Time in a Bottle

I have two wonderful antique bottles which I treasure.  My uncle gave them to my mother years ago.  He’s a great antique bottle collector.
One is green and has the date 1852 on it.  It was used to treat jaundice.
The other bottle is clear and has a rounded bottom with no date, but a search finds that this style of bottle was called a “torpedo or egg” bottle, patented in 1809, by William Hamilton of Dublin.  A wooden stand was made for my mother to keep it upright and prevent rolling.  This kind of bottle was popular because the shape kept the contents in contact with the cork, it was easy to pack in crates, and because the opened bottle was hard to set down, customers drank faster and ordered more!*

The photo I took has a third bottle, because I like groupings of odd numbers.  That bottle has an interesting shape but is not antique!

TIME IN A BOTTLE……would you say there is time in these bottles?  
  We know the green bottle has 160 years of time in it…..what stories it could tell!  It was used to help people feel better; used as a tonic for illness.  This bottle, which looks as if it holds about 20 ounces, may have remained on a shelf for a long time before it was emptied.
The round bottle could have almost as many years.  Think about time on the shelf, in someone’s hands, jokes and stories being told, as they sat around an old kitchen table.  Or maybe the singing of old Irish songs as the bottles rolled on the table!  Perhaps it was saved for a special occasion, too.  Time.  A long time ago.

I had a little fun and played on PhotoShop Elements with the second photo.  I’ve never done that before.

“Time in a Bottle”….I love the song by Jim Croce….if you’d like to listen, the link is below the photos.
 

Antique bottles: clear lying down and green.

Bottles...after playing on PhotoShop Elements.

“Time in a Bottle” video by Jim Croce…click here.

*Credit for round bottle research..http://www.antiquebottles.com/glossary.html

Thanks for viewing!

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Crocheted Button Necklace

I don’t know how to crochet, but I made this crocheted button necklace under the close tutelage of our local craft shop owner many years ago.  I could not think of the directions to tell you, so I searched on the web to find some.  (addresses below)  This necklace can be made with any color/kind of button.

I prefer old or antique ivory buttons, but modern looking buttons would make a nice statement.  Glass, metal, or Bakelite buttons would be cool too.  You can make a choker with one single row of crochet and buttons, or you can make the loops with buttons so they dangle.  This is another craft where you can be the designer.  If the directions (links) below don’t work for you, just Google “crocheted button necklace” and find some that do!

Link 1~http://sites.google.com/site/surawhit/buttonnecklaces

Link 2~http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/operatic/312/button1.htm

And thanks to Nancy, my tutor, & her store: http://www.henhousemi.com/contact.html

Gallery Shelving (repost from Oct. 8)

NOTE: I am reposting this from Oct. 8th as my photos did not display on the site at that time.  It’s not very interesting if you can’t see what I’m talking about!  I apologize for the mess-up with the photos.  Giving it a go again~~~~!

I have a personal preference for gallery shelves for photos.   I really don’t care to patch holes in my walls every time I want to change photographs or prints around!

Gallery shelves come in all sorts of sizes, prices and styles.  On deeper shelves where I can overlap the frames a bit, I can triple the number of photos I could normally get in the same space by hanging them individually on a wall.   They are also easily rearranged.  And that is something I love to do!

The sleek, modern shelves are from IKEA.  They have an edge to prevent photos from slipping off, and as you can see,  photos can be overlapped.  The next pictures show moldings from a Victorian house that I found in an antique-salvage shop.   I sanded and painted them off-white.  I added ceramic bath/kitchen door knobs with hot glue that will hold lightweight items.  The knobs hide the screws needed to hold the shelves to the wall. The moldings are not deep enough to overlap pictures, but I’ve never had a framed photograph fall off.   The first photo gives an idea of the depth of the antique moldings.

You can use real Victorian door knobs instead of the small ones like I used, but they will need to be screwed in.

TIP #1: > If you use real Victorian door knobs on the molding you could also make a great looking coat hook.<

TIP #2: On the IKEA shelves, I have all black frames.  This gives a uniform look to the antique photographs, and makes the photos themselves stand out.   I started out with silver frames for the antique molding display but couldn’t keep up with that “color”.   So I have a mismatch of frames!  Ah…some day….!