Lapis & Llamas

When I was 8 or 9 my mom gave me a brooch of a pink nylon plastic elephant with a clear rhinestone  eye.  I loved this pin, more than any other piece of jewelry that I had at the time.  Sadly that brooch and the majority of my childhood artifacts were all picked up by a junk collection company a couple of years ago.  The great thing is that I see this brooch for sale on Etsy every once and awhile, so I know I can pick one up when I want it back in my life.   Pink Elephant Pin @ The Vintage Mart With that memory as the inspiration for this post. Over the past 4 years I have been able to find a few Buch + Deichmann pins, thanks to " Talize "(a second hand shop down the street) I have found them in 3 different styles, Dolphin, Mask, and the Bird.  The bird is my new favorite.  Here is some information on the company that use to make these gem.  B+D( Buch + Deichmann)started up in Denmark in the early 70s.  Buch + Deichmann ...

I'm a big fan of using and purchasing second hand craft supplies. We have some great local places where I get a lot of my stuff at such as Talize, Value Village, BFM, Goodwill, Worth a Second Look.  You can pick up some great grab bags with an interesting mixture of things.  It gives you the opportunity to use new supplies that you would have never picked up at "Micheal's".  An added bonus to helping the planet by reusing and recycling, is that these grab bag don't cost too much.  This grab bag cost my $2.99 Let take a look at what came in the bag. First are these great bells, 15 little bags in an assortment of styles and sizes. Approx. 142 bells! I have great project in mind for these, and will post about when I get it done. Next, are the beads. 10-60" strands of gold tone beads in 4 different sizes and styles.   All the packaged bead came from a bead shop in Arcadia, Florida, Jenefa Arts & Crafts.  As far as I could find, this craft s...

While checking out my usual thrift stops last week, I came across this great gem.  The Great Turtle Race.  This board game is in great shape with all the pieces included. It is a Parker Bro. game. Made in Canada from 1976. Ages 3 to 10. Here is a Canadian commerical in french. You get 3 plastic turtles a spinner and the board you use is the inside bottom part of the the box.  It's a bright pretty colorful box.  The board inside also spins when the turtle goes on "wake-up" mode. We played with my 6yr old niece. She loved it, thought it was fun and silly.

  We were out and about yesterday at our usual spots, looking for gift ideas, when I found some pretty exciting vintage jewelry pieces. The first thing I spotted was this D'Orlan gold tone brutalist style choker.  Now this D'Orlan necklace is nothing like the ones I use to sell at the jewelry counter at The Buchart Gardens.  Those one are the kind with the glass beads and semi-precious stones.  My mother gave me her set, which was gifted to her by my father when they first came to Canada. So on returning home I started to do some research. I found a couple of good sites. Vintage North was a really good source and so was Creed Canada .  Some of the information I knew from before but I learn a few things.      Here is a short summary: D'Orlan was founded in 1957 by Mr. Maurice J. Bradden.  In the 50's he became Mr.Boucher’s protégé.  Mr. Marcel Boucher was a prolific designer of costume jewelry and his names signify quality m...

The last couple of days I've been busy trying to organize my crafting area.  The weather's been so nice lately that it gave me a little extra motivation to clean, organize and go through a ton of boxes to find a place for everything. I also wanted to incorporate some of my mother's crafting supplies that were still in my garage. So far I have just made room for them in my cabinet, they are still in the garage.  But hopefully by Wednesday night they will be all sorted and put away. We also got Nightcrawler fixed.  She has been so down since we brought her home, at fist all she wanted to do was hangout with Yetti, but today she back to her old self, harassing everybody and everything (especially my Bird of Paradise plant). Nightcrawler loves spending time with Yetti, and Yetti doesn't mind.  Her home is so cozy that Nightcrawler loves napping in it. I also wanted to share a couple of things that I received from Chile when some of my family went for a visit. I jus...

So I saw this video on You Tube of this of Emilie Autumn on HGTV making a pair of fairy wings.  I thought it would be fun to try to make a pair for my niece to give her for Christmas.  I got all my supplies the night before, and started to work on them, but quickly realize that I was not really prepared.  I could not find my brushes, anywhere!  I spent around 2 hours searching for them, and in the back of my mind I knew where they were but was not willing to tackle the garage to look for them.  We had moved into our place back in June/July, then my dad moved in at the end of November, so that meant not unpacking boxes because we were down one room.  The garage is now full of my mom's crafts supplies which i have great expectation of using them all before i die. Plus lots of furniture piece from her home that I decide i wanted to keep. Like her singer sewing machine with table top, old record player and many more items. So instead of digging around in ...