The Thrill of What You Alreay Have - January

Welcome to The Thrill of What You Already Have - a monthly opportunity to take inspiration from a picture and create a display using only what you already own. The theory is that the thrill of shopping isn't the only, or even the best, way to enjoy that wonderful frisson of 'look what I got!' If we can get the same frisson for free, we're meeting budgets, resolutions, restrictions and environmental concerns with a thrill instead of with a groan! Here goes... This month's picture was a wonderfully cool 1930s poster advertising Dunfermline, Scotland's ancient capital. The grey silhouettes, black shadows and pale orangey-pink gothic architecture are actually quite a challenge in the first month of this event, I think.

So here is my own collection of 'stuff', raided from drawers, shelves and boxes around the house. Shadows come free! I was quite pleased, seeing the photos lined up together in the file, that they did blend nicely with my photographs of the original railway advertising poster.

Now on to my gloat over the lovelies I found! The tray is Scottish, which is appropriate. It's from the National Trust for Scotland and presumably depicts a Scottish castle..? Really, I should have looked before I put things on top of it. I wanted to add more Gothic shapes, so that's the wooden lid, more black (those lovely carved, wooden African animals), more orange and more natural textures (the lichen ball and Chinese lanterns) and something French:this sweet autograph book with the little 1920s mademoiselle eating a lovely orangey fruit. Actually, the silk on the bobbin behind her is French too.For height and greyness I was pleased to remember my lavender-scented candle with the grey baroque-type decoration. I put it on a plastic cup on top of the wooden pedestal, and covered the cup with a black silk scarf. Then it was just a bit more of the natural bits and bobs and a pretty Russian painted egg which seemed to have the right colours.

So there we have it: January! I'm going to avoid Mr Linky (I'd have to pay to get that done, which is not in the spirit of the thing) and will make up a blog list of all your posts, if you just let me know here when you've posted! If you want to join in, the 'rules' such as they are can be found in the post below this one. I'm really looking forward to seeing how you interpret the picture with what you already have!

EDIT: Blogger is being really strange about comments at the moment. Even I can't get into the comments box for this post tonight! So please do email me if you would like to join in, and do leave a link to your blog so that I can find you! I'm going to try to reset my comments box now, to see if it helps...