Bottles for the Pond Scum......

I didn't set out to look for bottles for the attic this morning. I just wanted a slow stroll around the antique mall.....I got bottles.

But first I found a Pfalsgraff bowl in black for my kitchen. Then I found this cute Japanese Candy dish with a curlicue handle. I have a weakness for 1920 to 194o design. Evidently, so does Tessie. She immediately jumped in and announced that it would make a great bathtub, "And it even matches my apron. See the little blue circular flowers! Just like my apron."

I told her she could either have that or some bottles to store her pond scum and swamp water. She decided that I could have the candy dish back.

As I walked around the mall, I happened on a booth that I hadn't seen before. Or maybe it was just new merchandise. This booth had all kinds of fancy perfume bottles. I pretty much ignored those and went for a basket that had old sample bottles in it. The ones without stoppers were dirt cheap.

I bought four of them for Tessie's attic. That made her day. I also bought a couple of larger ones without stoppers. Those, I am going to use for bead work. I usually make beaded cork stoppers for them, so I didn't need the tops. I am just glad that the people selling these things seem to think of them as useless if they don't have a top.

Unfortunately, when Tessie asked what I was going to do with the big ones, I wasn't quick enough to think of an answer that would make her lose interest. Instead, when I said I was going to do bead work on them, her eyes lit up and she said, "Oh good. You can practice on those and then when you are good enough I will let you do my pond scum bottle. I would like it in green and yellow to match the scum. Then you can do one for Swamp water in blue and brown. I will have to think about the other two."

I bought a big bag of cancelled stamps from all over the world. They come in handy for all kinds of things in mini as well as they do for big art and craft projects.

Tessie already found a bunch of Irish stamps that are paintings of birds that she likes. I saw quite a few that are promising.

The last thing in the bag was a treasure. It is a paperback book from 1984. "Creative and Collectible Miniatures" by Lillian Baker. It's one that I had never seen before. I am guessing that many copies of that one were relegated to the waste basket. It has a lot of black and white photos(only a few color photos) and good descriptions. However, the pricing guide in it consists of maybe ten pages in the back and when I looked through that, I couldn't find even one company or store that is still in business. When I have a chance, I am going to sit down and go through it more thoroughly. Right now, Tessie has it and is marking photos of things that she needs badly.....

Me? I keep looking at the photos and thinking that we have come a long way in miniatures since 1984.

See you tomorrow.