INSPIRATION BOARD

One night while staring at the blank wall in my study, I came upon an idea to fill the space. I knew I wanted a beautiful bulletin board and I wanted it big.  Not two feet by three feet but four feet wide and five feet high.  Anything pre-made would be $$$$$.  So, while staring at the wall I thought about homasote, that 1/2 inch thick tack board that, if covered, would work.  I also remembered that Renee at Mesa Sales had ordered linen fabric covered in French writing. The next morning I went to Home Depot--no homasote.  But was told that white wall board would work even better.  For around $18 I bought an 8 x 6 wall board, cut down to one 5 x 4 and two 2 x 3 pieces. 

Staple gun in hand, I completed the project in less than 30 minutes.  And since my desk is deep, I didn't want it to hang on the wall but to lean, thereby easily accessed. 

Fabric - $18 per yard

This pattern caught my eye and would take care of using more of the board remnants and fill this space in my bathroom nicely. It is also French writing on linen but with an overlaying bird and branch pattern.

I stapled cording onto the back of the board to hang on a pretty little crown hook I bought in Paris last year.

A super simple project done quickly and for $ as opposed to $$$$.  Yea!

TRAVEL ACQUISITIONS

Travel is very conflicting, don't you think?   We all love to travel and to sleep in pretty hotel rooms, we love to be home and sleep in our own bed.  Can't wait to leave, can't wait to return.  Unless you are plopped on a beach for a week, travel is not restful or relaxing, but an adventure.  And it is addictive.

Part of the fun is collecting items for my home as I travel along.  Each of my little finds serve as reminders of villages, crazy-busy cities, people, monuments, etc. 

Several years ago on a visit to London I had purchased two French furniture drawings in water color from Abbott and Holder.  I regretted not buying more.  So a few months ago while browsing at Abbott and Holder, I asked the manager if he had any more the little faded gems.  He dug around and by the next morning had unearthed five!  All for a reasonable price.  I bought them all.  Haven't had them framed yet--framing sometimes is more money than the actual artwork.  But one by one they will be matted, framed, and placed on a wall to remind me of my visit.

This gorgeous silver journal was hidden on a "sale" shelf at Liberty.  Marked down because of a slight tear on the last page of the book--half-off, it quickly became mine.  I thought it was fitting to fill it with notes from my Oxford class.

And, remember these beauties?  What I didn't show you was how pretty the books are inside.

Matching bookmarks and endpapers.

Really, Persephone thinks of everything.

Belgian is known for its chocolates, linens, and lace.  For me, chocolates and linen are a definite yes, but lace, not so much.  So I purchased one dozen of these unbleached linen napkins. Thanksgiving will be the perfect dinner to be introduced to the family.
 

In Brussels, we stopped by a tiny little needlepoint shop full of tapestries and pillows.  These whimsical and colorful pillows caught my eye.  I purchased a total of five different patterns.

Hen and Hammock sells an authentic English Sussex Trug made from sweet chestnut.  Harder to find than you might think and too much money to have shipped to the states, I placed an order to be delivered to Christ Church College.  Then I had to figure out how to get it home in the flimsy box it came in.




Suddenly the thought came to me to reinforce it from the inside (thank you, Dad!)  and I did so with extra cardboard found on campus.  By reinforcing the box and padding the trug with clothes, I was able to check this on my flight (with several "fragile" stickers) and lo and behold it made it home in perfect condition.

Twice, I have carried large breakable bowls onto the plane to bring home (from Ireland and Austria).  It was worth the inconvience to cart these heavy bowls made by local artisans because not only are they beautiful, but I am reminded of who I was with and where I was when each were purchased.

Sometimes you have to be creative in getting your new acquisition home.  I once kept every empty plastic water bottle from a trip and used them to pad my breakables stashed in my luggage and it worked--nothing was broken. It's worth a bit of inconvenience to bring home tangible memories of great adventures, don't you think?

ARCHITECTURAL PRINTS

When I travel I love to pickup artwork whether it be small watercolors by local artists camped out in tourist areas or finding some interesting print in a secondhand bookstore.

The above is what kicked off my love of architectural prints. My sister, Tammy, and I were in a tiny little village, Puddletown (I'm not making this up) in Dorset County, England. We walked in (carefully since the entrance was directly on the main road, no sidewalk, no buffer between the door and the road!) to a miniscule used bookstore and I found this print of an obelisk that sits high upon one of the Cambridge colleges. It was 10 pounds which at the time was around $14. That was 1995.

Since then I have a collected a few more. I found the trio above in London at a junk shop on Portobello Road on my 40th birthday, December 31st. These three beautiful prints were in a french architectural book dated in the late 1700's and cost 20 pounds each--around $30 at the time.

I found this old print last summer in New York for $15. Isn't it pretty? I was touring the Kips Bay Designer Show House and this was in the gift shop, ripped out of a book from the 1800's.

Digging around in a shop in Rome I came across this water-stained print and loved the lines despite the brown, crinkly paper. It was also super cheap, just can't remember anymore. But I do remember the shop owner arguing with her husband in rapid-fire Italian.

And these three were found on separate trips. The top is of a fountain on a bridge over the Tiber River in Rome. The second, I found for $5 in York, it is an intricate drawing of a gate. And the last I found in Oxford--a drawing of a ceiling. Wouldn't you love to be looking up at that ceiling?

Some of these prints are fragile and don't travel well so I now carry a mailing tube with me which protects the art.

All of these pieces are some of the reasons I love traveling. To walk in to some tiny little dusty store, dig around in boxes and come up with a little gem while chatting with the shop owner enriches my experience. And to bring it home to display visually reminds me of a great trip.