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Vintage telephone action

blu/white phonepink phoneold black/pink phone
old phonetarget phoneold black phone
I love a nice old bulbous, bakelite phone. But I wanted one that I'd actually use - and the circular dial variety, gorgeous piece of design that it it is, was never going to work. It takes about ten minutes just to dial a number, seriously. So I went for the next oldest option, push-button (like the one on the bottom row, far left, above). It's almost hi-tech. Mine came from Radio Days, a really dinky little treasure trove of a shop in Lower Marsh, Waterloo and it cost under £50, fully reconditioned. But you can find similar in Ebay's retro telephone section. It's a small touch but I think it really stands out in my sitting room.

Charley Harper - but affordable

I can't remember where I first came across Charley Harper's gorgeous, stylised bird and nature illustrations - but I instantly fell for their clean, colourful modernist style. Look at them - how could you not?

But then I was thwarted: I could not find affordable prints of his work anywhere (I hadn't, then, stumbled across this brilliant Charley Harper prints website). But while on a work excursion to the opening of the new Saatchi Gallery in the King's Road, London, I found myself in the rather lovely little on-site shop and spotted the Charley Harper Memory Card Game - the children's game where you have to find two of the same images on little card squares and match them up. It cost less than a tenner, but I walked away with a whole bundle of Harper pictures in one little box - brilliant. Once home, I laid them out on a piece of card to fit a nice, square Ikea birchwood frame, glued them down once I was happy with the arrangement - et voila: cheap art!

The Saatchi shop online isn't very easy to navigate so I can't see if they still sell it, but I found it on Amazon for a bargainous £7.53. Nice.