Oh my! Dalton M. Ghetti's 'sharpened' pencils

I absolutely adore miniature things and you know that I am quite obsessed with up-cycling mundane and every day objects.  Well I think I may have found my favourite sculptor EVER!

Dalton M. Ghetti must have the steadiest, most brain surgeony exact hands - he carves the most exquisite miniature sculptures out of the ends of lead pencils.  They are amazingly worn and battered pencils at that, so happy they are not new :)  I am still finding it so hard to get my head around the scale of it all - they are tiny!  How on earth does he get them so perfect and so exact - it is completely mind bending for someone who breaks my pencils just about every time I go to sharpen one!

Here are some of my favourites but you absolutely must go and check out his page here to read all about this guy. 
 

............and the entire alphabet is just simply amazing!

oooh doesn't it just make you happy looking at them - love artwork that does that!

these are a few of my favourite things.....

I just love accidental artwork.  The kind of things that weren't originally intended to be art but 'discovered' and displayed as art anyway.  We have had this piece for about 6 years now, we always get lots of comments on it.   You definitely can't miss it in our house - it's pretty huge and so heavy we have always just displayed it sitting on the floor or on a sideboard leaning against the wall.  To me it looks like a really intentional and planned piece of artwork but I love that it actually started off life as something pretty mundane and practical.

The Mr and I bought this when he joined me on a work trip to Paris.  Although I was working most days we had some time together just wandering the streets, getting lost frequently but stumbling across so many lovely little shops and courtyards.  

We found this little place somewhere in the back streets of St Germain. it was definitely a junky kind of junk shop not carefully selected pieces at all.  But in that ramshakle French way it looked so perfect - junk piled high to the roof, spilling out of cane baskets and wooden cabinets.  Wheelbarrows full of jars, piles and piles of linen.  The shop was full to the brim and stock spilled out into the footpath and even the street!  Of course we had to go in - and we found amongst other things, this set of old number stencils.  

We have some of the smaller sets already but what I loved about these is that they were so huge and that they had been used and had a really cool patina.  We even managed to bargain the price down with the little old shopkeeper in my broken French - which was a bit of a woohoo moment in itself!

So back home we mounted the numbers on a piece of MDF and voila instant artwork.  I love the patina of the metal and the way most of the numbers are white but just a couple are red - perfect.  Now this is my kind of souvenir.  It reminds me of Paris everytime I look at it and I love thinking of the amazing doors around that city and how maybe my stencils painted some of those house numbers long ago.

My Vintage Week (by Mr Odd One Out)

I haven't been having much luck at all with my vintage shopping this year, although to be fair I've not been looking that much - with it being Kindy holidays a vintage shop is not really the best place to take an almost 3 year old.  I am so feeling withdrawals though, it really must be an addiction!

Mr Odd One Out however has done quite well for himself this week so I thought I would show you what he's been up to!

- A super cute (and just a little mad) cross stitch clock.  I love that it has been kept in the embroidery hoop and I double love that it says chicken feed.  Random words on things is something I just adore!

- A collection of little glass bottles that came complete with their little black Bakelite caps.  They are all identical and are now sitting in my entryway - I try to remember to pick roses for them most days.

- One super cool vintage biscuit tin.  With just the perfect amount of distress, I love the graphics on old food packaging!

- Some very old school intercoms - there is actually 3 of them.  Maybe it's just a guy thing but the Mr is so addicted to buying old technology stuff and tinkering away trying to get them to work.  These ones I don't actually mind though - I love the industrial styling of them and the wee atomic emblem at the bottom.  I can totally picture having one in the house and one in my garden studio (which doesn't actually exist by the way - but a girl can dream right!) We can communicate vintage styles.... "excuse me - could I please have a cuppa and some biscuits in here stat!"

So he does quite well Mr Odd One Out - don't you think?  He is also expert in hunting out vintage plates for me - I just love that he is totally comfortable buying a cross stitch clock or some lovely flowery plates and not think it's some kind of threat to his manhood :)  Unlike some other guys I know......