Flea market finds

We went to the flea market this Sunday and it was a very relaxing and successful trip. I have found lots of my favorite things, old brooches, vintage art supplies. I was the most excited about these wax crayons made in Germany by a company named Stockmar. I looked it up and these crayons are still produced and they are used especially in connection with Waldorf schools (this is how they were developed also). I tried to find them in this specific packaging but with no luck. I think these are from the fifties or early sixties judging from the graphics and the font. They are not vegan, ad they are made out of pure wax, but I make an exception for something so old. There are also some Staedler crayons that are from the nineties, I think and some astra watercolor crayons that Icouldnțt find anything about, but they also seem quite old. The Stockmar ones are very good quality and they have beautiful colors, I will most definitely use them in my drawings.

I have also found some small objects.

The most intriguing to me are the two metal brooches with the round holes in them. I have found them in a box full of similar objects, things that looked like oversized pendants that used to hold gems of cameos, a ring that I regret not buying, broken brooches, everything in this dark metal with the same round holes. The tube hinge and the C clasp of the brooches made me think they are antique, si I picked up these two, thar were the most interesting to me. I tried researching them but with no luck so far.

My friend showed me this tiny metal brooch that I picked up mostly because it seemed like an useful thing to wear sometimes. At home, I noticed it has a logo on the back. It is actually a Mellerio daisy brooch, that I found listed as being from the twenties, thirties or forties. I was very glad with my find!

I have also found these sweet metal brooches, that I think are quite old, too. The flower one has a missing rhinestone, but I don’t mind it.

I will definitely wear these large earrings from the eighties.

And lastly, I found a new addition to my vintage thread collection.

Damascene bracelet and a clip

These are the two random finds from my last flea market find. The bracelet is too big for me, but I couldn’t leave it behind. i think it’s from the sixties and I liked the dragon motif. The clip is very useful to keep my sketchbooks open.

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 :).

 

Autumn

It seems that I only post phone photos lately. But I do hope to finish soon a film and have some nice photos and I have to take pictures of all my birthday gifts this year and post about them here.

This brooch is a fleamarket find from a long time ago, but I don’t think I ever showed it here. Actually, this is the first timeI wear it. The green nailpolish is a birthday gift and I love it.

First pinholes of this summer

Like every summer, I set up a small lab in a spare bathroom for pinhole processing. I really enjoy doing this and I’m looking forward to it as soon as the days get longer. This year, I’m using the Agfa paper from this photo.

I finished the Ilford papers last year. Both these packs were a lucky flea market find several years ago, but even if they expired a long time ago, they are still very ok to use. The Agfa paper is maybe fresher because these exposures are only 4-5 hours long (while I exposed the Ilford paper for at least 9 hours, also managing to have 2 -3 days long exposures without over-exposing). We will try some portraits with this more reactive paper, as hopefully a few minutes of staying completely still will get results.

These are some images from our house this summer. Some outside images maybe and some portraits for sure will follow soon.

I think/not think/think about time a lot lately. It’s not the fact that I’ll have an important birthday this year, it’s not the time shrinking more and more, the days feeling like mere hours, the summer coming to an end soon. It’s neither of these. I actually love fall…

New old things

It’s summer and so hot these days and it seems hard to me to find the motivation to do much. I almost finished some job related things and now I am free to do whatever I want, but somehow the days pass and I don’t do much. Summer is often like this to me, I feel locked out from myself, with a foggy and scattered mind. So, for now, I will only post some new things I have found, in a rare visit to the flea market, online and in a vintage shop I visit quite often.

This is a pretty needlepoint bag, in a really good shape. I’m not sure if it is from the twenties or thirties or it’s something newer (the sixties?) made in that spirit. I am actually inclined to believe it is from the twenties, but never really used or something. I will keep it in my bag, holding embroidery stuff, when I go to work in the park (I do this sometimes, meeting friends in the park and stitching while we talk and it’s one of my favorite things to do).

This is a lucky flea market find, an Egyptian scarab ring, something that I kept hoping to find. It has Egyptian hallmarks, but I didn’t research them yet. I think it’s from the forties of fifties.

Another pretty ring, made of bakelite and some sort of silver alloy.

And a snake, found online.

I added another piece to my Art Nouveau collection. This is a brass necklace with mother of pearl (a very cheap flea market find).

And a cute brass dog ring.

1951

I have found this chocolate tin at an antique fair. It is Romanian, from 1951 (the factories used to mark the year of production on tins). It’s in such a perfect condition for its age (usually these boxes have rust on the inside or outside). And the characters on the box, even if it was produced 30 years before my childhood, are so familiar, so very much the same as the characters from my own books and toys.

Very expired film

I used another roll from some Kodak 400 films that I had picked up at the flea market two or three years ago. From time to time, I really feel like using a very unpredictable film and camera, even if I really enjoy our DSLR, too. I used my Diana mini camera with this film and the results are shaky and blury and underexposed, with some accidental double exposures, too, but they capture so well the quality of that day in the forest, as film usually does. One of the rare days when everything seems good and the future full of promises.

Atmosphere

These photos taken on really expired instax film captured really well the atmosphere in the forest, so soft and dreamy and safe.

Panoramic camera

I have used again these past months my very cheap plastic panoramic camera. These photos are from January to March, shot on a very, very expired Kodak 400 film (a flea market find from a couple of years ago, when I bought several expired rolls, but I did’t use all of them because I don’t like the blue hue these films had). But somehow, in this camera and in this winter months, I really like the blue color of this photos. It was mostly fog when I shot these images, and the old film has the right atmosphere. I liked spending a slow evening scanning these winter images, now when spring is almost here.