Cheaper than Ikea

We have been trying to find night stands for the bedroom at home for ages. Our previous ones were over 15 year old covered baskets that were starting to look a bit sad. About a week ago we found perfect tables and they cost only18 euros each. Quite a find!

Teething troubles

Do you know the feeling when everything you have is kind of great but kind of broken at the same time? We have several old radios and there is something wrong with every one of them. This one is otherwise a beauty as a side table but some of the buttons are broken. Would love to get "new" ones..And when taking the photo I noticed that the rack under the radio is held together with cable ties...never noticed this before, shows how much I care about details..

It seemed so big

The wintry painting is from my parents. At their house it seemed really big but in our office at home it seems rather small. I already had the colourful vases collected on the side table and I think I should get some more (and bigger) to contrast with all the white of the painting.

Retro heaven

I love 60's teak stuff. This lamp was without a shade but we found a perfect fit from Hemtex. Even my husband liked the pink colour as it goes very well with the brown and bronze.

Who knows

What do I do with an old traffic sign? I don't know, but it looks rather good. I am not much into blue anymore (the eightie's ruined blue for me), but the sign was rather cheap and how often do you see these in flea markets? Never, is the answer! So of course we had to buy the only one and now it decorates our living room at home.

What about me?

How are you going to remember me on my 100th birthday? To honor Tapio Wirkkala, Iittala reproduced a beautiful glass vase Wirkkala designed. Not bad. I bought a brown one on sale (couldn't resist) and I'd still love to get the slim green (or grey) one, too. So if you get an urgent need to buy me something, you'll know what to get :)

As if

We have spent a lot of time at flea markets in the last two weeks. And of course we have found a lot of wonderful stuff to buy. As if we don't have enough stuff already, we found a chair in our waste room here in the city. A prefect example of industrial chic, a bit of wear and tear and the chair even folds, a great addition to our home in a factory.

Back to school

Ms Ebba Masalin illustrated the most amazing educational (plant) boards for Finnish schools in the 30's and 40's. New productions can be bought in Taito Shop (link...). They are rather beautiful but the originals are even better as the colours are much deeper. The tins here are of new production, too. The whole product serie is new in fact, there were no tins with Ebba's illustrations when she was alive. I think she would have loved these, the colours and design are quite beautiful. I saw the new productions in one magazine or another and first wanted to have a table runner with Ebba's design (new product line this, too). Luckily I went to Taito Shop in Helsinki to see the product instead ordering the thing online right away. I was a bit disappointed as the supposedly black background seemed blue, not black. So the runners stayed in the shop and I bought two boards and the four tins instead.

Just saying hello

We have several old globes and decided to paint one of them with black chalkboard paint. My husband first soaked off the paper (map) and after the globe had dried he painted the globe without priming it first. This globe is plastic and the finnish was perfect with only one coat of paint.  Thanks to google we found several translations for the word hello - and my husband wrote the words on the globe roughly where the language is spoken. Neat, eh?

I know

Yes, we have enough coffee cups already! But the new Issey Miyake cups for Iittala (link) were so beautiful we just couldn't resist buying new morning coffee cups for ourselves. Pink for me and green for the husband (couldn't have guessed this one without saying, now could you :).

Changing places

The orange vase was in the hall in Vårkulla for a while but now I decided to move it to our home where the decoration leans more to the 50's/60's. As I happened to have the exact same coloured blue nail polish as the decorations on the vase we took a picture before the move instead of photographing this at home. I guess at least half of my friends will hate the picture as the vase is rather bold, but here it is anyway.

No cutting the fish

This "Nämä by Ruth Landesa" cutting board is only for decoration -  it could of course be used as a cutting board but I don't want to. Instead it will have a pride place at home on top of a drawer in the hall where there are other fishes (decorations and a framed picture) to keep it company.

BTW, Krinti (link to a Facebook page here) is a small shop in Loviisa that sells artist's and craftmen's work (like the Nämä board) and in addition a selection of old stuff. The artist was just dropping these boards to the shop when we visited and I instantly fell for the 50's style.

Still trying to find its place

When you get something very cheap, you just have to buy it even though you don't quite have a place for it, don't you just? This Kupittaan Savi vase was a real find for 10 euros. They usually cost around 30 to 40 euros. So if I decide to sell this, I would at least triple my money back, not a bad investment (I am not selling it, though).

Green leaves

For home I love the 1960's muddy colors. We found this Uppsala-Ekeby plate for a song in a flea-market in Kotka. It is by Sven-Erik Skawonius.

Higher and higher

Even though we are tall, at home we still need a ladder to reach the highest shelves of our bookcase. We have been on a lookout for a suitable ladder for ages and now we found one at last at our neighborhood facebook fleamarket: old and tarnished = just perfect.

Colourful enough for you?

I started to collect red and orange glass vases from the 60's about half a year ago. The first one (the small orange vase) I found then and the next one took me the mentioned half a year. The green one completes the collection for now as I don't like things in pairs and haven't yet found a third one in right colour. There are of course a lot of red vases around but I don't want to pay more than about 20 euros per piece and the vase has to be old and monochrome. This means the collecting takes a little longer. Well, I have more time than money.

Muddy waters

This week's posts seem to all be about art and stuff. At Vårkulla I tend to like colourful pieces but for home we usually fell for the more strict and muted 60's style.

The vase on the left is Arabia from 1963, the figure in front is by Arni Aromaa from last year and the other vase is from an unknown factory and time. It is fun to collect, just choose a theme and buy both old and new, this is the way to an unique collection. If you want to ensure a valuable collection, it is of course safer to collect only known names but I find it more fun to mix things up to my own taste.

Glossy glass

We have been collecting green and brown glass for a while. These two are the latest finds. They are by Marja Hepoaho (Mafka).

Art corner

We have been looking for an art piece for our kitchen (doesn't everyone?). At last we found the right one, a small bronze statue by Laila Pullinen: Hädän kolmet kasvot (three faces of calamity). Pullinen designed the piece for the Finnish Red cross in 1977 as their 100 year medal of honor. The piece is not unique - Red Cross still gives it out to award its members.

Reminds me of beer

We have a small collection of brown glass. Two are new and two are from flea markets. We started with green glass and after collecting it for a while, the brown ones started to look good, too. And here we go again, collecting starts and never ends..