In Print: Fluffy Pompoms and My Childhood Collections

Two of my projects have ended up in very different places recently...

First, my sky pompom gift-wrapping packs made an appearance in this month's issue of Glamour magazine (December 2016).

There are my pompoms, sitting atop some gorgeous Liberty gift wrap which happens to be my very favourite Liberty print (what a lovely coincidence, huh?).

If you want to add some pompom goodness to your own parcels, I've still got a couple of packs in stock in my Etsy shop - remember to use the discount code HURRAH50 to get 50% off any/all items purchased from my shop until the end of November.

And second - for something completely different - two of my photos have been included in What Can You Collect?, a fab little book from the Superkids Reading Program.

Look! There's my shell collection...

... and there's my eraser collection!

I cannot tell you how delighted I am that photos of my childhood collections are featured in a book for kids about the joys of collecting stuff. My heart, it bursts with happiness.

My Childhood Sylvanian Families Collection

More treasures from our attic clear-out: Sylvanian Families!

I definitely collected Sylvanian Families more than I really played with them as a kid.

My sisters and I each had one family - mine were the grey rabbits. My parents used cardboard boxes to build us an apartment block style dolls house, with one vertical row of boxes each which we could decorate as different rooms.

We used carpet and wallpaper off-cuts and mixed our store-bought furniture (all lovingly, carefully chosen after much deliberation and on a limited pocket money budget) with homemade things.

I just loved looking at all the teeny pieces. A bookcase with tiny books! A bath with a teeny cork in the plughole! A sink with a tiny bar of soap! A sewing machine with little scissors and reels of thread.

Drawers that really opened! Charming old fashioned furniture like a dressing table and a rocking chair and a fancy rotary phone!

It was such a joy opening up a box and finding all these things... especially as I'd also kept some of the handmade furniture and accessories we'd made. I'll blog about those soon, they definitely deserve their own post.

In the meantime, check out my posts about other rediscovered childhood collections:

My shell collection...

... my badge collection...

 

... my sticker collection...
 

... and my eraser collection.

You might also enjoy reading about puzzles and games from my childhood, more childhood treasures, Fuzzy-Felt Fairytales and beloved kids books.

My Childhood Shell Collection

I collected a lot of stuff when I was a kid. If it was small and inexpensive I probably collected it at some point!

Postage stamps, erasers, badges, thimbles, weird looking rocks, novelty soaps, teeny little ornaments, pretty buttons, stickers, bath pearls... and much, much more. Some of my collections didn't last long, other grew and grew.

One thing I amassed quite a large collection of was sea shells:

Most of these were collected on days out at the beach, but a few were (I think) bought in gift shops at places like Butlins. You can probably spot the fancy bought-in-a-shop ones!

I found these 200+ shells in a box while doing some decluttering a while back. I don't "need" or even really want a box full of shells anymore, so these will be finding a new home very soon.

I'm going to keep a few to remind me of my shell-collecting days and many happy hours spent walking along beaches, and I'll have these photos to help me remember the whole collection.

 

They look rather pretty all laid out together, don't they?

 

Fancy a peek at some of my other childhood collections? I've also taken pics of my sticker album, my badge collection and my huge collection of novelty erasers.

You Never Know What a Blog Post Will Lead To...

It's just two weeks until Blogtacular - an awesome-looking conference for creative bloggers. I treated myself to a ticket last year and have been looking forward to it ever since (especially after it was announced that Grace Bonney will be the keynote speaker!)

With the conference looming I've been thinking a lot about blogging: why I do it, what I enjoy most about it, where I see my blog heading in the coming months, and so on. Despite an attack of imposter syndrome and occasional patches of blogger's block I've loved my 8+ years of blogging and all the inspiration, connections, friendships and unexpected opportunities that have come along with it.

One very unexpected thing that happened this month was that I did some decluttering, blogged about my childhood eraser collection... and ended up having the collection featured in Mollie Makes!

It is thrilling (if slightly surreal) to have one of my childhood collections in print in one of my favourite crafty magazines - especially as I originally wrote the blog post thinking "this is a bit of a random thing to be blogging about, I wonder if anyone will be remotely interested in this???"

I'm delighted that so many people will get to bask in the glory of my collection (haha) and I hope it sparks lots of nostalgic conversations about the things they all collected as kids.

It just goes to show that you never know what will happen when you press "publish" on a new blog post!

My eraser collection is featured in the current issue of Mollie Makes (#54). Click here for a preview and for stockist info.

80s Child: My Eraser Collection!

My Less 365 project might be finished, but I'm still working on decluttering my space - slowly sifting the beloved, much-used "wheat" of my possessions from the no-longer-loved, no-longer-needed "chaff".

While working on my Less 365 project, I "decluttered" my childhood badge collection: taking a photo of the whole collection as a memento, then keeping just a few favourites with special sentimental meaning. I had totally intended to do this for some of my other childhood collections but not got round to it (oops). 

So, when I found myself at a loose end the other day what did I do? Took photos of my novelty eraser collection, of course!

I haven't counted them, but there are quite a few erasers in the collection!

I think most of them date from the late 80s to the early 90s, basically while I was in primary school and spending my pocket money on cute nonsense like this. I vividly remember buying some of these erasers while on a summer holiday at Butlins, some were obviously bought on school trips and family outings to museums and theme parks (several of which I'd totally forgotten I'd ever visited) and others were gifts from my mother, tucked into the pockets of our Advent Trees.

I especially love the comb and the windmill (it has plastic blades that spin!)...

 

... the smiley-face-in-a-box that I won playing croquet at a friend's birthday party and the treble clef I got when I was taking piano lessons...

 

... the retro telephone and those cute kittens...

 

... the interlocked rabbit and baby rabbit...

 

... and the rainbow clothes peg. So much cuteness!

I'm going to keep just a few of these that tug at my heartstrings - any suggestions for what I should do with the rest? I'd hate for them to just get thrown away, but I suspect that's exactly what might happen if I donated them to a charity shop.

UPDATE: the erasers have found a new home with a collector, hurrah! I donated the money raised to a children's charity - it seemed appropriate given that these gave me so much happiness in my own childhood :)

P.S. for more 80s kid nostalgia, here's a blog post about my sticker album!

80s Child: Badges

I've been sorting through lots of boxes as part of my Less 365 project (trying to clear out / declutter / give away one thing a day for a year) and I found my childhood badge collection!

I've often read (on the sort of blogs that are pro-minimalism & anti-clutter) that you should take photos of sentimental items and then get rid of the objects themselves, because who needs them? And to be honest I thought this was a bit bonkers. What is wrong with keeping something that has sentimental value, and reminds you of special times, places or people?? For myself, at least, looking through photos of special, sentimental items I used to own would just make me sad about giving them away! 

But actually, looking through some of the collections of things I aquired in my childhood (what is it about kids and collecting things?) I can see the usefulness of this recording-the-object-in-a-photo idea. I can take a photo as a record of / celebration of the whole collection, and then clear out all the badges (or erasers or shells or whatever else I accumulated as a kid) that no longer have a strong emotional tug. For example, I am absolutely keeping the badge with a badger, hedge & bridge on it (made by my friend Rosemary for our very nerdy reading & spelling club) but do I need/want badges about not littering? No, I do not.

Did you have a badge collection as a kid? Or did you collect other things?

P.S. if you fancy it, you can also check out this old post about my sticker collection :)

80s Child

Earlier this month Etsy published a cute article about sticker collections, and it inspired me to dig out my old sticker book and have a nostalgic flick through it...


Some pages are now almost empty (thanks to being plundered over the years to decorate letters, birthday cards and other things) but it's still got plenty of treasures!

Taking Stock

Where does the time go? The whole of yesterday got swallowed up by an assortment of tasks and a variety of entertainments, leaving no time for blogging whatsoever. So it's time for another mini catch-up...

Day 272: I took a small break from my accounts to work on sewing pastel mobile pieces onto their ribbons:
Then yesterday (day 273) I finished the mobile:
I also did a stock take. Counting, labelling, tallying, listing, tidying, photographing, planning, plotting, scheming. Working out what I've got listed where, writing lots of to do lists, and generally covering the house with a big pile of felt. I couldn't resist taking photos of all my brooches (well, most of them anyway)...
... and then there were so many flowers they needed their own picture!
It's pretty cool seeing them all together like that, and very satisfying. I love making all kinds of random things out of felt, but I'm also trying very much to develop my own style, and cohesive "collections" of designs that work well together. Getting everything out and looking at it every now and then is an incredibly useful part of that process. So many things to do...