January 2021

I’m back here, after a long time. But I have missed this place and I like looking back at my posts sometimes. So, I’ll try to post here again this year, mainly because I like having these random fragments of my life logged here. I’ll start with this video of some of my daily journaling in January.

My birthday gifts

My birthday was almost three weeks ago, but these days seems very difficult to do things just for fun, so I kept postponing taking photos of all my gifts this year. But I really wanted to have a post about my birthday haul, because I enjoy looking back at these sort of things and I always like reading about other people’s gifts, too. So, finally I post about my gifts, even if most of the photos are blurry phone pictures.

For one year already, I have a closet for my art and embroidery supplies and other such things where I had only one shelf. The rest of the closet was one huge pile of stuff, of boxes built on top of each other. I was ok with it for a while, but lately it was driving me crazy. When I needed something in a box below, I had to take out the whole pile of things and then put everything back. So, one of my birthday gifts this year was shelves for my closet. I don’t have a before photo, but this is how my closet looks like now (even with the shelves it looks kind of cluttered, but now I know where everything is and I have easy access to all my things.)

And here it is my friend Maria installing the shelves for me.

She also gave me a nice, vegan and organic hand cream (that I didn’t take a photo of) and this great black Dala horse for my collection!

And tiny succulents. 🙂

The fluorescent nail polish is from Oana, who also gave me this bunny watch that I am wearing these days.

Rodica made me this beautiful pencil wrap, were I keep my Policromos pencils. Souris likes it, too.

I also got a lot of clothes this year (from Rodica and Alina).

Oti gave me this nice notebook, with drawings of flowers inside.

I kept watching online this Edwardian bangle for a few year now. It is hallmarked for 1911 and it’s really beautiful. I bought it with birthday money from my mother. I think it belonged to the same person as my other bangle from the same period (I bought it from the same seller).

And finally, my uncle bought me these very expensive watercolors. I already started using them a bit, but I hope to find time in the second half if November to really paint with them. The colors are so beautiful and vibrant. The pocket brush was included and I was relieved to see the hairs are synthetic.

I was got chocolates from my friend at work, but those are long gone before taking a photo of them :).

 

Last pinholes of this season

It’s too dark for pinholes these rainy days and also I’m out of chemicals, so I ended the pinhole season till next summer. I also finished this box of papers I bought 3 years ago, I think, at the flea market. I still have another box of 100 papers, but the matte kind. When I bought these boxes of very nice paper, I wasn’t sure if they will still be ok. I don’t have an expiry date on the box, but the price tag on it is in DM, so obviously they are from before 2002. They were quite expensive, too. But even if they are at least 14 years old, they are great and as the paper is always so expensive, I’m glad I’ll be able to use them for many more pinholes.

Plein air

I have found this box yesterday at the flea market, for quite cheap. It’s a small size case, with some of the original tools still inside: a metal bottle for turpentine, a dipper and a metal charcoal holder. The palette is not there, unfortunately. There are also some pastel sticks and 2 old brushes with bamboo handles marked Japan. Also some newer pencils. Obviously, this box was used in a really long time span or had different owners using it.  It was made by Sennelier Paris, an old and famous art store. Their logo is different now and I couldn’t find any listing of their previous logos, so I could have a definite answer regarding the age of my box. But, I think the box and the original accessories are from the thirties or forties, from the feel of them.

I don’t plan painting en plein air again (something that I was very fond of when I was 15), but it’s a very nice box to store some of my drawing and painting supplies in, while trying to imagine who were the ones using it before me.

Linking up with Vintage Bliss Tuesdays.

Pencil cases

I love old wooden pencil cases. The ones in the first photos are from Belgium, I think, because I have found them in a box at the flea market that had stuff brought from Belgium. I think they are from the forties, maybe? The one with Plumes written on  it has a sliding lid and the other one has two compartments that open separately. They were obviously used but they are in a good shape. But my favorite is the third one, that I have shown here before, a Romanian one from the seventies or eighties with white and pink counting beads and an alphabet paper glued inside.

Linking up with Vintage Bliss party and Thriftasaurus.

Phone numbers

I’m not sure what to use these vintage phone number notebooks for. I kept the small one a long time in my bag, thinking I’ll use it for something (maybe randomly write down ideas that match each letter) but I never did. The big avocado green one is new in its box, with a leaflet with other office accessories from the same line. It’s from the seventies, I think. I used to be fascinated with these kind of notebooks, you just dial in a letter and the book magically opens at that page, but back then there were lots of phone numbers to write down. For now, I keep hoping I’ll find a use for these and how they pop open at a certain letter it’s still fun :).

Linking up with Vintage Bliss Tuesdays party.

Vintage stationery

This is what’s left of my grandfather’s stationery collection from the seventies and early eighties. He kept his pencils and fountain pens and notebooks in a special drawer and we would take them out sometimes and look at them together, carefully. (He died when I was 6 and he was my only friend till then). There were much more fountain pens and colored pencils, but I used them and gradually lost them in primary and secondary school. There were also more notebooks and I still have those as my diaries from high school. I could never bring myself to write in this last one though, the most melancholy notebook ever. Linking up with Vintage Bliss Tuesdays.