail!

 

Vignettes 4

Every thursday there’s a secret place one can go in Edinburgh to buy wonderful things. This place is not well publicised and for good reason. I once wrote about it here on the blog and was berated for ‘spreading the word’ with abandon. Suffice it to say that you need cash, time, and a good strong pair of elbows.

The following finds are the best of the bunch, and the stories behind them.

I’m always on the look-out for vintage Tala. They have re-released some of their classic baking products, but its the originals that really are the icing on the cake (he he). So when i saw this quite unusual cake tin, i was not going to let it slip through my fingers. It came to me for £10.

The real beauty is in the restoration job i achieved on it. Here is an instagram of it before i attacked it with bleach (no surprises there). Looks like someone was using it as a tool box (the cheek!). I had to sacrifice the lettering a bit to get the grime off, and then paint them on again afterwards. But it was worth it to bring up that beautiful duck-egg blue colour.

I’ve written about clocks before in this series, but am not intentionally building a collection. However that does appear to be the case… I bid (small clue as to whereabouts) on a box of rubbish and won it for £1. Within it were these fabulous clocks. The first one i absolutely love – looks to be around 1950s in origin, and ties in nicely with my current birdie phase.
These little retro travel clocks were lurking in the bottom of my box of surprises. Aren’t they funky?!

I got these vintage Salter weighing scales for £1. Bargain!

Also in the box – this silver cake stand, plus a centre-handled one to match. I will add this to my very small and reasonable cake stand collection.

 

Liberty

Long before the salvage sisters got savvy about good design, our mama was dressing us in Liberty print baby dresses and fitting out our shared bedroom with Liberty wallpaper. Either its in the genes or its classical conditioning, but i am now a huge fan of liberty fabric (who isn’t!?), but rarely indulge in such luxuries. It was a great day last year when i came across 3 meters of retro Liberty fabric in a wee rural charity shop for a few pounds, but such events are of course rare so the occasional splashing out on stunning fabric is ok in my book. Just browsing the London shop itself is an experience, slowly unfurling swathes of soft fabric and dreaming about the most suitable project, or fantasising about a sofa stacked with mounds of Liberty cushions…

This year i was given a sewing book from my secret santa (thanks ryan), a collection of Liberty’s very own in-house sewing projects. Its full of lovely illustrations and uses a variety of prints and textures. It is little bit exacting for my style (i never usually measure anything) but i am hopeful i can learn a trick or two about the avantages of becoming more precise and learning how to use a simple pattern.

So here is completed project number one. Its a quilted wash bag. Whilst i managed to stick to the measurements and the pattern, i did take a liberty (ha ha) with some aspects including the quilting, also the style of fabric is cotton rather than a stiff canvas as was recommended. The fabric is in fact a vintage Laura Ashley print, salvaged from an enormous jumpsuit i found in some charity shop sale rail (you know its bad when you shop from charity shop sale rails).

When your splashing out on fabric, it is a good idea to make a project initially in more basic fabric so that you make the inevitable mistakes on that first, then move on to the real deal. So here is my chosen fabric for the next attempt, bought in january whilst we were in London for the weekend. Fingers crossed!