Today I held a little birthday tea party for my friends, Sylvie and Alissa. We dressed up in furs and hats like high-society ladies and sipped tea from our fancy china cups. Thanks for a fun and girly afternoon!
A few weeks ago, my friend Barb and I went out antiquing for an afternoon. While we were in an antique mall, we found this amazing old book of German sheet music with the most beautiful title sheets. We both just fell in love and just had to have it. But what were we going to do with it? We had no idea at the time but knew that we would be hit by inspiration later.
So one day over chit-chat at Barb’s house, while we were splitting up the book to each get our share of the pages, we started bouncing ideas back and forth about what we could make with this little bit of history.
After many ideas were visualized, I settled on the idea of using the sheet music as decoration for a wine gift tube. You can buy the plain cardboard forms at Michaels for around $5 and they come with a lid that fits on top.
I did not want to wreck the originals so I had color copies made of a few of the pages. This way I did not have to concern myself with screwing up the original and could make as many copies as I wanted. And besides, I was going to cover it with a coat of matte Modge Podge to adhere it to the cardboard tube.
Once I glued the sheet music to the form and let it dry, I scrounged around in my scrap pile of trims and tassels and many other trinkets. I glued a glass knob to the top of the lid, added a chunky trim with tassels, and put a silk cord through the tube for a handle. After tying the ribbon around the glass knob, it was done. Just like that. It was so easy!
I am thrilled as to how it turned out and I plan to make more for the holiday gift giving season. But for now, I am keeping this one part of my holiday display of decorations. And even after Christmas has come and gone, it will still look good with my home décor and I can squirrel away goodies into it!
OK, I know it is Monday but I have this new idea and I am already a day behind!
Every Sunday I will be featuring a beautiful saucer out of my collection. I will try to provide as much information about it as I possibly can. The saucer will eventually be made into a stunning ring holder, but until then, it will be admired on my shelf with the rest of my saucer collection.
This saucer was manufactured by Coalport. Unfortunately, this beautiful design does not have a pattern name. I like it when there is a name because it usually hints to the design of the saucer and then it is easy to reference to it later. But if this saucer had a name, it would be something like ‘Meadow Birds’. What would you call it? I would love to know your ideas so please leave a comment below.
About the Company
Coalport is an English china manufacturer founded by John Rose (1772-1841) after he had trained as a potter in Caughley, Shropshire, under Thomas Turner, a potter with a revolutionary approach to making porcelain.
After the Great Depression, Coalport was sold to English china manufacturer Cauldron Works. In the end, this resulted in the closure of the Coalport factory. In 1967, Wedwood purchased Coalport. As a result, Coalport is now produced at the Wedgwood factory in the village of Barlaston, Staffordshire, in the Potters region of England.
My boyfriends mom, Lucille, lives out east at Niagra-on-the-Lake, Ontario. All summer, she has been on a mission out searching for saucers at garage sales and antique stores. Through an antique dealer, she made an offer for a huge lot of saucers. The saucers once belonged to his Godmother (she recently passed away) who also had an antique store in Jordan, ON. Lucille sent me a big brown box of all 59 saucers and luckily, they made it to me safe and sound!
Lucille loves this lime green saucer. So as a token of thanks and appreciation, I will be making her this saucer into a ring holder that matches the colors in her bedroom perfectly.
A very big thanks goes out to Janine of Uppercase Gallery for taking photos of my ring holders in the Anthropologie store in Seattle. Just to see this is a dream come true! I would love to see them myself in person — but I will have to wait for the Anthropologie store opening up next month in Calgary.
People always ask me, “What do you do with the tea cups?” Good question!
I have dabbled in a few projects and yet nothing quite seems to be the perfect solution. I have seen in magazines — I think it was Domino — where you can hold and display your jewelry in the dainty tea cups. I recently acquired a vintage dresser which I lined the drawers with wallpaper (from Home Depot). I think it provides the perfect nesting place for my tea cup collection. And now I can see all of my baubles displayed beautifully in the top drawer of my dresser.
Posted by Paige Smith at 11:34 PM Comments Off on Tea Cup Jewelry Holders
I spent the afternoon at my good friend’s house having a little photoshoot of my ring holders. Barb of Honey B’s has the most amazing beautiful home so it was easy to make my work look great. Thank you Barb for generously opening up your home and letting me take these photos. I am still no pro but I feel that I am improving and learning lots as I take more pictures. I will feature more very soon! XO
