Thrift Stores = Great Finds!

This morning I was browsing in a Thrift Shop along the waterfront of my little home town and found some gorgeous finds! I found a lovely old handkerchief that I'm going to use on one of the vintage pages of my grandmother. The embroidery is devine!

I notice alot of scrappers are using embroidery stitches in their layouts lately and wish I could remember what my mum taught me. It was many many years ago and my mum would buy me little pieces of linen with a picture on it and she'd teach me how to 'fil it in' as it were. How to make daisies and bows...... Shame I can't remember any of it now.

I also found some fabulous buttons and a postcard for my mum's vintage album. I'm planning to one day go back over the album I did of my mum and add to it... Make it better. It was my first attempt at scrapbooking so it was extremly basic. And because the time available to us wasn't that long we kept all embellishments to a minimum. Just getting the pictures in, and matted, some journalling and a title. No backgrounds. No embellishments. So I want to go back and add backgrounds and embellishments to alot of the pages. Especially the ones of my nana and poppy. I have a great photo of my grandfather in his uniform when he went to World War I. (He lied about his age to get in and then was in France for about a year before he was shipped home with his jaw all wired up. ) I'd especially like to redo this page as I have since found my grandfathers service record that I'd like to add to the page. I have also since found his ANZAC badge. I don't know what happened to his medals though... shame.

But for vintage albums I definitly think the Thrift Shops are the place to go... lots of cheap and unusual scrapbooking supplies. I do get a little tired of all the layouts I see in the magazines and such having the same papers and embellishments. I know there are some great product ranges out there and we all love using them but my favourites are always the unusual, original and totally personalised layouts.