Random Ebay Purchases - Part 2

Following on from my last post about the kind of purchases I make on eBay, here's another one. 

In the last few weeks, I finally managed to find an item that I've been looking for over a number of years and I couldn't believe my luck that it worked so well for what I needed.

I've had the above ornate brass frame for many years. I bought it in a charity shop and have always loved it. I've been meaning to either put a clock in it or to get some glass and put a picture in it for years, but never have.  Ideally, I wanted to make it into a clock, as we don't have one in our living room, where it has always stood.  I'd seen some clock inserts on eBay, but I'd never been sure about the size of them and whether they'd fit well, so during lockdown, I took some measurements and did some research and managed to find one which I thought would fit. It was a bit of a gamble, but it actually paid off, as the clock mechanism fits pretty well.  It's a little loose, but this can be rectified with a strip of cardboard or some Blue Tack that won't be seen.

It wasn't exactly what I wanted colour wise, as it was a very bright gold colour and my frame, being vintage and brass, is a darker gilt colour, but my trusty eBay bought pot of gilt paint worked wonders on this, to make it fit in much better with the frame.  I'm happy with the roman numeral clock face too, as I feel it fits well with the ornateness of the frame. Overall, for £9.99 including postage, it was a very simple and effective solution to the problem of transforming this frame and giving it a purpose.

I also purchased another gold photo frame on eBay recently. As I've mentioned before, I'm changing all of the photo frames in the living room to gilt coloured ones, to fit in with some artwork and other items I already have, such as the clock above.

Once again, this gold frame was a little too brightly coloured when it came, so out came the gilt paint again and it now looks so much better. I paid £3.49 including postage for this frame, which was a bargain.

It is now holding a photo of  LB, myself and her birthday cake, from her 2nd birthday, an all time favourite photo of mine. I'm still on the hunt for a few more frames, but there's no hurry as the more eclectic I can make them the better.

On a completely different note, I also bought this cute little wooden stamp on eBay recently for £3.75 including postage. I bought a brand new green ink pad from the charity shop where I work the other week for just 99p and wanted some sort of botanical stamp to use with it for making gift tags, etc. When I saw this fern stamp, it was perfect and so cute too.

Talking of plants, I bought some bronze fennel seeds on eBay a few weeks back.  I think I paid about £1.60 including postage for about 50 seeds. With shops being closed during lockdown, it was hard to buy seeds, hence why eBay came in useful. I have bought seeds on eBay before, but some haven't even germinated, so I was sceptical about whether these would.  They did though and I've now potted some of them on, so that I can plant them out later.  .

Here are some of the ones I've potted on:

I'm hoping they survive the upheaval and grow into much stronger plants that I can plant out in the garden and the allotment.