Picture Picnic 🅿🅿: Purple Asters

These arrangement of lovely purple Aster flowers in two shades makes me very happy right now. Two little tight bunches in clear glass vases. The beautiful vintage periwinkle blue vase is French and used to contain furniture polish but now makes a pretty little vase. I bought it from a company called Velvet Ribbon. They sell a charming selection of vintage stuff sourced from all over Europe.

The arrangement sits on a collage that is a joint collaboration by my wonderful daughter and me. It is made directly on a stretched canvas, we used vintage sheet music, two decorative tissue tapes, one with butterflies the other with varied styles of antique calligraphy. The two tapes are both from Cox & Cox.

We also used some rubber stamps with birds and plants from The Paperie, a company that sells some great stationary stuff.

Several weeks ago I found some fantastic white fabric lace tape that I needed for a different project so we were able to use some of that as well. The lace tape is sold by a French company called Lovely Tape.

I love this retro plate decorated with the pattern 'Homemaker'. It was designed by Enid Seeney for Ridgeway Pottery in 1955. Woolworths sold it in their shops until the 1960s. It is decorated with archetypal images of 1950s style, such as the boomerang-shaped table and a two-seater sofa.

The little black heart, buckle, buttons, and clip-on earrings are all Victorian mourning jewellery. During part of the Victorian period black was the height of fashion and black jet and glass jewellery was very popular.

It took me a long time of to find these spoons. When I finally found them they turned out to be French as well - I know, a lot of French stuff in this post! I had seen them used by two of my favourite food bloggers - Aran Goyoaga from Cannelle et Vanille and Beartice Peltre from La Tartine Gourmande - and I just thought they were adorable and had to have some! The company that makes them is called Sabre Paris and they sell a large collection of acrylic cutlery as well as lots of other things for your table.

The two adorable floral washi tape are from What You Sow. Lyndsey has an internet business and sells, to quote her business card, "Unusual gardening things for the creative gardener."