Fisher Price 50th Anniversary Toy Releases

These updated, rereleases of Fisher Price's highly successful Little People range to celebrate 50 years of the brand are a kitsch toy collector's dream.

I think everyone had something from this range, the school house, the three-tier garage with the ramp & lift, the family house. These designs are older than the 1980's versions I had, but I still would love to own these myself.

The barn is my top pick, love the font used on the roof.

My son us getting the 2009 version of the garage, hopefully he'll have lots of nice memories of the Fisher Price brand like I do.

Claire

Kitsch Suburbia #2

Another house near our own, this little gate keeper cottage could easily be a giant music box.

It's totally twee, and with it's giant pointy tree & pair of kittens to ward off nosy folks like myself, it just had to make it into the blog under Kitsch Suburbia.

(The kittens are perched on the wall)

Claire

Giant Candy Canes & Clip-on Birds

This year our tree is adorned with lots of little glittery clip-on birds. Mostly all new, but two pheasents are original, old fashioned versions.

I also have lots of candy canes on there, ranging from foot long glittery ones, to little plastic Tesco value ones.

Tried to make the tree kitsch, with a string of vintage fairy lights, along with light up bluebirds & red flowers.

Claire

Dr Seuss Cat in the Hat Christmas Tree

Our proper tree will go up on the first of December, but my son helped me decorate the little 3ft tree for his room today.

It's a turquoise tree with red & white decorations, the colour scheme of the Dr Seuss Cat in the Hat books.

I found some tiny Cat in the Hat ornaments on US Ebay last year when we first did the Dr Seuss tree.
I love the illustrations from the books, so a themed tree seemed like an interesting idea to try out. This is the tree's second year.

Claire

Garish Velvet Flock, The Great UnKitsched

Here's a little touch of tackiness you all might have in your home, without even realising it.

Popular, current interior decor seems to have plastered everything in flock in the past few years. In fact in 2008, it appeared as if Next Home couldn't make anything without a flock design on it.
So has flock become so commonplace that it has unkitsched itself?

Flock patterns being kitsch come about from the whole "grandeur out of place" theme. Granny's little sitting room bedecked with a thick velvet red flock wallpaper, or the local Chinese restaurant's fancy gold & green flock walls.

Because I always have to be a quirky wee bugger, I haven't much flock in our house due to it's current trendiness, but we do have a couple of lampshades.

Claire

Frankenstein Family Portrait

Tattoo kitsch again & a painting I did myself, but plagarised from a tattoo in a magazine, so I can't take the credit!

It was a design I thought about getting myself after our son was born, but what with the tattoo being permanent & my son not being tiny like in the design for long, I think I made the right decision to simply hang it on my wall instead.

Took one night to copy from the magazine & finish, inbetween night feeds when our son was a few weeks old.

Claire

Old School 3D Taxidermy

This week in the UK, Channel 4 has been showing some 3D programmes & films using the old red & blue glasses.

I've always loved gimmicks like this, so got a few pairs for us.

I found an iPhone app for making your own 3D images. It's bloody tricky, but I'm going to keep practicing.

Here's my taxidermy fox in slightly blurry 3D.

Claire

Kitsch Wrapping Paper from M&S

Marks & Spencers are my absolute favourite store. I love their food, wear their clothes (sure sign of middle age creeping in) & most Saturdays we have breakfast in their cafe.

They are celebrating their 125th year, & as I've blogged before, they are celebrating with beautiful retro branding of their grocery items.
They've got the vintage look so right, not a tacky reproduction of what they imagine retro to be, but genuine wonderful illustration.

I was delighted to see their Christmas gift range include a lot of the retro branded kitchen items, but disappointed my local medium sized store didn't have any wrapping paper or cards in that style.

Dandering around the store however, I found this colourful dolly mixture wrapping paper. It's photograph yumminess has become the Christmas wrapping paper for us this year.

I plan on Christmas being kitsch of course. To do this I'm going to dress the tree how we used to when I was a child. Mismatched ornaments, different kinds of fairy lights, and I think the paper will go wonderfully with the assault on the eyes!

Claire