Eltham Palace, an art deco gem

A couple of weeks ago I took a trip out with my parents, this time to Eltham Palace. We have visited before and I shared some lovely photos of the gardens from last year in this post . Since our visit last summer English Heritage have spend a vast sum of money making several super changes, including a new greenhouse cafe. They have also opened some new rooms including the bomb shelter used by the family in the 2nd world war. The other really exciting thing is that they now allow photography inside the house. I adore Eltham Palace as it is a house of the 1930s and Art Deco, one of my favourite eras of fashion. I live in a 1930s house and just love some of the original features here.

Eltham Palace dates from the 1400s and was originally a royal palace. It fell into decay and it was rescued from ruin by the Courtauld family in 1933 who spent a fortune on renovating the medieval barn and then building a plush 1930s mansion around it. In its time it caused controversy but now it is regarded as a unique gem. It is set in acres of glorious gardens too.

I am delighted to finally be able to  share a "tour" of the inside of the house with your, grab a cuppa, take a seat and enjoy joining me..........(if you are just visiting me to see my challenge entry just scroll to the end..there are lots of photos today)

It is approached across a drawbridge

The entrance hall takes your breath away.....

 How art deco is that!

and the light streams in through this ceiling made of hundred of glass sky lights

There is wood everywhere

the dining room has a foil ceiling to reflect the light

and more gorgeous inlaid wood doors

cocktail anyone?

upstairs many of the bedroom are open including the lady of the house's, Virginia and her husband Stephen, they had separate bedrooms which I think was not uncommon in those days.

and through the door on the left is her opulent bath room

 the golden tiles just shimmered in the sunshine

with marble everywhere

This is her husband's room, you can see the door to his wife's room next door in the wall.

the most unusual feature of the house though is the restored medieval hall which they used to hold balls in. It even had underfloor heating

Inside in the newly opened basement you could see the state of the art vacuum cleaner which had outlets in every room. How the maids must have loved this, 

 The dark room

 and the bomb shelter

Which obviously just had to contain a snooker room too!

The gardens at this time of the year had wonderful spring bulbs, very different from the roses we saw last summer but just as pretty. I plan to share those in another post.

My visit inspired me to make some new journal pages.

Here is my creative process and thoughts as I created them in my studio. I wanted to use the Art Deco feel of the Palace but also some of the Royal history. I started by pushing some texture paste through my TH harlequin stencil and added gold embossing powder.

How rich the gold looks. I used lots of other Art Deco shapes, tissue wrap and more texture paste.

I black embossed the circles.

 I made myself up a spray of Antique linen using the re inker and water

 sprayed through another stencil (sorry I have no idea who makes this one, it's package free in my stash) I sprayed the ink on each page. This was my artistic interpretation of

the carpet and colours in the entrance area.

 I LOVED this effect, sadly most of it got covered up which is why it is good to take some step by step photos.

 I found a TH sentiment which I thought very apt and gold embossed it onto black card. This was inspired by the dining room doors

I added a gold line too.

I also found that the positive and negatives of one of my Cheery Lynn dies were very apt. They had both a medieval and Art deco feel.

I also wanted to use my new Tim Holtz mixed media die. This was a birthday present which I had to wait a little while for as it was out of stock everywhere. How lush this gold card is when both embossed and die cut with it.

Then it was time to put everything together.

Here are my Eltham Palace journal pages

You will see I have used my "real" relatives photo of my Nan and Grandad's 1928 wedding day.

Here are some close ups;

I added some stamping too, these are my new Paperartsy stamps I recently won in the Craft Stamper challenge.

Can you see those carpet colours here?

I had so much fun making these pages and every time I look at them I am transported back to my day at Eltham Palace.

I would like to enter my Journal pages into the following challenges;


Paperartsy sprays I really enjoyed Leandra's introduction video...I was inspired to just spritz and have fun with drippy inks.
Country View crafts simply scenic this is my Art Deco scene
The craft barn words
Simon Says stamp Wednesday let's get sentimental
The Artistic stamper journalling your heart out
Craft stamper take it make it take a stamp
That Craft Place No cards
Inspiration Journal embossing paste
Art with heart mixed media mahem
Crafty card makers make your own background
All crafts challenge  anything but a card
Papertake weekly anything goes

I am also linking up with my friend Brenda's Visual Journey #19 on her blog too. Do pop on over there, this is the link over at Bumblebees and Dragonflies.

We are looking forward to catching up with Daisy and her Mummy and Daddy tomorrow. Hopefully we will manage a good walk at some point and tea and cake somewhere but rain is forecast.  Daisy is such a little girl now rather than a baby and I just had to share this funny photo of her taken last week...
Do you think those eyes are saying " Please Daddy may I have this ball"......................

and yes her Daddy bought it for her ;0)

Thanks so much for visiting me and have a wonderful weekend.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x