A Walk in Time: Prisons of War in Edinburgh

A Walk in time takes us today to the beautiful city of Edinburgh, Scotland where we visited the Exhibition “Prisons of War” at the Edinburgh Castle and I will share some information & facts described by the brochure of the exhibition.

The basements of the castle of Edinburgh were used as a jail for prisoners of war during fifty seven years between 1757 and 1814.

In June 1781 the place had about a thousand prisoners of war.  Most of them had been captured at sea during the American War of Independence. 

Prisoners slept on cots or hammocks and each prisoner received a straw mattress and a blanket.

At the exhibition you can see some of the original items, some made by the prisoners.

Vintage Recipe paper

Do you remember when not so long ago, the ladies used to keep their best recipes in small boxes or containers? I am sure many still do it today and these two images I present you today, reminds me of the old looks of recipe boxes.  These are part of a wrapping paper I have and thought it would be nice to use them in projects related to kitchen.

Enjoy crafting,

Erika

Chemise, Corset & Petticoats

Victorian Fashion Trends

When it comes to Fashion, I am a big fan of the Victorian Era, I consider those women dresses just amazingly beautiful, elegant and charming, and I found one website with interesting information about the 19th Century Fashion  that not everybody knows about like, for example that women of that era were much like us women of today, always looking for the newest fashion at an affordable price or the fact that corsets affected women’s health seriously.  However, I still find that fashion style very nice.    

Having the Victorian era in my mind and inspired by my collection of Victorian Fashion & accessories from Dover Publication books, I decided to renovate and decorate one old cardboard perfume box I had forgotten in my closet.  Here it is the final result:

 

The box was in poor condition, but with a color striped background and prints of fashion elements, it came back to life. 

The colors of the background enhance the black & white prints. 

Some images were glued as well in the front of the box.

The background for the inside of the lid was kept in plain brown.

Art Nouveau Illustration

Alphonse Maria Mucha is one of my favorite illustration artists, he was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (the present Czech Republic).  He was a Czech painter and decorative artist, known best for his distinct style.

Today I post his French vintage perfume ad made circa 1900.  The advertisement is for "Bleuze-Hadancourt Parfumeur," in Paris. 

Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewelry, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was termed initially “The Mucha Style” but became known as Art Nouveau (French for “new art”).

I used one of his beautiful illustrations to decorate a round jewelry box that I posted some weeks ago.  You can see the project here.

Have a great weekend,

Erika

Boy Scouts Camp back in the 1960's

The other day, I was going through some old papers at my grandparent's house and I found one brochure of the Panama's Boy Scouts First National patrol camp, that my uncle attended back in 1967.

The brochure provides information about the association, a little bit of history, the details of the camping place, the activity schedule and even a detailed day to day menu for the boys. 

The association was founded in Panama in 1914 and it was originally for boys only, but nowadays girls can be members as well.  The brochure have some nice graphics that would be perfect to use in kid's projects.

Vintage Classifieds memory Box

When it comes to vintage images & graphics my favorites to collect are the old Advertisements, Classifieds and commercial art.  We have many in the workshop and we keep collecting more and more especially in digital formats, when we don't get access to the real newspapers.  I really find them very charming and unique.  

Then one day I was going through my collection and wondering, what would it be a nice way to keep a collection always visible?  and my answer was a memory box decorated entirely with vintage commercial art.  Here it is:

It is a sort of a collage of old advertisements in all the box, the inside as well as the outside of the box.

I chose the most colorful advertisements I could find to enhance the box and printed them with the "vivid" option of my canon printer.

On the inside of the box, the bottom was painted in brown acrylic color and one vintage stamp was stamped on it.

A Walk in Time: Medieval Shop in Tallinn

Last month I posted about the Tynemouth Flea Market in UK and I mentioned we would continue sharing info about other interesting antique & vintage places, stores and things we found in the cities we visited during that particular cruise itinerary and also future finds as well.  So, there is a lot to share and I thought it would be nice to do so in a series of posts we will call: “A walk in Time”.

Today I want to show you a really cute and interesting small Medieval Shop we found in Tallinn, Estonia.

Olde Hansa is the name of this Medieval Restaurant and Shop located in the heart of the medieval city of Tallinn.  The shop exhibits beautiful and practical items from medieval Europe.  

They sell reproductions of medieval items which are suitable for everyday use. Everything is handmade and modelled after actual medieval artifacts, yet designed to be durable and practical for the home (e.g. Dishwasher and microwave safe.) Take a trip through history!

 

The vendors are all dressed up in the medieval fashion, I never had the chance before to see in person the replicas of medieval fashion, so I was very happy to observe the simple clothing but yet very charming and colorful; and believe me my mind immediately travelled back in time picturing it.

Old issue of the Collier's Weekly

A couple of days ago I was very excited to receive an old issue of the Collier's Magazine that I had purchased on Ebay and although I had no knowledge of this type of magazine, I got it basically because it is vintage and I liked the cover very much and the seller also provided few pictures of the inside, but once I received it, I was very glad that I  bought it and can use the graphics in my projects.

The issue is of May 25, 1912 and is still in good conditions.  

Collier's is an American magazine, founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier, which went by the title Collier's Weekly during its early years. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's. 

The magazine ceased publication with the January 4, 1957 issue and was revived in February 2012.

As a result of Peter Collier's pioneering investigative journalism, Collier's Weekly established a reputation as a proponent of social reform.  (information courtesy of Wikipedia).

As we are into father's day theme, I would like to share today from this magazine 2 advertisements related to men's topics:

I also purchased a 1980´s issue of the Harper's Weekly Bazaar and I'll be sharing it with you soon.

Thank you very much for visiting and if you like our blog, please follow us so we can stay in touch.  Have a wonderful week,

Erika

DIY Vintage Love Notes 4 Dad

Last week's Project was the Vintage Town Box for dad, and I wanted to give it along with a love note, not the traditional greeting card but something a little bit different and less elaborated, and still wanted it to look nice & vintage.  So I thought of making it very easy with simple index cards & stamps and they came out like this:

Just a simply note to let him know how much I love him.  

 

We thought about using our collection of vintage stamps, choosing the ones that would go better with this project.

The index cards were white in color, so to give it the aged look, we painted them with water colors, adding more and less water to create more dark/clear areas.

Early model of Ford & Our project was featured this week

Father’s Day is approaching and we thought about posting this week some images related to the topics that men find interesting, like cars for example, and the first one is this funny drawing of an early Ford Model which I found in an old book about the history of transportation. Hope you like it. 

Now, on to the good news.  We have been so happy and excited at the workshop this week and wanted to share it with you, because one of our new projects (Oh those summer days) have been featured by 2 incredible Blogs: Maid in a Day and Serenity You, it means a lot to us and it inspire us to continue working & sharing more projects.   

Thank you so much to Kim and to check her features click here.   Thank you as well so much to Natasha and to check her features click here.

Also, we submitted our workshop to a Spanish craft directory “Directorio de Manualidades” and they chose our blog among the blog’s of the month, it was a very nice surprise.  Thank you very much to Yolanda, and if you would like to see the directory, click here.

And last but not least, we received a stamp, a gift from our friend Simone at Minhas Artes, where she chose 10 blogs she would like to feature.  To see her features, click here.  And the stamp looks like this:

It says: “This blog is perfect, I approve it and recommend it”  Thank you very much Simone for this great gift.

It has been a really nice week for us, thank you very much for all your support,

Have a great day,

Erika  

Old mail & envelopes

I like old envelopes and letters; I fancy the idea of thinking we can read stories, conversations, love letters, invitations and different writings from people who has lived in different time frames as ours.  It is amazing how envelopes and letters travel through years and countries from hand to hand and end up in ours, letters written for instance even a century ago and one get to live the story, to imagine the scenario the person has written about.  It’s like travelling back in time. 

I have a small collection of envelopes and letters I will be sharing with you, the one I post today is from 1955, and I bought it in the Tynemouth Market I mentioned to you on an earlier post. 

Enjoy using them in your projects.

Thank you,

Erika

Vintage Town, Rush Hour

If we think of the traffic today on the rush hour in our city we imagine the modern era cars, motorcycles, bicycles, the red light, the noise, the horns, the people crossing and the traffic police, right? 

Now let’s think about the same rush hour but two centuries ago back in the 1800's, how would it look like? That's what I did and I pictured this: 

Nice and elegant horse-driven carriages, fancy bicycles, people in formal wear and of course a much more smooth traffic.

The box was a very old tobacco box I had and it needed some repair but unfortunately I do not have pictures of the box before. Basically I repaired it, painted the inside and outside in black color, the lid top in golden brown color to imitate the sepia color of an old picture and then decoupage the images.   For the standard decoupage process we follow, please click here. 

Link Party in Spanish

I am a newbie blogger and I have been participating in awesome link parties in English speaking sites since I started, and my blog has an English version and Spanish version, and I had troubles finding parties in Spanish speaking community and I even was considering the idea to start my own link party for the Spanish market.  

But today I found one wonderful blog, who started this initiative, the Arte Friki and their party has just started, so for those of you with a blog & projects you also want to share on a Spanish blog, please do visit her site, and I invite you to support this party, make new friends, and see the creativity of other crafters.  Her blog is great; she has got many good & cool projects to share. 

You can find her blog here & the party here.    There might be other Spanish speaking blogs offering link parties but unfortunately I have not seen them yet, but I keep searching, if you know of any please let me know so I can visit it gladly.  Maybe one of these days I would start a party, but for now we can link at Arte Friki.  

Do have a wonderful weekend,

Thank you very much,

Erika