Mantelpiece Today Part 2 - On Monday

This photo is here for several reasons: This morning Lakota of Faith Hope and Charity Shopping

posted her mantelpiece photo, and a link to Estelle's Fortune Favours blog which is running a mantelpiece-on-Monday feature here: http://fortuneandfavours.blogspot.com/2011/06/mantelpiece-monday-in-monochrome.html. So I'm joining in!

Also, I started one of my never-get-past-part-one series on my own mantelpiece here:     

http://trashsparkle.blogspot.com/2011/05/mantelpiece-today.html last month. Today's pic is what happened when hayfever kicked in and everything had to be dusted. And of course, re-arranged.

Mantelpiece Today

Pat Phoenix has joined the mantelpiece riff-raff, in honour of the Elsie Tanner storyline in Corrie ;)

Finds, Ancient and Modern

Some more pics of "Things Around Trashsparkle Towers That Hide The Unfinished DIY".

These frames went back up again this week, after the wall-painting-effort a few months back. There's still a patch of turquoise in the top right corner where the roller wasn't long enough...keep meaning to sort that out. I love the dudes sprawled on the Belgian beach - from 1936. All of these have been picked up at various flea markets and car boots.

The mantelpiece is a moving feast. After the tinsel and lights got put away, it was in a Minimalist Phase; just a few candles and black'n'white postcards. Then I was given the orange Sanctuary box - it looks better against the grey wall in real life than this photo -  so I had a bit of a re-shuffle from another shelf and let these wooden figures come along and join the colour fest.

They're all from flea markets/junk shops. The Aqua Manda bottle was cheap as chips, just as they started rocketing on eBay. I found the red salt'n'pepper dogs in Greenwich market in the 80's - nobody's ever liked them, but I lurve them. Found the little green book this week - a real coincidence, as I'd read something about Edith Sitwell last week.

Resolutions

Hey ho, it occurred to me that I had posted yonks ago about my new mantelpiece.... here, very belatedly, is said marvel, all fested up. Quite reluctant to take all the sparkly stuff off for another year, but I'm sure there will be plenty of treasures to display on it soon.

Which moves us on to resolutions for 2011:

1. To put more photos on my blog - and even some of things other than my unfinished house!
2. To sort out better lighting for my photos. Maybe even do a bit of photoshoppy stuff?
3. To be a bit more structured with my time. OK, a lot more. Waste less time snoozing on the sofa with magazines, and just generally keep on top on my life.
4. Keeping on top of my life shall entail seeing friends more, and generally trying to roll out of the house before 3pm.
5. To make no more resolutions, but I just like odd numbers, so hey...

Happy Resolving



The Mantelpiece Is Finished!

...the one that featured a few posts ago as a lump of wood covered in 19 layers of paint.

I put it up last Friday - it was to be home to the silly big red reindeer, but as the baubly wreath looked better on the wall the reindeer is still in limbo.

You'll have to trust me when I say the star lights are "boiled sweet" scarlet. Despite what they say, my goddamn camera lies all the time instead of showing what is REALLY there!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Have been a bit on the go this week - hoorah! And here is the proof...

The red wall in one of the recent posts - behind the chandelier in Trashsparkle's Homemade Home - has now become grey (dulux's urban obsession), so this little fella can sit up on the mantelpiece soon without being camouflaged. And hey, yes, he is sitting on the first piece of the mantelpiece I was contemplating last week. A sawn-down fence post....

..... and this is the other part of the mantelpiece, a piece of salvaged victorian door architrave from when the kitchen got knocked through. Still a long way to go, seeing as I woke up to find the paintstripper had failed to magically do its job overnight (thought that trick they do with cornices and shrouding in plastic

would work).

And inbetween these mucky little projects, I realised on Thursday how cold I was, even in my hat. So I started to make a big, weatherproof one that evening... Voila!