Breathing New Life Into Old Finds!

Some of my regular readers will know that I volunteer at my local Oxfam Shop twice a week, which I really enjoy. It's great to work with the other Volunteers and enables me to give something back to the society we live in. Of course there is also the added bonus of finding wonderful old items for my altered art! During the past three years I have had the pleasure of getting to know a local Antiques Dealer who visits the shop once a week, he knows that I am always on the lookout for old photo's, lace, music sheet papers etc.. and on several occasions he has brought some great pieces in for me to purchase.

The last couple of weeks have been no exception, he has found some wonderful old photo albums for me as well as a huge bag of old lace and tablecloths. With these treasures I have breathed new life into them and created vintage wall hangings. The cover and inserts from the albums have formed the background base for my wall hangings (after carefully removing the gorgeous photos of course). I have then very loosely thrown together scraps of lace to create a tattered setting for the main images.

I then stitch the lace background in a freehand motion on the sewing machine making a layered and tattered collage with the scraps of lace. This forms the base on to which I have added an old postcard image that has been covered in melted beeswax and sealed with diamond glaze. Butterfly wings printed onto velvet paper are then added to the child image and this is glued onto the postcard. I then stamped the word DREAM onto old paper and cut each letter out repositioning them haphazardly below the childs hand. The whole piece is then hand stitched onto the lace background adding vintage buttons, making sure to stitch through the lace and also the photo album backing.The original ribbon from the photo album is then retied onto the holes in the album cover, this adds as a ribbon with which to hang the piece from. And there you have it "Breathing New Life into Old Finds!"