Yes it’s arrived! Every year I design and create a special Christmas Collection, but the collection does not begin here in October, it actually began over the Summer Holiday.
On a swelteringly hot Tuesday back in June I had gone second-hand shopping. Something I love to do. Rummaging around the charity and antique shops is my jam. My very best strawberry jam, because for me, the storytelling behind the items makes me feel whimsical…and often in 2022, there’s not a lot of whimsy.
When ‘on a whimsy hunt’, yes sustainability is on the list, but often there’s a secret narrative that fuels the strawberry conserve even further…thoughts like, “I wonder who this used to belong to…’, ‘Perhaps this came from an old dilapidated mansion in the woods?’, or ‘This must have adorned Miss Havisham’s mantelpiece, until the years of dust finally pushed it off the mantel and it was uncovered by a mouse, whose years of eating strong Manchego cheese, enabled said mouse to develop large arm muscles. Those large ‘guns’ then took the item in question on an adventure to Dartmoor. I digress….the point being, that narrative engages us and that is precisely what happened when, in the back of the shop, underneath some questionable stained fabric, I found this book “and Miss Carter Wore Pink’.
One day, or should it be once upon a time, Helen Bradley picked up a paintbrush and mixed a little pink colour, she painted the dress of a tiny figure. From that moment, the character, Miss Carter (who wore pink) was created.
Helen Bradley was born on the 20th of November 1900 at number 58, High Street, Lees, near Oldham, Lancashire. She was interested in art all her life, but it was not until she was in her sixties and her grandchildren were asking what life was like when she was a child, that she started painting the scenes she remembered of her own Edwardian Childhood
And so it is that this book found its way into my heart and home and is what has inspired the Collection.
I’ve created heirloom decorations, blooms to make you swoon, hand painted baubles and decs to celebrate all things whimsical.
Now tell me…what ‘treasures’ have you found whilst on a whimsy hunt?
