Friday 31 December 2010

South West Christmas Jumble / Happy New Year!





80's dead stock clip-ons






Love this 60's Spanish tiered dress, I always imagine that it would look so great on the catwalk, if anyone knows any supermodels who'd like to buy it let me know!


Here's the pictures from the South West Christmas jumble, it's held in one of the most eclectic settings the Tooting Tram and Social, there are so many vintage frames, cupboards, cabinets and lamps dotted up, down and around it's a true feast for the vintage senses! The jumble always features a great assortment of goodies from homemade cakes to handmade blankets, pillows, confetti, gourmet chocolates and vintage finds of course! It's a great day out (especially if you want to take someone who isn't into vintage as much as yourself because you get the best of both worlds here) Plus all of the door proceeds and our stall holding fees going to a different charity every time, a super win-win.

The sale wasn't as busy as expected perhaps because it was in the last couple of weeks in the run up to Christmas, it's really the nature of the business, but if you love what you do then you'll keep doing it. I seem to be quite lucky, even though I have traded at venues that haven't been that busy I have still made a profit at each place and it's a great feeling. I spend so much time looking for items to sell and never put anything on my stall that I wouldn't wear or use myself so making a sale is like a mini approval and it's great to know that people like what I like! I love meeting other stall holders, owning my own business and meeting all of those vintage fiends who like us love to look for great stuff, care for and understand the value of vintage items. I will definitely start to trade on Etsy this year so I can reach more of you lovelies out there! I have registered my name dearsweetagatha and to get that up and running is in my top priority list of top priority things! Haha!

Look out for the next South West Jumble here, though obviously I'll keep you updated!

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Christmas times








I hope you've all had a super Christmas, sorry it's been a while since I have posted anything but on the up side I have so much stuff to show you all in the next few weeks! So here's the first, my partner stuartruel.blogspot.com and I go to a jive class on Wednesday evenings and here's some pics from our Jive Christmas do that featured a hot and cold buffet, wigs, jiving, strolling, a raffle, Elvis impersonations and karaoke! And...If you look carefully at the fifth picture down you can see a silhouette of me Charleston-ing at the back! Your all so lucky haha!

I really rather regret not taking some pictures of my outfit to show you, but at least the last two pictures are of the bag I took. I found this bag at a Cancer Research charity store and it cost £4.95, it's heavily embroidered with a thick gold coiled metal thread. I love the handle on the back with the extra touch of floral accenting, though I have to admit I struggle with small purses! It matched my 50's circle dress that had a repeat gold, deep purple and emerald green floral pattern too, and I teamed that with a crinoline of course!

Sunday 19 December 2010

A cake fit for friends


So I have a couple of dear friends who work for the Police and to say a big chocolately 'THANKS!' for helping me out recently I baked them this cheeky cake. Ok so I cheated a little by using a cake mix, but I really hate baking (especially cakes from scratch). Even though I love the idea of being able to bake fabulous treats with my 50's apron on, previous attempts have always ended up flat, dry or bland! I am definitely no Delia but I heard it was good! Haha!

Tuesday 14 December 2010

Jumpin' Jack at The Blues Kitchen








Ok so here's some pictures from the third of the four sales in the run up to Christmas, the 'Jumpin' Jack Jumble' organised by Jet down at Can't Buy Me Love and held at The Blues Kitchen in Camden. It was the first of it's kind held there and there were only eight stalls there in total. We had bad luck with it being over the weekend after the heavy snowfall in London so the footfall was a little lower than we had hoped. Usually Camden is heaving with people as it's a major tourist attraction and just generally a great day out, however with most of the attraction being outside there weren't many people about due to the cold and wet weather. Luckily I still made a profit and went dancing after! Phew.


Saturday 11 December 2010

Forever



With Christmas coming up I have been looking for some vintage baubles for the tree that I will have in my room. I had been trying to source some from the charity/thrift stores that I had visited but never found an actual set of decorations and after having looked on Ebay at the prices these were going for I definitely gave up hope of having any this year!

Very early last year outside a secondhand furniture/house clearance store I had seen a huge white 60's suitcase full of vintage Christmas decorations laid out along with most of an old lady's entire life possessions. At the time I decided not to buy the lot due to a lack of space and need, however I can assure you I had been kicking myself (very hard!) up until a few days ago when I found these beauties in a charity shop that I stumbled upon by chance! They look like they're from the late 50's to early 60's, the one's with the gold glitter are made of coloured see-through glass (in a dark green, blue and red) and are just Christmassy-magical. Finds such as these are extremely, extremely rare in London due to the amount of people in the city not only after vintage finds but also the sheer turn around of goods in and out of the stores as with any major city. So it bought great joy to my heart finding these and I was especially excited as they are still in all of their original packaging including the tissue paper! So a great big 'THANK YOU!' to whoever donated these to the store. I heart these and shall cherish them forever.

'Can't Buy Me Love'






Having accumulated so much stuff through the last year I decided to look for some jumbley-vintage sales to do before Christmas to free some much needed space in my room and to add to my Christmas fund! So I had a bit of a nosey on Facebook I found four to do in the run up to Christmas, though it's been hard having a sale every weekend mainly because it's extremely time consuming, having to select the items for sale, clean them, price and pack as well as having to bring them to the venue (of that the clothing rail being the worst to carry) the experience of the sale and having your own stall is great and over shadows all of the other hard bits and pain you may have endured along the way! I will be posting pictures from all of my sales but here's a few from the second one Can't By Me Love held at the Boogaloo in Highgate (which is on the last Saturday of every month). This one was the neurosurgery special with all of the table proceeds going to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.




Thursday 9 December 2010

Christmas in '54








I found this 50's journal from the book seller that I pictured in my previous post (second picture from the bottom). It's falling apart a bit, but I took it (it was the end of the day and all of the stuff was free) with the intention of restoring it and also ripping out all of the joural entries....Yes that's right your not going crazy I said ripping out!! I have since realised that this was one of those spur of the moment ridiculous ideas and have since catapulted it back to the land of all terrible things.

I couldn't work out what this journal was used for, for a long time. The different handwriting and languages totally threw me but after taking the pictures today I suddenly realised it was a guest book of some sort from a b&b or some place similar as most of the posts express thanks for 'their' hospitality. The first entry is from December the 23rd 1954, the last on the 4th of December 1994 and the entries address 'Barbra' and 'Peter.' There's some lovely bits of text in here so enjoy.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Welcome...oh and days out.







So I'm working a lot at the moment and days off are quite rare. I miss going to the car boot sale early on Saturday mornings. The best thing about them is the chance to really bargain with the sellers most of whom are second hand shop owners and conduct many house clearances through the week so they're extremely keen to leave with the bare minimum of what they came with. If you stay til the end you may even get to pick up a few freebies as some sellers declare their goods 'freeeee!' This usually includes fabulous bits of furniture, such as the 60's white wicker chair I wanted to take home but since I have zero space in my room it had to stay where it was *sad face*