Merchant Square sale Oct. 1-3

I was in my booth (C-6) at Merchant's on Monday.  I put in new items, rearranged things to give it a fresh look, vacuumed it out and then took pictures.  Here are just a couple of the pics I want to share with you.

New shabby white dresser

That pretty pink dresser sold last week.  Knew it would go quickly.

Items on top of the white dresser

Pretty clothes

Found these at an estate sale.  The top is a pretty peasant blouse style in pink with blue that matches the skirt.  The blue full skirt feels very silky and needs that plum colored petticoat to make it stand out!  The dark blue item is a pair of ruffled pettipants to be worn under the full skirts.

Vintage shabby items

The shabby shutters are there, lots of vintage frames, old paint brushes, Cinderella home window, and more industrial chic items like door face plates, hinges, and drawer pull face plates.

This is just a sampling of the items in my booth that will be for sale all week as well as at the upcoming mall sale.  I will be taking in a few more items before the sale begins.  Please check my shop Facebook page, Judy B's Shabby Chic for the September 27 picture album of the things I put in on Monday.

Working in my studio lately

Well, decided I had to get back to creating.  Been away from the work table and my sewing machine too long.  Here is what I did over the weekend.

First cowgirl cuff

Decided to try my hand at creating a cuff.  I see them everywhere these days -- blogs, books, and most recently in Stampington's lastest issue of Jewelry Affaire.  This one took a while to create.  The first few of anything new always takes me longer to get the hang of putting together the finished product.  Also saw a couple of necklaces in that same issue that were made from watch parts tins.  I have a few vintage watch tins for sale in Vintage Recycled.

Am going to make a few cuffs more before I offer them for sale on Vintage Recycled.  But in the meantime, I have created and have listed three more rhinestone cowgirl journals.  These have sold out every time I list a few of them.  There are a lot of cowgirls out there!!

Annie rhinestone cowgirl journal

Annie always had her gun with her.  I love this image of her.

Rodeo Star journal

This image is Mabel Strickland.  A real rodeo cowgirl in the early 1900's.  Besides being very pretty, she would ride broncs and rope calves.

Some finds last Friday

My bff Kim Johnson and her husband are moving to Yucca Valley very soon -- [[[so sad]]]!!  Friday they had a pre-sale at their house to clean out stuff that needs to go.  I found some treasures to put in my Merchant Square booth next week.

Black velvet floppy hat 

Black felt hat with netting and feather

Off white child's hat

I love each of these old vintage hats.  I had to do a little brushing and steaming to get them back into shape.  Don't they look great??

Silver clothes brushes

Vintage purse

Old porcelain wall hook and shabby door plates 

Shabby purse close up

This wonderful old purse is very shabby.  But it sparkles in the right light!  Just too bad I can't capture that with the camera.  It is covered with rhinestones and you can see where tiny red stones used to be in the purse frame.  It is lined with sheer pink silk.

Small old trunk

Don't you love this shabby old trunk?  And what a surprise to find that wonderful paper lining!  Way cute for doll clothes, vintage treasures, etc.

Old shutters (before)

These six shutters are pretty dirty.  But they are sage green on one side and white on the other.  Plenty of water and a scrub brush cleaned these up nicely.  Here's the result:

Much better!!  I think they will make great decorator or display pieces.

Some cabinet cards I found

Here are a pics of cabinet cards I found yesterday.  Thought you might enjoy them, too.

Little barefoot girls

Little girl in plaid dress

Don't you love her ringlets?  I can remember my mother wrapping my long, curly hair around rags in order to create ringlets.  The plaid dress is so pretty and I was surprised that it was colored.  They had to do that by hand on the old photographs.

An old school photo

This was probably a photo of the children in a one room school house.  I noted all the little boys in the front row were barefoot as well as two of the girls.  Interesting!

You can see all of the photos I found on my Flickr page here.

Altered Tag Swap

After I met Lesley Venable at Art Unraveled in August, I joined her ning site, The Art of Altering.  A month or so ago Lesley launched an Altered Tag Swap and I immediately signed up.  I just finished my tags and will be mailing them to Lesley tomorrow. 

I have to admit, that working with glue and paper again was a struggle.  I really prefer fabrics.  I even thought about doing fabric tags.  But, I had all these extra images, papers, and ribbons.  So I decided to use them up to create my tags for the swap.

A Pretty Witch

This is the first one I did.  I did glue papers on the tag but then I stitched around the orange paper.  The netting was glued down as well as the witch and tag.

A Queen for Halloween

I have used this little girl before, but I love her a lot.  So I glued dress pattern paper on the tag, stamped it, then added the image and embellishments.  This tag was fun to do!

Please check out Lesley's The Art of Altering and join.  It costs nothing to join, and I am sure that Lesley will be having other great swaps.  She also offers tutorials and online classes.  Great way to get your art out there as well as learning new techniques or take a class.

Lovin' the bunnies, NOT

I have noticed this year a large number of bunnies of all sizes around my yard.  The bunnies have been doing what bunnies do best -- multiply!! 

There have been lots of little, itty bitty ones hopping around.  This one, not one of the smallest ones I've seen lately, jumped into the bowl of my small water feature to hide because he heard me inside the house -- I have the sliding door open this morning.  It's much cooler today.

See him hunkered down in that bowl??  Cute, huh???

Here's what he and his bunny friends have done to my landscaping.

As I headed out the door a few minutes later, the same bunny was nibbling on the bush on the right.  That particular bush is about half it's normal size.  The other two have been eaten down to nubbins!!  Landscaping is expensive!  Rabbits are destructive.  I'm not lovin' the bunnies much these days!  And to make matters worse, the neighbor behind me is feeding them!  Obviously not enough!  LOL!!

September Alphabet Party

Once a month Etsy Cottage Style does an Alphabet Party.  This month participants are to post pictures and descriptions of vintage items they have beginning with the letters P, Q and R.  I had a lot of fun going through the house looking for vintage pieces.  Here are the ones I selected for the Alphabet Party.

Ironstone PITCHERS

old PEWTER PITCHER

The old pewter pitcher and cream and sugar set belong to my grandmother. 

vintage PURSES

The purse on the left is a shabby Whiting Davis.  The black one is old and studded with jewels.

coffee and tea POTS

The pink one is a Droll Designs pot I bought over 20 years ago.  The blue enamel biggin coffee pot above was found in Virginia.

vintage PETTICOATS

Remember these??  I had to wear several in order to get my skirts full enough.  I laugh at that now!

vintage ROSARIES

more vintage ROSARIES

For some reason this rosary collection just grew.  Guess it's because they don't take up much room!

Old wicker child's ROCKER

This old wicker rocker was my dad's.  He was born in 1910 (to 1994), so I can date this at being about 100 years old.  I love this little rocker.  The doll is one of about 40 I made back in the early 1990's.  I sold all but three, which I still have.  Perhaps I will feature the dolls in a post in a few days.

I skipped Q you say?!  I don't have anything vintage that begins with Q other than old cutter quilts.  Q is tough!  And here they are.

vintage cutter QUILTS

I use these in my art work. Believe me, they have been well used and well loved before I use them again in a piece of art work.

If you visit the Etsy Cottage Style blog post for the Alphabet Party, be sure to visit all the other wonderful blogs who have their vintage items posted.  Easy to do!!!

Goodies from yard sales

I did OK at yard sales this weekend.  Will be adding all you see here to my booth this week.  I have got to redo the entire booth and put that pink dresser in a more prominent spot.

Here's some of what I found:

This mirrored dresser tray was a jewel in all the dust of an estate sale this weekend.  The pink roses are in perfect shape and so is the mirror.  I just had to get a rubber cover for one of the feet on the bottom.  I love the charm bracelets, soft green beads and old pin cushion.  That pin cushion is filled with emery so that when you stick the pins or needles in, the emery sand/dust sharpens the tips.

I love this silver pitcher.  It has a small boo-boo on the bottom, but that just gives it character and makes it even more shabby chic.

Found a lot of buttons, too.  A large bag of white and off white buttons as well as some red and pink.  Lots of mother of pearl buttons in this lot.  The bag of dark buttons are actually red, white and blue -- must have turned the bag over.

Vintage tins just listed

I just listed three sets of vintage tins on Vintage Recycled.  I am cleaning out my stash and thought these tins would be perfect for the mixed media, steampunk, or jewelry artist.  Here is a pic of the watch part tins.

They are tiny and the one on the top actually has two tiny watch parts included in it.  More pictures on Vintage Recycled.  See the other two sets of tins there, too.

I also listed another rhinestone cowgirl journal.  This time it features Annie Oakley.  She's my favorite cowgirl from the Old West.

SOLD!!!!

Met a new dealer at Merchant Square last Saturday when and she came to my booth to look around while I was there fluffing!  Her name is Rhonda and she has a blog called A Little Bit French.  Please visit her blog and have a look around.  You'll love her work.  And you can see a few of the items she bought from my booth on Saturday -- booties, pearl necklace, perfume bottle.  Please scroll on down through her blog and see why Rhonda and I are kindred spirits!  She loves the same things I do and she is a mixed media artist!!  How cool is that?!

Lastly, I had the unfortunate experience of being stung by a bark scorpion on Monday afternoon.  I can honestly tell you that IT HURT!!!  And the numbness in my toes, face and scalp didn't help!  It took a little over 24 hours to recover from that experience, and it was awful.  That scorpion managed to get 4 stings in on my leg before I could get my shorts off to get rid of it.  Never saw it, don't know where it was that it could get on my thigh, but it did.  Little beast.  Ice packs and Benadryl help relieve the symptoms.  

Nasty creatures.  This is what they look like.  I find them in the sticky traps I have set in my garage.  Don't find too many in the house.  But the one that got me on Monday was in the laundry room and a big a surprise. 

I'm on a first name basis with my pest control man -- Logan.  He's coming again tomorrow to spray the inside of the house again.  Hope it gets that little pissant that stung me.

It's been awhile, I know

No excuses.  Just nothing to blog about, really!  But since Thursday, things have been moving along.  Merchant Square has now gone onto Facebook here.  On Thursday I was lucky enough to be able to sit down with Lisa at Merchants and start my own little shop, Judy B's Shabby Chic.  I just uploaded 12 photos of my booth to an album on my shop.  Check it out!

I can already tell you that this is going to be a major learning experience for me.  I am puzzled by terminology (RSS Feed, Twitter -- who cares!?), how to link things, and in general just how to get this going.  Needless to say, I am going back on Thursday to meet with Lisa again and try to make sense out of how to do certain things.  Facebook is not my thing (I feel it's a waste of my time to sit at this computer playing games and reading comments on walls for hours on end), but I have a feeling it is going to be!  I feel like I am being sucked in while screaming and digging in my heels!!!  LOL!!!

Last Friday I was lucky enough to run into James and Jill, two dealers at Merchants.  They were unloading a trailer full of old furniture.  I spied a pink dresser on that trailer and quickly brokered a deal to buy it.  Here it is:

It's shabby, but I love it!  And they also had a white dresser out there and I bought it, too.  I will show you that one later.

Recently I had come across this old composition book at an estate sale.  It was full of daily menus kept by the owner, Mrs. Richard K. Shaffer, beginning in 1942.  Something older than me!!!!  I thought you might enjoy a peak inside that book of menus from back then.

Cover of the Menu Book

Don't know if you can read this or not, but at the top of this page it is dated 1942-1943 -- still older than me!  On the right hand side at the top, on June 2 they had liver with onions and baked beans -- not my favorites!!  EEEwwww!!  I think if you click on the pictures you can enlarge them and be able to read some of the writing.

They had lots of left overs which she noted as (L-O).  Upon reading some of these menus, they were not very healthful in the eyes of food and nutrition experts today. 

Yesterday was my son's birthday.  He came down here (from North Phoenix where he lives) in the afternoon and we went furniture shopping for his apartment.  Found a really nice dining table (my gift to him for his birthday) for him at My Sister's Attic and he found the sofa (I chipped in some) he wanted at Ashley Furniture.  After our shopping spree, I treated him to dinner at Sandbar Mexican Grill in Chandler on Ray Road.  We had yummy Baja Tacos made with mahi and tasty ingredients! 

Happy Birthday, Rob!!!

More little journals added

This week I have been making more little journals but with a Christmas theme.  Also put in a new cowgirl collage done on an old log cabin cutter quilt piece.  You can check them out on my Etsy site, Vintage Recycled, or just view them by watching the Etsy badge on the right side of my blog.  Here is a sample for you.  More are ready to be listed very soon!

This is one of my favorite images.  A mother and daughter in front of a white Christmas tree with the new doll that the little girl has just received.  So pretty!

Here is the Kris Kringle journal I just listed.  I have more of these and will list them soon, too.

Lucketts Design House photo

The only time I wish I still lived in Virginia is when Lucketts General Store sends me an email telling me about their next open house in their Design House.  What a wonderful house it is, too!!  I try to visit each time I go to Virginia to visit my family.  What I love about this photo are the old paint brushes in that turquoise colored bowl.  Also love the feed bag pillow and the picture with the bird and bird cage.

Lucketts Design House photo

This industrial look is beginning to grow on me.  I would LOVE that storage unit!  What a great thing to store fabrics in and you can see it all!  Also love those two hats on the dresser as well as that great painting behind them.  Wish I could "beam" myself over there this weekend and take a look first hand.  Where's Scotty when you need him??