My growing collection of vintage photographs

Well firstly, thank you for still paying attention to our little blog (I say 'our' - Mr BL stays away and just reads what I've been babbling about!), I'm going to pop around in a bit, drop in for a cup of tea and say 'hi' :)  Mine's milk with one sugar thanks.

Today I'm on strike and I was hoping to stand side by side with my fellow teachers in the march - unfortunately our washing machine is broken and I have to wait in for someone to fix it.  SUCKS!  The joy of teaching and Mr BL's crazy hours, we never have time for repairs to be done.

While on the subject of work - it seems that Ofsted will not be coming to our school this side of Christmas now.  They haven't called this week and the next two weeks our Year 11s are on an intensive time-table, which means we'll be teaching a different time-table with lots of different cover/ supply lessons.  Ofsted call for these details before they make their arrangements so it will not be in their interest to come.  Well, what happens now?  Now we have to have training over the next two weeks because Ofsted change the way they do inspections in January.  We've been expecting the 20 minute walk-ins but this will be changing - so we have to rethink everything again.  It's all been so ridiculous, stressful and exhausting.  I feel in good-ish shape though.  I'm virtually marked up to date, I've got 'outstanding' in my last two observations and I know what I'm doing.  On the other hand I still feel stressed because I always want to 'do my best' of course.  Ah well - enough whinging!

BACK FROM THE MARKET ...
It's now a couple of hours later (from writing the mind-splurge above) and I'm on the sofa watching a documentary about the mind and money - I'm so glad we have PBS here now - I love NOVA.

So onto my ever-growing collection of vintage photographs:

For the men to look at (e.g. it's above the toilet!)

Anyhoo - onto what I was going to blather on about.  Our collection of old photographs and what we're doing with them.  I think I mentioned before that the toilet is slowly getting covered in some of these and I thought I'd show you a couple of photos (Hipstamatic I'm afraid) of how it's coming along:

One of my favourites is the contact sheet to the left - a man had obviously gone for a photo shoot and this is a selection of shots for him to choose from. 

You can see him better on here!  The little girl next to him is really sweet too!

Really sad to see wedding photographs being dumped - I usually pick them up - they give such a sense of the era as people tend to dress their best at a wedding so you get a real feel of the fashions at the time.

The wedding photo in the middle has now been moved to the landing.  I hate to say it but it features the ugliest family I've ever seen.  I know that's really cruel but seriously - they are.  The groom looks so upset!

This is the landing leading to the smallest room in the house.

Look at these beautiful women - you couldn't not pick up their photographs and want to preserve them.  The young girl on the left was photographed at the Lafayette Photography Studio in Bond Street.  You can read about the studio on the V&A website. I have a couple of photographs from the same shoot.  You can see it below above the baby.

Look at that beard! It's a pity you can't see the small photograph under the large portrait of the woman - the guy in it has the BEST moustache.

So there you go - a little sneak preview of what we're doing with our collection of vintage/ old photographs.  I know some people will balk that I've put my old photos on the wall like this but I just know that they are in a better place than a landfill site.  People can see them and enjoy them :)  I will try and do some better photos with my 'proper camera' when I have the walls finished.

What do you think?

I used the opportunity of an unpaid day off from work to go to my favourite haunt - Deptford Market.  MOST disappointing today - there was NO paper ephemera :(  I was in a massive sulk.  However I did pick up this:

Snoopy

The gang's all here

Snoopy and I

I think he might be circa 1970s maybe even as early as the 60s?  Everything is there - the t-shirt and trousers and there is NOTHING wrong with any of the stitching - a complete SNIP at £2 methinks!  I used to love Snoopy when I was younger so it was a real no-brainer for me.  Also got a few books and records but nothing exciting.  I hope it's better on Saturday!

Insomnia stricks again ...

I keep waking around 2am which is great for stumbling and checking out Pinterest, however it's going to be a nightmare for going back to work next week.

It's given me time though to indulge myself in capturing some bits and pieces around the flat as we start to get organised:

Our one organised corner.  The shelves are made out of recycled scaffolding boards by Mr BL, the chair was being thrown out at the theatre he works in, the doll was a present from my best friend and the phone was from the junk market - £5.  Mr BL fixed it - he's so clever!

A couple of old boxes we've picked up at the junk market - the top one is an old Police ammunition box.  Great for hiding away games controllers and wires.  I picked the vase up at the Salvation Army shop for 95p; it's going to be drawn on I think for my Etsy shop.  But for now it's holding some lovely sunflowers :)

So there we go - the ONE corner we have sorted! ha ha.

While I was sorting things out I noticed this weird 'connection':

This box we picked up (where? You've guessed it - Deptford Junk Market) ages ago and it houses more wires and tools. Note the number on the side.

This tea crate was one of two that we found on the street where we used to live.  Note the number on the side!

 I know it's only a coincidence but a weird one nonetheless.

I thought I'd also share a couple of bizarro purchases from last week before I got sick:

We discovered this weird Kewpie praying Spiderman doll in the Salvation Army shop - really a bizarre mixture of ideas.

 

Found these 'aura goggles' on the market - £1.  They were produced by the British Metaphysical Society in the 60s and are just fascinating.  The only place I could find something similar was here and they sold for $49.99 - one of our friends wants them - not sure we want to get rid of them.  They're also quite steampunk in a way I guess.

Yesterday my Zuzzle Bind-It-All turned up - the instructions on the disc and the booklet are rubbish so I turned to trusty Youtube and found this awesomely simple tutorial.  I was binding within minutes and only really messed up a couple of times being my usual over-excited self.  I haven't really done anything ground-breaking but I was fairly pleased with my first tries, creating some little 'art journals' for when I feel 'arty'!

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The covers are vintage bingo cards I picked up on the Market.

Random pages taken from an old scrapbook I found on the market - mostly of playbills and adverts from the 70s and 80s.

I painted some of the pages with oil pastels and water colours.

And finally on another 'crafty' note a new addition to the Belle-Laide collection and a 'second' which ended up being just a test plate that I kind of liked!

Mucha inspired

Just a doodle - I kind of like it though.  I'm really not a very good artist! ha ha.

Well there you go - my little life in a nutshell.  Hope you managed to get to the end of this!

My weekend haul, my crazy classroom and a lickle competition

I really should be marking some work or editing some photos from an event on Saturday but I've been wanting to share my finds from Deptford Market this weekend - so the rest can wait for a bit.  I'm sitting cross-legged on the sofa watching Come Dine With Me munching on fruit and now I will share ...

So let's start with the books:

I've been intrigued by Haunted since it came out

This looked intriguing - has anyone read it?

I LOVE Mr Fry and have most of his books - but not this one -  well I do now!

This 1940s dog book is full of excellent images and adverts

Brilliant recipes for home-made wines

We are quite geeky and love to collect old AtoZs of London and then sit comparing how much has changed in the city!

I met Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell when they came to a school I was teaching at - so I bought these two books for my tutor group's 'book box'.  The Parliament of Blood intrigued me because it seems to be similar (slightly) to a novel I've been working on - BUGGER!

For some reason this book grabbed my attention and I have no idea why

... but I'm glad I opened it because it's the first Richard Scarry book I've found second-hand.  I used to love Richard Scarry books as a child and this one, despite being battered shows signs of being very well loved.

 Onto the paper ephemera:

I love these shaped birthday postcards - so cute.  I now want to find 1,2,5,6,8 and 9.  Not sure if there's a 10.

Cute kittens!

Random ephemera - a few photos for the Ghosts project we're working on.

I quite like drinking ephemera and this little Stones booklet is so cool - with recipes and games inside :)

Now the random shizzle and COMPETITION TIME!

What do you think this is??????????? I'll let you guess and reveal the answer AND the winner in next Tuesday's post.  I'll even send a prize (a box of random goodies) to the closest guess. To win you need to post your answer as a comment AND follow my blog. If a number of you get it right I'll put your names in a hat so to speak and pick out a random.   HINT: I'm going to take it into work tomorrow and show it to my Year 7 Media Studies class to show them how we 'used to do it' back in the day!

 I love this pair of peacocks made out of tin.  I don't think there is much age to them but they're adorable.  I have an art deco style peacock tattooed on my back and have a real love for them.  In fact this weekend I'll be spending the weekend in the company of a peacock as Ben's parents' have one :)  We've now got to find a home in the flat for them.

Did you ever have a flower loom as a child?  I did and I loved it.  I found this set for 50p :)  BARGAIN!  It didn't have the instructions but it did have some odd colour combination of wools and a really bad wool flower.  I'm guessing they tried it the once and gave up after that!  So I looked up some tutorials on the web and found this great one on Youtube.  The woman collects vintage flower looms and creates her own kits then sells them on.  This is a really good tutorial and as I've said before I find it easier to be shown how to do something rather than read instructions.  So - do you want to see the results?  Of COURSE you do!

Instead of using wool I had some old thin curtains that someone had given me and was never going to hang them up so I decided to rip them into strips and use that instead of yarn.

These ones were made out of a silvery/purple curtain the same person gave us.  They make quite cute rosettes for presents I think.

Well done you for getting this far with my blog post :)  I thought I'd also share a story from the crazy world of teaching.
I have a Year 11 class who are difficult to say the very least.  Basically it's a class where you have the worst behaved, most excluded kids in the year group, and I have to start and end my week in their company.  I've grown to like them in a weird way.  However it's now 4 days before they leave to go on study leave, as the course they're doing is 100% coursework they're slowly starting to filter away to other teachers during our lesson time in order to prepare for their exams.  Today was the last lesson I have with them and I was trying to get the 'strays' to finish as much off as possible so they can go off and do their Maths, English and Science revision.  One of the students took 1 1/2 hours to write about 5 sentences and THAT was with me sitting next to him to make sure he did it.
Anyway - I was updating the spreadsheet on the smartboard so that the kids could see what they had left and I heard a bit of commotion behind me.  Freakin' out thinking that a fight had broken out (not unusual for this class) I turned around and saw the same boy who took forever to write 5 lines, standing there with his flies and button undone on his trousers and the trousers lowered.  Apparently he was 'just sorting' his trousers out.  Seriously.  Well he's now on an 'early bath' (which means he only comes back for exams now) and the school is investigating the situation.  He just kind of stood there like there was nothing at all wrong in what he was doing. 
To say this is the worst thing that has happened in my classroom with boys and their hands down their trousers is, unfortunately, not true.  I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations.  Ahhh the youth of today eh?