Buy Vintage China ‘Mad Hatter Cake Stands’ from Vintage Tea Sets

I’ve opened an ebay shop due to popular demand and if you haul yourself over there now you can buy beautiful quirky mad hatter cake stands!  This ones just gone but I’ll be adding more on the weekend….so keep your peepers open!

I’m selling an assortment of bespoke cake stands just like the ones you can hire through vintage Tea Sets, beautiful cups and saucers and from time to time I’ll be releasing surplus stock that no longer fits in with my collection.  This is the perfect option for a ‘Bride to be’ wanting to buy china but you are restricted to what I put together (it’s all beautiful!)…as it happens…….there’s still two days to run on one I’m running at the moment on ebay so stop by and take a look here.

And the winner is…….

Last month I announced a give away for one of my bespoke cloche hats, in addition to the Vintage China Hire this is another passion of mine.

The winner of the competition is Spoiltpig.  I’m sorry to all of you who missed out this time, I enjoyed reading all your comments and honestly if I had some little elves that could get stitching and making felt I’d be sending you all one!  I’ll be running another competition soon, so do pop back.

The great Vintage China Giveaway!!! well almost…..

I’ve posted on ebay a large amount of afternoon tea china thats surplus to my requirements with no reserve and its not got long to go!  This is perfect for anyone organising an afternoon tea for a wedding or anniversary and I haven’t done this before ladies and gents and am unlikely to again.  There are cake stands galore,  really cute mad hatter ones, trio’s, teapots and coffee pots, soy tea cup candles….what are you waiting for!  Go and check it out here!

Buy your own tea for two from Vintage Tea Sets

When I acquired this beautiful pair of Wellington Trio’s they sat pride of place in my cabinet for over a year.  They are one of my favourite finds but I’ve decided it time to let them go, I can’t hang onto it all, I’ve enjoyed them and now its time to share the tea cup love!  If you click on the image below it’ll take you to my ebay shop.

Over a 100 years old and super fine

Vintage China Hire from ‘Vintage Tea Sets’

Here’s a few taster pics of the actual crockery we have to offer here at vintage tea Sets in action at an Afternoon tea wedding, for more images, please click here to view our gallery.  Don’t forget we also have dinner services…..these beautiful images were captured by Graham Morgan

An afternoon tea with VTS crockery in full swing!

Lots of steaming hot tea....

Bespoke cake stands from Vintage Tea Sets

Royal Albert anyone?

Appear on “Four Weddings” and win a luxury Honeymoon

Not a competition for the super sensitive but hear me out!  I heard this first from the fabulous Rock ‘n Roll Bride if you get time do check out her blog its an amazing source of inspiration if you’re planning a wedding.  I digress!  Casting is taking place for a second series of the hit TV show for LIVING, called “Four Weddings”. They are looking for more UK brides-to-be to attend and score each others big days, scoring the venue, the dress, the food and the overall presentation. The scores are not disclosed amongst the other brides until after all the weddings when it will be revealed whose wedding has been judged the best! The winning bride will win a LUXURY Honeymoon.

They would love a real variety of weddings in the series so if you know of anyone getting married in the UK between Now (October 2009) and March 2010, please could they contact meg.barnard@itv.com

Its got the feel of ‘Come dine with me’ this show, so if you like that format and love a competition, why not!!! So  long as you can take the whole scoring with a pinch of salt then you could end up with a lovely honeymoon and a healthier looking bank account….

Bespoke 1920’s Style Hat Giveaway……

Another passion of mine alongside the vintage crockery hire is making 1920’s style cloche hats some with a bit of a twist, I’m currently working on a cheeky little faux leopard skin version for myself which I’ll be donning this winter.  I sell them through my temporary online shop clarabows which I’m slowly winding down as I’ll be launching my own millinery website before long.  Well, this morning I woke up in a particularly generous mood!  Having packed my latest hat order off  in its white and black striped box I decided to make one lucky individual a cloche hat for free, one like the stunner shown below or you can pick from one of the following colours, Hot Pink, White, Emerald, Sage or Lilac. I have a chest of drawers full of luscious trimmings to choose.

A handmade bespoke hat of your very own.....

HOW TO ENTER
All you need to do is venture into my Vintage Tea Sets online gallery and choose you’re favourite item of crockery from my collection and pop back here and tell me why, leaving a message in the comments box below. Closing date is 31st October 2009 midnight (UK). All entries will be entered into a hat (no pun intended) and the winner will be announced November 01st 2009. I’m afraid this competition to win a hat is open to people entering from the UK only, if you are from overseas you can still enter but its for a cocktail hat/fascinator and then there will be a redraw for the hat, a hat is going to someone.

alternative prize

WHAT WILL YOU WIN
You will win a custom made cloche hat hand made by myself, hand stitched from the finest quality wool felt produced in the UK. This will then be dressed with a satin fabric band of your choice and either a vintage style rose or something of your choice from my large collection of trimmings. I will work closely with you to create something you will want to wear all winter! This hat will be delivered in a black and white striped hat box.  As its made by hand, it will take up to 2 weeks to make before I post it on to you.  Alternatively you can plump for a cocktail hat like the one shown above, either in cream or black, birdcage veiling is optional.

So, what are you waiting for…….off you go to my gallery!!!

Setting a beautiful Christmas table – Part 1 1950’s mismatched

Plain rose

I’ve got a number of weddings in December taking advantage of a Christmas theme and rather than them opting for the low/high tea, they’ve gone for a hot buffet which leads me onto table settings and made me think I’d throw a few ideas out to you for your own table and how to make it look beautiful.  So this post is just showing what can be achieved with lovely crockery alone.  I’ve not focussed on cloths, mats, that’ll come later…..and these are ladies settings, whilst I occasionally get a kick out of making big burly rugby chaps drink out of my chintzy cups, they too can have settings that won’t make them feel a little bit left out.  All to come!

Most requests I get are for 1950’s mismatched, it’s fun and bold, so this is what I’m going to show you here.  Later on in this series I’ll show you some Art Deco, before going further back to Edwardian before savouring the delights on offer from the naturalistic Victorians.  So this is just the start of our tour.

In these examples I’ve given you a mismatched look using the 1950’s china, I like both mismatched and sets, they have their places both of them.  The more I learn about China the more I appreciate the beauty of sets in all honesty.  All 3 of these settings can be replicated so whilst they are technically ‘mismatched’ on the table you could have them all identical. So say, 12 settings of the red rose…..and so on…I like that look, mismatched but not totally.

Chintz

Just a simple glance at what can be achieved.  I hope thats given you all some nice ideas, over the next few weeks I’ll start adding more simple little touches you can do at home to set that table alight over the Christmas period.  And if you need to hire anything you know where we are, I have tureens and gravy boats galore!  not to mention tea sets, coffee sets….dinner plates, meat platters…..

Vintage Tea Sets in West Country Life

Art on the Hill took up all my time over the weekend and I also popped into the Gay and Lesbian Wedding Fair in Cardiff to say hello which meant a lot of dashing around and general faffing about so I conveniently forgot I was being featured in the Western Daily Press’s weekend supplement ‘West Country Life’ on Saturday (the news story I related last week ran in a few more papers).  Whilst my picture is on this blog, it still feels a bit odd putting myself ‘out there’, yes I know why do it?  when I read blogs I like to know who it is behind them,  its nice to put a face to someone’s ramblings is what I’m saying.  So it was either an intentional thing or my subconscious trying to avoid something quite scary (the newspaper that is), well I ‘forgot’…..’luckily’ Adam returned home in the evening with a newspaper chuckling to himself, he’d been queuing in our local supermarket and spotted my mug staring up at him (he’d also forgotten about the article, we’re very well suited).  Well it was a lovely article and I managed to make it on 3 pages, not page 3 (front cover of the magazine and two full pages inside), 4 if you include the one on the front page of the paper as well! (oh how sad!), anyway, here it is…….and the phone has not stopped ringing since…..this is the coolest thing to have happened to Vintage Tea Sets with media coverage so far but I must say I don’t think seeing that massive face of mine and being Bristol’s ‘China Girl’ has sunk in yet!

Front page of 'West Country Life' and on the front page of the paper (behind)

Art on the Hill 2009

Today was day one of ‘Art on the Hill’, after wishing I’d taken part last year I took the plunge and put some of my mother and I’s craftywork items on display for people in the local area to take a peek at and its been a great day.  All in all its an opportunity/excuse to just get to know other residents a few streets away and have a chat!  Anyway, here’s a few shots of our display, the house has been in turmoil sorting out the vintage crockery hires so it was a struggle but came good in the end!  I make jewellery, candles, hats, cake stands and my mum made the upcycled picnic hamper.

Hats, fascinators, candles, upcycled jewellery, upcycled hampers....

Necklace made from old pearls. a vintage brooch and vintage dress clip

A teacup candle alight