Vintage Love: kitsch enamel biscuit tin

I love a bit of kitsch. And it doesn't get much more kitsch than this vintage, enamel biscuit tin.
It's whimsical, it's floral, features gingham, big hair, loving glances, soppy dog...what's not to like?

Given to me by my Gran a few months ago, I'm not sure when it dates from. I'm guessing 1970s, but may be even older. My Gran was an avid horder of enamel tins and she never liked to throw anything away. I'm certainly glad this one didn't head into the bin.
This vintage enamel tin sits in my kitchen making the place look pretty. If I'm lucky it stores home-baked delicious things, currently it has some brownies and rock cakes made by my Mum & gifted to me today...when it's full of cake, I'm a happy girl.

Celebrating creative upcycling and crafts at Children's Scrapstores

When I was a child I loved nothing better than making stuff out of bits and bobs destined for the bin. I cannot count the number of cardboard box, tin foil, loo roll monsters I made when I was little. A pile of cardboard, string, glue and poster paints fired up my imagination and made me think ‘what shall I create today?’

Across the UK there are a network of Scraptores UK that continue the tradition of helping children to use their imaginations and create something with their hands. Each scrapstore is a treasure trove of clean scrap waste materials donated by business to be reused by local children in whatever way their creative urge takes them. The range of materials in any of the scrapstore changes each day and could include card, paper, textiles, paint, cork, wool, cardboard tubes, netting, gauze and many other things.

Scrapstores promote ‘play without rules’ and understand the importance of creative play in a child’s development. Every child needs to have the chance to squish clay, get covered in paint and look at a pile of scrap and think ‘what could I make with that?’ Scrapstores offer affordable craft materials to a wide range of bodies working in education, training, arts and culture, environment and conservation and projects involving children and young people. By taking familiar objects we all recognise from everyday use and encouraging children to use them in new and unusual ways, Scrapstores foster creative expression. The organisation has already helped out over 80,000 community groups by providing access to an exciting variety of materials.

Whilst local branches operate as separate entities, ScrapstoresUK was set up in an attempt to coordinate the work that individual scrapstores do across the UK. ScrapstoresUK acts as a champion for the movement and raises public awareness, facilitates fundraising and attempts to make each scrapstore run in an effective and efficient way. They also offer a useful online directory of all the scrapstores, so if you feel inspired to find out more, their website will have all the information you need to track down your local store.

All Scrapstores have different means of accessing their scrap materials. In some you need to pay an individual membership fee, at others you simply pay for the scrap you take on the day. Membership is generally offered to groups who work in creative play, care, educational and therapeutic settings. A number of Scrapstores also have shops open to the public selling good quality art and craft materials from glue to paintbrushes to complement the scrap.

We paid a visit to my local scrapstore which is based in Bristol to find out more about the work they do. The Bristol Children's Scrapstore is one of the oldest in the UK and has been open for over thirty years. To access the main scrap warehouse you need to be a member, but the Bristol branch also operates a craft supplies store called Artrageous Store which is open to the general public. Artrageous is a thriving business where you can find a wide selection of goods including art supplies such as glue, paint and modelling clay, they also stock puppets, wooden toys and musical instruments. Every other weekend Artrageous throws open its doors and invites children to come along and try out the craft materials. These ‘Super Saturday Sample Sessions’ encourage children to gain hands-on experience of creating a finished crafty item from scratch. The friendly staff encourage kids to get their hands on raffia, felt, glitter, crayons and lots of gloopy glue. All the proceeds from Artrageous support the Children’s Scrapstore and help to maintain local community projects working with local children.

Alongside Artrageous is the adjoining Children’s Scrapstore warehouse. There are an abundance of crafty delights with large containers filled with netting, colourful gauzes, plastic tubes, surgical masks, piles of remote controls, reels of sparkling paper, mounds of foam shapes, towers of take-away cartons and even the odd shop mannequin. Each item was destined for landfill and through Scrapstores it can now find a new life in a creative project.

The Scrapstores movement is something to be cherished and supported. By encouraging creative play, children learn communication skills, creativity and problem solving, team work and collaboration and a willingness to experiment. As with all charity projects, Scrapstores needs resources to keep functioning. Whether you donate scrap, volunteer your time or become a member, there are many ways to keep your nearest branch operating. Now I’ve discovered my local scrapstore, it would take a gang of foil covered, paint daubed, googly eyed cardboard box monsters to keep me away!

all photos were taken by my niece Jessica Chappell, you can see her blog here www.kingofthesheep.blogspot.co.uk

Scraptores UK

Bristol Children's Scrapstore

Artrageous Store

If you're interested in finding more interesting children's craft projects, you may like to follow my "Kids Crafts: gluing, cutting, sticking, painting" board on Pinterest...

Follow Pouch : blogging + craft's board Kids Crafts: gluing, cutting, sticking, painting on Pinterest.

I'm linking up with these lovely blogs:

Trash 2 Treasure over on www.coombemill.com

Brilliant Blog Posts over on honestmum.com

Share With Me over on www.letstalkmommy.com

What I'm Writing over on writingbubble.co.uk

vintage love: John Lewis sewing needles

Usually, when I acquire a vintage item, I don't know its back story or "provenance". This isn't the case with this set of John Lewis Gold Eyed Needles. My Grandmother gave them to me a few years ago. As she passed them over, she told me that she'd purchased them from John Lewis in London during World War II. She was stationed there during the conflict when she was a member of the Women's Voluntary Service.

It seems something of a miracle that I now own something that survived the Blitz. The packet is only just holding itself together, but that's hardly surprising considering it was bought over 70 years ago.
During the war the East End of London was worst hit, but the West End also suffered many bombing raids. Oxford Street took a terrible hit in 1940 and many iconic stores were badly damaged. Yet John Lewis reopened a small section of its Oxford Street store just three weeks after the building had been set ablaze by incendiary devices. You can read more about the history behind the Blitz and Oxford street in this interesting online article.


Below is a photo of my 20 year old Grandmother in her WVS uniform. She's now 93 and isn't able to sew due to her age and ill health. But she was an excellent seamstress and I've seen many of the blouses and dresses she created. Her generation made clothes because they had to, if you wanted the latest dress, most people couldn't afford it, so they had to run up something themselves. my Grandmother has had a lifetime of thriftiness, the 'make do and mend' spirit of the war has stayed with her to this day.

If you'd like to see more retro goodies, head on over to my "Vintage Finds" board over on Pinterest...

Follow Pouch : blogging + craft's board My Vintage Finds on Pinterest.

The big fabric sort-out!

I have been an avid collector of vintage fabric for about eight years now. I wouldn't say my collection was out of control, but I have got enough fabric to keep me going for about three or four lifetimes!

For the past three years most of my vintage fabric has been in boxes in the loft. I felt really disconnected from it and since having my daughter my fabric collection has been neglected. When we moved to our new house, I vowed that I would organise it better, I really wanted access to it, so that I could create things with it. It's pointless having loads of yummy fabric if you can't get your hands on it!

My mum was updating her wardrobes and she said I could have her old one. My husband grabbed his drill and some spare pieces of wood and added two shelves to convert the wardrobe into a large cupboard. We then got all the boxes out of the loft and I started the process of sorting through it all. Some I wanted to keep, some to sell and some to pass onto my lovely crafty friends.

As each box came out of the loft, it was such a revelation each time I started sorting through the fabric. There are so many pieces I'd forgotten about. I have amassed some lovely examples of vintage Moygashel, Sanderson, Liberty and Heals fabric. I have one particular piece of vintage Sanderson 'Cobweb' fabric that is just beautiful.

I now have a lovely area in my home where I can house my fabric and look at it whenever I want to. Who knows, maybe I might actually get the time to use it all!

New listings - vintage trims

I have been on a marathon listing session over past few days! I've added lots of lovely vintage trims to my Etsy store. There are tons of different styles and patterns and colourways - so something for everyone. You can see the full selection here

vintage woven trim in dusky pink, apple green and cream vintage woven trim in khaki and olive green

Vintage love: cotton bed linen

I love finding pieces on vintage cotton, especially double duvet covers like these. There's so much fabric to work with because of the double layer! I bought these a couple of weeks ago, they are in pristine condition and I love both patterns, even though they are both very different.

I always get excited about thinking what I can make with newly thrifted fabric, I think the brown swirls will be sewn into market totes and the purple and lilac floral fabric will become peg bags, but I change my mind all the time, I wont properly decide until I'm stood over it with a pair of scissors in my hand!

vintage love: Bandaid tin

I remember as a child my Mum whipping up many Clothkits outfits on her trusty Singer machine (which incidentally, I now own). Whilst my Mum was busy sewing, she would let me look through her sewing box.



This usually involved me emptying everything out onto the floor and searching for my favourite things: her handmade needlecase; the silver bullet-shaped object that held her pins; the thimbles. Above all I loved to tip out this Bandaid tin which was filled with buttons, mainly red ones as I recall. I never seemed to tire of doing this, funny the things that amuse a four year old!



A few weeks ago I was moaning about never having enough safety pins. A few days later my Mum gave me the Bandaid tin filled to bursting with pins. I'm really grateful she parted with it as it now sits on my shelf and reminds me of my childhood. Is it possible to be sentimental about a tin? Yes, I think in this case, it is...

Creating a workspace

I have spent the past couple of days doing a bit of reorganisation in our house. I have always wanted a space where I could leave my sewing machine out permanently. I'm a bit fed up of perching the machine on the side of the kitchen table. So I decided to empty a bureau in my office and move it to the downstairs hallway. I sorted through five years worth of paperwork, old photos, a teapot (yes teapot) and even a teddy bear. And boy was it cathartic! Our recycling bag is breaking at the seams now and I have a huge pile of shredding to do at some point.



I then installed a lovely table thrifted for £5 at a local 'save the church roof' type of affair. I remember the struggle we had to get it in the back of the car. But, I was *not* leaving without it!



Now, I know in the grand scheme of workspaces, mine is right down there at the bottom of the scale, but hey, just having a sewing table is luxury for me! Hopefully some shelves to display my vintage finds will soon follow, few more pictures on the wall and I will have my own little crafting haven...

Vintage Find: Paddington fabric

I must admit that this isn't something I found myself! In fact my Mum found this gorgeous Paddington fabric in a local charity shop. She made it into curtains as a present for our baby, clever Grandma!



It dates from 1984, so it's what I would call 'new' vintage, or vintage of the future. Although 1984 is now 26 years ago, which makes me feel old. Anyway, I wanted to include it as a vintage find on my blog as I absolutely love the fabric!



Paddington was one of my favourite characters as a child and I'm so happy to see these curtains hanging in my own baby's nursery. She loves looking at Paddington and his messy decorating antics as the sun shines through the fabric.

I wanted to share some other nursery details, first off, this sweet hot air balloon from Ikea. Another present from Grandma!



I also love these stacking cups which I thrifted for £1 from a local charity shop. They are so colourful an I'm sure they will be a firm favourite for bath time fun in the future!





Our baby also loves this cute wall decal I bought in Devon a few weeks ago.



I also have my eye on some handmade goodies from Etsy, including Little Butterfly TEETHING TOY by littlesaplingtoys My Little Button Boots by hipknotz, Fiona's top by Rasmilla, Herman The Enigmatic Bear Knitting Pattern Pdf by dangercrafts and finally some Pretty Girl English Bunting by Paperfish

The nursery is shaping up to be one of the prettiest rooms in the house, I wouldn't mind sleeping in there myself!

Vintage find: Salter kitchen scales

I guess this isn't strictly a 'find' as these Salter Scales were kindly given to me by my Gran a few weeks ago, but I love them so much I had to include it on the blog!

They date from around 1945, when my Gran was newly married. She started married life in an austere, post-war Britain where home cooking and being thrifty was second nature to most women.



As you can see from the photos, these scales were well used by my Gran. She used to set aside one day a week to bake. This was a very common thing for post-war housewives to do as there was very little, if any, convenience food in the shops. So if you wanted a pie, a pudding or a cake, you had to make it from scratch.

Apart from the timeless design of the scales, I love the fact that my Gran was so fond of them.

It's nice to know that she cooked food for her family using these scales every week. It's a tradition I hope to continue with my own family.

vintage find: recipe tin

I thrifted this tin for £1 in a local charity shop. I fell in love with the colours and the images. It represents a snapshot of times gone by when wheeling out your latest creation on a hostess trolley was the height of sophistication.



Judging by the images, it seems that you had to smother everything in aspic jelly in the 1960s or 1970s! This tin indicates that shops were starting to stock 'exotic' food such as bananas, peppers and grapes. After the rationing many people had to endure in post-war Britian, it must've been a relief to cook with some interesting ingredients again.





When I got home, I was slightly taken aback when I opened the lid and saw the writing inside 'Recipe for Preserving Children'.


It's ok though, not as sinister as it sounds at all. It's actually quite sweet and again highlights a time gone by when people allowed their children the freedom to play outside, get the sun on their skin and heaven forbid, get a bit dirty!



I think it's a really unique piece and I look forward to putting some of my own recipes in it.