hangers, clipboards and book pages

My choices for my home are mostly fuelled by envy...............I've been hankering after trouser hangers, clipboards and using book pages somewhere for some time.
Other people have them and it makes me think 'I'd like some of those'.

An idea came to me for my landing after I found this mirror in a local shop for the knock down price of £12.99.
It's a bit small but I thought I could make a wall display, using the mirror as the centre piece.

First I sent off for three trouser hangers from the US. I love them all but two were identical and perfect for my display.

As I wanted eight clipboards, the cost of finding vintage ones was a bit prohibitive, so I chose new ones that worked out at around £2 each.

I cut up some old calendars that had colourful pictures of Islamic tiles and textiles (calendars are such a good source for decoupage and frame-able pictures).

I added book pages (not book pages that I had torn out of a book myself, as I still haven't managed to do that yet, but ones that I bought, a great selection for £5), and then added photos of places I've visited.

I put eight on the wall around the mirror, and left them for a couple of weeks but they just weren't right, I didn't feel happy at all, so I started again, and now I have this.

I've had the fruit and stamp pictures in my stash for years and years, I just tore them out of magazines.
I never read the article about the stamps, but they were painted by American artist Donald Evans, who made up a whole series of countries and individual stamps for each nation. They're fascinating and give the display the drama it so badly needed (and now I've read a bit about him, I feel lucky to have them).

I downloaded some graphics from this etsy site and got someone to print them on the book pages, I love the result. If I ever get bored with the current arrangement, I might change them all to printed book pages.

Oops, they're a bit crooked.

The maps came out of some other old calendars, so I just chose two of similar size.

The long piece at the top came from TK Maxx and used to hang over the picture at the end, but I felt it would help finish off the wall display.

 

I might hang something else to either side of the maps if I get inspired, but for now the view is a whole lot more interesting than before. 

 

 

My favourite parts are definitely the printed book pages, but I just discovered something on the back of one of the calendar pages......................

the date we picked up my dear little dog from the RSPCA in Brighton......January 10th 2007.

It was completely by chance that I chose this calendar page, but I love that it's here, because Rufie (Rufus) means the world to me.





garden tales #2 'patience is a virtue'

I love flowers with pom pom like heads............thin stems with a flower head like the Armeria I showed you in the last post.
Chives have very pretty lavender/ish pom pom like flowers, so when I saw them sprouting up all over my flower bed last Summer, I decided to wait and see if they would flower.
I left them and left them and waited..............patiently.

A few nice plants, lots of weeds and lots of chives, growing separately.

The long stems started to grow buds.

Which started to look promising...........so I waited.

Then they sprouted long green tendrils not resembling petals at all.

 

Which died.

But patience is a virtue so I waited some more, and eventually I saw the beginnings of the resemblance of a flower.

A definite pom pom like flower.

Until I had this...........one fully open (?) lavender coloured tiny pom pom flower head.

Did you read that carefully ? I said ONE, just ONE tiny pom pom flower head that doesn't look much like other chive flowers I've seen and only lasted a couple of days.

Needless to say............this year I didn't feel like being quite so patient so I pulled them all up.