evaelena vintage: Serendipity

I have hundreds of vintage things that I have been collecting, pulling apart and recycling - they are starting to pile up in boxes in the lounge room, the dining, my study, under the stairs and now the hallway. The volume of stuff and the projects underway means that I never have to go to another auction or flea market again....Oh really? Maybe just a quick stop by the auction house....But what determines what project I finish and what vintage things I choose to list? Serendipity?

There doesn't seem to be any particular thread, but any psychologist will tell you that there is a kind of internal logic that operates outside of our conscious awareness which determines the choices we make. Even the small decisions about which piece of fabulous vintage something or other to put on etsy.

Take the last few days for example - I had two commissions over the last week and both involved wombats - go figure. One for a girl from Adelaide (wombats are their emblem animal) and one for a girl in the states who has a passion for the animal. Both are very happy with the resulting pendants. But was some giant wombat in the sky channeling these two girls to approach me? Before this I hadn't given wombats a thought and they are not native to the Sydney area where I live, so I only see them at zoos and I havent been to a zoo for many years.

In the same week I came across vintage black lace fingerless gloves and listed them at the same time as finishing a project that I have been thinking about for some months - the three coat of arms hair pins. At a stretch (excuse the lacy pun) black lace might suggest medieval clothing which equals heraldry.

Hair pins, British and Canadian heraldry and black lace gloves and wombats? The pins turned out even better than I imagined - they just need a good head of hair to do them justice. Wombat hair perhaps? A medieval damsel with long tresses.

Before these were even listed this week, my head moved on to another project of a single pearl kangaroo cufflink begging to be made into a ring - OK kangaroos certainly relates to wombats, but where did the retro New Zealand maori tiki make itself present in my consciousness? Aah yes, of course, serendipity - the tiki is an ancient polynesian symbol for luck and it is this element of chance that ties all of these things together, the tiki was just giving me a heads up!