August Bank Holiday Malvern Flea And Collectors Fair

Following just a few weeks after Lu's and my trip out to the Malvern Antiques and Collectors Fayre, we decided to give the August Bank Holiday Flea and Collectors Fair a go too and despite neither of us actually making any considered purchases, the £5 admission was well worth a wonderful day of ooooing and ahhhhing.

This mirror was soon on our radar, with Lu rocking a tasteful cocktail theme in her kitchen, but at £25 it would have been a a bit of an extravagance.

It was very much a day for mirrors, my passion, but I didn't even bother to look at the price of this beauty as it would have been undoubtedly well beyond my means.

As my own version of a barbola mirror is still at the flower painting stage I took these pictures as a reference as to how the original flowers were painted.  The materials used on these mirrors is so fragile, finding one undamaged is pretty difficult, but despite this ones battered state they were still asking £10 for it.

This hand painted glass panel and mirror, although with no age to them, got me wondering if I could do something similar, what sort of paint do you think they used?  I am thinking acrylic, but would that stand up to cleaning, any suggestions would be very gratefully received before I find myself a small charity shop mirror to have a little play with.

This mirror also caught my eye, it looks like it may have come off something bigger as the proportions don't look quite right at the bottom, but in the right setting it could look quite stunning.  If there were two I could see them either side of a bed, above a set of small, wooden bedside drawers?

And now for the kitsch.  I know there is a name for this sort of "ornament", possibly Vallauris (???), it's so bad it's good, just my sort of thing, but with nowhere to put it, it had to stay where it was!  I think it was about £12.

Lu and I also spotted this coffee table at the same time, in fact we are pretty predictable at what we both point out on stalls, in the right room this would be perfect, just not ours, at the moment. 

And finally the one that got away ....... this wonderfully kitsch nativity scene set in lucite (?), if it had been somewhere between the £2 and £3.50 mark it might have come home with me, but at £18 I don't think so! I am not sure if the lucite/resin had discoloured over time or it was meant to be that colour .....  but I doubt if I'll ever see its likes again!!

While we were going round we saw that they were recording an episode of Bargain Hunt. We saw the Red Team with their expert but the Blue Team eluded us.  We also didn't see what they were buying, but I'll be honest there was so many stalls to look at and take in, goodness only knows how, where or what they bought to sell at auction for a profit, they looked pretty cool, calm and collected where I think I would have been running around like a headless chicken.

I said at the beginning of this post that I didn't spend any money, but I didn't leave empty handed, because as we left the showground I spotted some acorns, more importantly acorn cups. They were only small, as it was only just the end of August and I don't think autumn had begun then (or had it?), but since I had used the last of my acorns from about three years ago I proceeded to fill my lunch bag. I could still do with a few more slightly larger ones, but this was a most excellent start to my new collection, now slowly drying out on the window sill.  Happy days!