So this is gonna be one of those long posts, ones where I ramble…you get bored and roll that mouse down through the pictures…while I waffle on… 

It all started a long long time ago.  In fact when I was still in the Old Country.  I came across some old bus blinds in a junk shop.  Hmm, I'm likin those.  But I walked away not really sure what I would do with them. 

Now, sugarbums, I would clutch them to my breast, do the treasure hunting dance and run, run, run as fast as I could back to this old cottage.  Put them on the wall, open a beer and stare at them, with my feet up, in gleeful thrifting ecstasy for a whole evening. 

However, I have not come across real ones here in Australia, though I sure have not stopped looking for them, for four years.  Certainly I've come across imitations of them, I've seen them on Ebay & stalked auctions wondering whether to bid or not, viewed them on blogs and I've even seen them made into cushions.  Ahem. 

I've come across them in shops in Sydney too, but since the real budget kicked in and is still very much in force right down under here in Beach Cottage Land, I haven't even tempted myself by looking at the price tag. As with most things in my life, if I like it, it probably won't be cheap. ( Edited to add:  since writing this post I found myself in a shop up the beaches, and spied the price tag of $1000.  Yes that said one thousand.)

What I didn't expect, on my way to pick up the kids from school just before Christmas, was to see one quietly sitting in the corner of the most lovely florists that I pass regularly as part of my day to day life.  It sniggered beautifully at me from beside the stairs…

I stopped dead in my tracks, staring through the Christmas decorations and flowers.  Sigh.  Sigh.  Sigh.

I've been thinking about that unreal bus blind since then.  

And then the other day, driving home from a sporting event, musing, I thought surely I must, somehow be able to make one myself.  Think out of the box.  

So I thought I'd try black paint on an old frame and print off my own bus destinations.  Beaches ones.

And I did just that.  Printed off a fictitious bus route around Sydney's beaches….

And stuck them to an old thrifted frame 
 

And placed it on the wall in the kicthen…

I love the almost retro feel to it, hinting of days gone by when one might run for the bus in T-Bar shoes and utility skirts, the hand-typed feel of the font, when people sat at a chair with a clunky old typewriter with a wheel and a ribbon not pulled a Blueberry out of their pocket…

And the days when people got on buses and trams…I remember as a young girl commuting up to the big smoke, transfixed by those iconic London buses…I lusted after their red forms queued up at the bus depot at Victoria, I loved their curved bottoms, with the platform for anyone to hop on as it lurched along…and the ticket inspectors, more often grumpy than chirpy and nearly always Cockney, but mostly offering the term of endearment (or not) 'love' to most everything they said….where you going love?…that'll be 1 pound fifty pence love…you wanna get the Number Fifty Eight bus to there love…

There's certainly none of that here, and perhaps I am some kinda nostalgic fool…alright I definitely am…I can't deny this to me has some kinda vintage-life-gone-by appeal…somehow conveying a slower world of timetables, and shopping baskets, where one's main concern was to set out for a ride on a bus. 

I wonder what you think?  Don't forget the new Entry Conditions of this tatty old beach cottage…no lurkers, hahaha!!  

I have to say, it turned out a whole lot better than I thought it would.   I wondered how the black would go, but in fact I think it anchors things quite nicely…I love the way it's nautical and a little bit whimsical…it kinda speaks to me old beach vintage days….coastal towns…salty breezes…sand sandwiches…

It was easy peasy, even for those with the patience and craft skills of a knat and best of all it cost me under $10, so I was, oh, approximately $990 in pocket.

You can find more pictures, and a step-by-step tutorial of how I did it here.

 

Hit that comment button people and lemme know

 
remember, ya saw it here first lol!

you can find other Do It Yourself Beach Cottage Tutorials, including an old vintage table in our bathroom here, some shutters I made myself out of fence posts here and an old wooden ladder I madeover here.
  

{ and if you want some more vintage bus blind inspiration, go and see Michelle, at Retrophenia tell her I sent you and she'll give you a nice little discount }

and thanks to Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for her Met Monday event