score! London bus blinds

For a while now, we've been seeing vintage London bus destination blinds on style shoots and in trendy interiors shops, but they often come at a great price. Even on eBay the blinds with multiple destinations often sell for several hundred pounds - far too much for miserly old me, scraping my pennies together.


Interior designer Abigail Ahern, used them in her sister's apartment to nice, graphic effect.


Get the look, mounted and framed, from Pedlars, £2500.


Or have a hunt around places like eBay or Etsy. Here is one on Etsy, Recent Settlers. This blind will set you back $197.50 plus shipping from the US.


Also find them at Retrophenia and Colporter amongst others. This one is £695 from Retrophenia.

Where am I going with this post? On Saturday we ventured up the M6 to ferret around for junk at Bygone Times, three warehouses stuffed full of vintage and antique goodies. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the stuff was quite affordable - nothing like the prices that the same items would fetch in London. What did we come home with? Some sheet music for the piano and... you guessed it! This:


How much did we pay (she gloats)? A princely sum of £10. It's genuine - you can see the names typed on the linen back which the bus driver would read as he wound the blinds around. When I sent the husband to look for the price tag I never imagined it would be so cheap. I nearly died. It looks better in the flesh, and once I've taken off that horrible plastic bar at the bottom it will be even better. How much will it cost to frame it? The mind boggles...