Betty and the rainbow!

Taken in Port Eynon, Wales this summer. Fantastic holiday x

Vinyl Record Bowl... !

What better to act as a fruit bowl in a 1970 caravan than a 1970's vinyl record made into a bowl !! Courtesy of Recycling in Bristol from ebay.. bargain as well £3.50 !!

Drinks Cabinet! Pewter cups perfect for Jager bombs!!

This is our 1970's drinks cabinet that is in the van at the end !! Don't you just love it!!
It is filled with the full original pewter cups. A wine size and a small schnapps size (I would imagine being a German van!). We have found they are bloomin perfect for Jager Bombs!! Redbull in the big cup, jager in the small, drop the small one in and the cup sticks to the bottom of the big cup!! Down the hatch... !! Cheers!
Just like the original brochure !

Fashioning a caravan cushion!

I had a blue peter moment at around 10pm one night and decided to create a cushion based on our caravan so cut out all the pieces, used iron on webbing stuff then went round it with a sewing machine. Found a couple of buttons for the wheels... presto !!
Only trouble is it is now if you could see it has a slight blue tinge cos I washed it with the blue blanket.. doh !!

Retro Accessories

Just a blog of general bits and bobs around the van and outside too !!

Retro Tupperware Light!

When we go the van unfortunately the bits beneath the lamps were broken and falling off! So Nick had this genius idea of drilling some retro 1970 orange tupperware beakers to fashion the new base. Funky and practical x

Bedtime !

I love it at bedtime when the beds get all made up and the sleeping bags and blankets come out and we get all cosy!! I love the girls sleeping bags from Anorak, they are called kissing rabbits, and kissing horses and were a birthday present for them both! The caravan has these fab sliding doors that shuts the kiddywinks in with little glass windows.. (must add a picture). So they get very excited! As you can imagine it takes a while to settle to sleep but all the fresh air helps !

Makeover stickers !

Whilst we decide on what we are going to do with the paintwork we decided to give Betty a facelift with some stickers from ebay. £26 worth in total !
Bit of fun for the time being and certainly makes her stand out !!

Stamping enamelware !

It was a bit of an experiment but a fun one!! I bought some basic white enamelware and wanted to cheer it up so got some different colour ceramic paints.
Well it wasn't as easy as I hoped as the paint is kind of opaque and the enamelware is very slippy and rounded! It took quite a while to be able to get the stamp to stay without slipping off!
So it kind of worked anyway and cheers up the bowls, plates and cups !!

Custom made Betty Stamp !!

Ok it was at this point when I ordered a custom made stamp I knew I had lost part of my sanity to doing up this caravan and it was/is a bit of an obsession !! But I love it nonetheless !
I found a gorgeous caravan of love stamp on notonthehighstreet.com and contacted the lovely Emily from Skull and Cross Buns and she made me a custom "Betty Stamp" She incorporated the shutters and did a seperate retro name one as well.
I used it on the front of this book where we write all the places we have been !

Built in chess board and bargain ebay find!

Another appeal of Betty was the built in chess board. I kept my eyes peeled on ebay and for £4.80 won these gorgeous handpainted, dutch wooden chess pieces. Oooh I love a bargain !!

Fabric Fabric Fabric!!

So the dream for the whole owning a retro caravan came from a book I was bought by my good pal Mel, called my cool caravan by Chris Haddon and Jane Field-Lewis. When we got Betty we decided to go old skool retro so it was in keeping with her 1970 birth date. This was so so so much fun. Especially when you have the wonderful wonderful people at the Eternal Maker only 40 minutes down the road in Chichester. Their echino fabrics are the most reasonable and they are well worth a visit, wall to wall loveliness! So I filled my boots on the 70's prints for the curtains and the cushion covers. The seat covers I could never have done without my lovely Auntie Tess (xxx) as I didn't even know where to start. We bought hard wearing Cath Kidston Polka Dot from the fab Cath Kidston outlet in Gunwharf (they were very very helpful as I kept changing my mind!) and got cracking.