Places to visit along 7th Avenue in Phoenix!

My friend, Gail, and I also visited several other wonderful places last Thursday after we went to the Sweet Salvage event.

Magpie's Nest

 Cute corner breakfast nook display!

 Love that yellow hat!

 Pretty display for Valentine's Day.

 Letters, numbers, and colors!

 Vintage wedding dress.

 Love these glasses with the flamingos!

 Corner lighting display made out of bottles filled with mini lights!  Awesome!

Rust and Roses

 I don't know what these are, but I love them!  Poppies???

 Lots of vintage!

 Loved the flowers in the giant urn!

 Cupcakes made out of sea urchin shells!  Cute ballerinas!

 Love all the items on this bench.

 Beautiful light pink wrap.

 Chandelier in a cage.

Nice old cupboard display!

After Christmas redo of my booth at Merchant Square

A couple of pieces of furniture sold last week and I didn't have any in stock in the garage.  So I had to go shopping in Merchant Square for some good buys -- which I found!  Then I redid my booth and most of the displays.

Have switched from Christmas to birds.  I have a couple of bird cages in my booth now.  This pink chair is a child's chair in great condition and just darling for a girl's room.  Love that hatbox!

This is the dress form that is for sale.  I have dressed her in one of my slip dresses and added a fur collar.  Next to her is a great shabby easel that holds an old print, several old buckets and a blue sap bucket.  Lot of other goodies to see here as well!

This great piece I found this morning and bought from another dealer.  It is a really nice display piece.  Loaded it up with lots of old flower frogs, rubber stamps, another bird cage on a cake plate and a dress form.

I Love that old La Mode print.  It is an actual page from an old magazine.  In this huge bowl is an assortment of rubber stamps, sponge stamps and some Maya Road items.  For you scrappers, this is a good deal because the prices are very right on those stamps!

Have a few cowgirl items here.  Red straw hat, white boots, bandana napkins, old toy horses, old horse show ribbons, and a couple of old suitcases.

I also put out several new hats.  This one is a vintage Easter hat.  She's wearing old pearls.  Vintage pink gloves and a die cut that is framed.

Come on over to Merchant Square and visit!  New dealers are moving in now and many others are redoing their booths for the New Year!  

The weekend finds . . .

I can tell that spring is approaching here in the Sonoran Desert.  The temps have been in the mid-70's, it has rained more than usual (thanks El Nino!), and now my lavender is in bloom.  The bees are also busy getting pollen from the blooms.  I need to pick some of this and dry it!

Last week I met some friends in Mesa for coffee and conversation.  Afterwards we wandered down to Domestic Bliss to see what goodies they had on sale.  Domestic Bliss is rearranging their store and getting rid of some old items at great prices.  Check out their blog here for the latest news and items.  Here is one of my purchases:

Speckled eggs!  And these are real eggs.  The insides have been removed -- remember how you used to blow out eggs for Easter dyeing??  I do!  I think they may be quail eggs, but am not sure.

I found this tiny wood cage several weeks ago and decided to add a small nest, some of the speckled eggs and tiny roses trim.  Cute spring display!

Here's a peak inside to see the eggs I tucked in there.  This little display piece will be on sale in Merchant Square in a day or two.

Birds and Botanicals altered book is finished

I began this altered book several months ago. After working on it for a couple of days, I was tired of it and put it in a big envelope and let it sit for awhile. Today I took it out and looked at it again and decided that it was nearly finished. So I worked on it today to get it finished. Here it is:The cover is an page from an old photo album I bought that was falling apart. The bird picture is actually a piece of wallpaper.
Here is Joy's relative that you saw a while back. I imagined that this was her botanical book and she put it together with just what she could find. There is a "certificate of merit" just under her picture and I like to think that her teacher liked her book and gave her the certificate for doing such a fine job. There are tags and journaling papers on the other page for her to fill out with her notes while she collected her botanicals.

More tags in pockets and more journaling space. Also a "bird" word card.

Here I made a pocket out of stiff interfacing and put a pretty postcard in it with butterflies.

Here is a birdnest that perhaps she could have sketched or collected. There is a bird tag tucked in the back of the nest. The birds on the other page are mounted on a piece of wall paper that was folded in half and sewn together. The tiny tag on the left holds (perhaps) a feather from one of those birds.

Here is a picture of her best friend who helped her collect the things for the botanicals book: butterflies, bird's eggs, flowers, etc.

More favorite things: fabric flowers, pictures of birds, a game card with an envelope that has a tag with feathers on it.

The back side of the game card has my favorite twig chair stamp and a bird attached. The opposite page has some of that wonderful woven paper that I threaded ribbon through so it could hold tags.

These are the last two pages with shells, a bug, and a wonderful bird cage. I used a lot of the Graphics 45 papers, vintage papers, some things by Catherine Moore (the bird cage and the twig chair stamp), heavy paper to paint on with acrylics matching the colors in the papers. It was a lengthy project. Glad I put it away for awhile and then took it out again. The "rest" from it gave me the boost to finish it today.

Done! I think this may be a submission.