The Thrill of What You Already Have - March Edition

My first port of call for inspiration for this month's calendar pic from Floss was the back of my wardrobe! The colours on the poster reminded me of this old dress which I've had for a very long time.....

and although I know I'll probably never wear it again, I can't quite bring myself to get rid of it just yet. It's an 80's Laura Ashley and at the time I loved wearing it to various events and it was brilliant to wear for dancing with all that silkiness swish,swish,swishing around on top of the black net petticoat which also twirled and swirled in time to the music, while maintaining a certain decorum when being flung around the dancefloor at Ceilidhs!....

....and I normally partnered it with this little vintage tapestry bag which I love to bits and so admire the work involved in the pattern

.....and then in keeping with the colour scheme of the poster, I rooted around some more and found this....

...it's a print (if it was an original, I'd be extremely rich!)which I bought a few years ago from a little antique shop in a nearby village to mine....it's by a Scottish artist called Sir William Russell Flint and I just love his work.....this print is called 'The Floor Polishers' which is quite apt for me and I just love the colours he's used, especially the pop of orange which he's used in the lampshade which really lifts the painting I think.....

  .......I found this little print in a charity shop and managed to get it quite cheaply....it's called 'The Unwanted Visitors' and it has a definite Spanish theme. He lived there for a while which is evident in some of his paintings of beautiful flamenco ladies and Spanish castles in the air............

 

....he also loved painting ladies in their various states of nekkidness........all in the name of art, of course! I have one of those prints but I'm not going to show you here because I'd better not risk being thrown off Blogger for transgressing their rules pertaining to porn!!

(sorry about the quality of the pics but I was trying to avoid any glare from the glass in the frames so the colours look a little muted)
 .....so here's a nice little Mucha instead to be getting along with!I thought her colours were very similar to the flowing River Tweed in the poster....

....and I thought the chair cover in this pic was similar to the colour of the sky.....but maybe not!

  

For the colour of the castle I was reminded of my very,very vintage Sara Moon print. Remember those back in the day?

Some people thought they were really cheap and tacky at the time but I loved mine, although somewhere along the road she's lost her frame and glass! She's been lugged around quite a bit over the years!

Sara Moon was the photographer for Biba, the brainchild of Barbara Hulanicki....oh Biba, how I loved thee so! Do you remember the classy mail order brochures - all sleek and black with the gold Biba logo on that smooth matt paper?! My Mother would never let me buy anything from their mail order book because she thought the clothes were far too 'avant garde' for a wee lassie from a Scottish mining village but my schoolfriend's older sister was allowed to order complete outfits and I remember thinking how wonderfully stylish and classy she always looked in her Biba navy blue wide legged pantalons with the bright red cummerbund around her waist and the black felt floppy hat adorning her blonde flowing locks!!!My time came some years later though but by then, they'd stopped doing mail order and had opened some shops ... my nearest one was 500 miles away in London! I managed to buy some of their make-up though in a department store in Glasgow - remember the lovely black compact with the thick,almost yellow foundation inside and the dark maroon lipstick! I thought I was the bees-knees!

 ......and here is my favourite Biba image which I rescued from a scrapyard years ago....it had no glass in the frame, which I always meant to change, so some of the print is a little damaged but for the moment she's quite safe up on the wall in her finery and swaddled in leopard print!

...so that's it for March. I'm really enjoying this project so thanks Floss, although I suppose you could say I'm at a distinct advantage with the subjects being Scottish but I'm trying my best not to bore you with all things Celtic so took my lead this month from a comment Floss made about having an outfit as a theme. Thanks for the inspiration, Floss and for getting me to unearth my various 'treasures' which I'd almost forgotten I had....the thrill continues!

Enjoy and have a great week Mes Amis xxx

ps Thanks Everyone for fab comments and stopping by last time and all the times before that - you're the BEST!