BLOG CANDY WINNER & MORE ANTIQUE FAIRE FINDS

Okay- no reason to prolong the suspense! The name my daughter pulled from the basket tonight was "CASS"! So, she is the winner of last Sunday's wedding themed blog candy! I'll be in touch with you soon to get your mailing address, Cass. Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone for being such faithful readers and leaving me the comments that mean so much to me!

I have rally enjoyed sending happy mail out to my winners and really don't want this to end. So... keep popping on over here because I have another group of things I am putting together to give away before long. And this time it will be (in my opinion) the best blog candy from me yet. It's going to be filled with lots of the things that I use and consider to be my favorites. (Think vintage inspired!) So, keep an eye out for that to come soon!

Now for a few things I want to share with you.

Stamp storage is such an issue for me! Despite the fact that I have weeded out tons of stamp sets and have my miscellaneous individual stamps all neatly stored in baskets, it's still a constant challenge. I know that organization is important, yet I must say, to me stamps are fun to look at, too, lol. (Would anyone except a fellow stamper understand this?) So, here is a neat thing I found- or shall I say my sweet husband found- to keep some of my many small miscellaneous stamps stored in while also looking great on display.

Isn't it great? It's an old printer's type tray. Mike used to have one that was nicer and even a bit bigger than this and we used to put little knick knacks on it. At Christmas time I'd load it up with tiny Christmas decorations and ornaments. (Why we ended up selling it at a tag sale I do not know!)

Anyway, Mike found this one when we went on one of our fun antiques hunting trips. He brought it over to show me and I immediately thought it would be an awesome way to display some stamps. And I think I was right! Cool, huh?

And next are the things I found last weekend. I actually found another printer's type tray, but much smaller. I will take a pic when I have it hung up and filled with stamps.

As for the things shown below: Here is some of the lace I purchased. The first picture is some of what I bought from the lovely British woman who also sold me the perfume bottle. It's all so pretty!

In this next picture is some I got from another lady. Included is some much older lace. Oh, it is just gorgeous up close and in person!

And next are buttons. I just love old buttons! I have been collecting buttons since I was a kid. My grandmother was quite the seamstress (she made lots of things including her own clothes and hats- and even doll clothes for my Barbie dolls including a wedding dress made from left over lace from her own wedding dress!). I have a large box full of buttons that were hers, but also many that I have collected on my own. Some day I will have to post about them, too ;-)

Here are a few of the buttons from the rather unusual assortment I ended up with. They were all from the same seller. She had tons of buttons! I had to buy a lot more that I didn't care about to get these, though. She had them in baggies of assorted buttons and so you "got what you got". Although, she was nice enough to let me pull a couple out and gave me a price just for those.

I love using old buttons on my cards. I am actually having buyer's remorse over all the PTI buttons I have purchased, as I really hardly ever use them. I so much prefer "real" vintage and antique buttons! :-)

And next are the three pieces of jewelry I splurged on.

I have a ton of old stick pins, but could not resist this sweet cameo. The color is so much prettier than the picture shows. And speaking of color- OMW! The dangling blue stone in this bar pin is so, so pretty! The photo totally does not do it justice!

And isn't the little silver and rhinestone heart pendant pretty? I got that one first. The lady was packing up to leave and gave me a really good price on it.

So then, as I was on the way out and heading to my car, thinking I had done all my shopping for the day, I saw one vendor I did not notice on my way in. She had sooo much beautiful jewelry! There were so many lovely pieces from which to choose that I had a really hard time deciding. But I really don't think I could have left without the blue stone bar pin!

So... there are some of my latest antiques faire finds. Being on the West Coast, it's a lot harder to find things like we used to get when we lived in New England, that's for sure. But the potential still exists, and I think it's the hunt that's what is really fun anyway.

So... I'd love to hear- how do you think I made out?