The Depths of My Depravity: The Flowers

Youthful disdain has a way of biting you in the backside as you grow older. When I think of all the things I mocked and sneered at in my teen and early adult years, and which I now avidly seek and long for, it's a humiliatingly long list.

For example, if you had told me in the mid-seventies that one day the sight of a mid-century kitchen dinette set would put me into a gibbering swoon, I'd have rolled my eyes and written you off as a complete crackpot. 

Melamine dishes? Yeah, right. And then one day I came around a corner in a local antique shop and beheld the very same set of pink Melmac dishes my mom used to have (acquired with Green Stamps, if you know what those were) and it was as though Cupid had shot his arrow straight into my rapidly fluttering heart.

There were no holds barred after this--I grabbed up every piece of aging pastel plastic I could lay my hands on.

We don't call our place "Melmac Paradise" for nothing!

Gravel art? Paint-by-number art? Don't get me started! Yeah, I've got it. In spades.

http://sheertrashroadshow.blogspot.com/2016/04/she-thought-it-was-ordinary-blog-post.html

But nowhere are the real depths of my kitsch-loving depravity laid quite so bare as in the maniacal acquisition of mid-century artificial flowers. Plastic flowers, to be precise. 

When I think of the withering scorn these hated hokey horrors used to elicit, and my present doting fondness for them, I can only shake my head and wonder: What was I thinking not to have been converted to them sooner???!!!!  I LOVE this stuff!

Plastic mid-century flowers, some sold, some still available at SheerTrashRoadshow.etsy.com

   
I'm not sure when the transition occurred. I grew up across the road from a cemetery where I saw plastic flowers (and despised them) on a daily basis, so maybe it's a nostalgia thing. 

Graves adorned with plastic flowers were de rigueur in the 1960's. Most of them didn't look this good!

Or maybe it's because here in my little nook in the Pacific Northwest, if it weren't for fake flowers I'd rarely see anything in bloom. But whatever the reason, I've gone full circle and now clutch these things to my beating heart whenever I'm lucky enough to find them, which is not as often as you might think, by the way!

It's only been in the last couple of months that I've started listing some of my overflow for sale in my Etsy shop, and I've been amazed at how much of it has sold. Apparently I'm not the only tasteless clod! Seriously, these things are selling like proverbial hotcakes. 

I've managed to reduce my hoard by about half, but further than this I don't know if I care to go. I'm clinging tenaciously to my favorites, most of which are orange, yellow, or blue.

Here are two views of my biggest, boldest plastic flowers--poppies! They're massive, each blossom being about 9 inches across. I've got five or six of these orange ones, and somewhere around here I have a couple of white ones as well. It was a red-letter day when I found these at a thrift shop.

Size isn't everything, though. These petite yellow roses, mums, and orange marigolds are very special, also. I was particularly jazzed to find the marigolds--the only ones I've ever come across.

This bunch of peach and orange blossoms is waiting patiently on my mantle, until I can figure out what exactly I'm going to do with them. I found them jammed into an ugly piece of aging floral foam and arrayed in a hideous basket, sitting forlornly and unwanted amongst the freebies at a garage sale. They were grimy and dusty, but I could see their potential so I nabbed them. Once home I ripped them from the ugly green foam and gave them a sudsy soaking in my kitchen sink. Now they look marvelous! (Well, I think so, anyway.)

Now while orange is my passion, this mixed posy of blue plastic flowers is delightful, too. Look at those little blue bachelor's buttons top and center! Cute as cute can be.

Here we have orange, yellow, and blue plastic flowers together. I love this little arrangement!

Now these are some of the most unusual of my fake flowers--chrysanthemums in rare hues of green and turquoise. I may list them; I may not. Time alone will tell.

Another plastic flower wonder of mine was found in a garage sale free box--or rather, placed right beside the free box. I clutched it to my beating bosom with rapture and exclamations of joy that truly startled and alarmed the seller, but--oh well! Not my fault if someone doesn't recognize the desirability of their junk.

I love my freebie footstool!

This inflatable wonder is what's known as a "terrarium ottoman". And since I'm not about to let go of mine, here's one available from another Etsy seller (just in case you're in a swoon of envy):

www.etsy.com/listing/541919924/vintage-inflatable-terrarium-footstool

Now, my most serious breach of self-respect came at an estate sale this past summer. Hidden in the corner of a dark garage, up on a shelf and nearly out of sight, was the most disgustingly dirty and cobweb-covered plastic pot imaginable. Drooping dejectedly over the side were three grubby plastic chains and a bevy of bedraggled, nasty-looking plastic blossoms. Even my stalwart junking buddy, Claudia, was aghast when I fished it out and proposed buying it. Why it hadn't been hurled into a landfill decades ago is anyone's guess, but I decided it was worth trying to salvage.

I shamefacedly purchased it for twenty-five cents or so (actually I should have insisted the seller pay me to take it, but I was already too embarrassed to consider doing any haggling.) Once I had it home I stashed it on the back porch for several days, being too mortified to face what I'd brought home. But eventually I steeled myself to the disgusting task and proceeded to soak and gently scrub it.

In retrospect, I should have taken a photo of it in its original gruesome state, but somehow I couldn't face the prospect of so graphically revealing the depths of my collecting depravity. I know you want to see how it turned out...  Here I happily unveil it.

No, the basket isn't still dirty; this is the original "antiqued" contrast color.

Voila! It's now one of my very favorite plastic pieces. Love the lovely blush-pink roses cascading over the sides.

All right. I've laid bare my soul. Feel free now to share your own eccentricity. I won't snicker--too much! I promise.