Moving on up!

I am really enjoying having my booth at Third Coast Antiques. In fact, I am enjoying it so much that today, I opened a booth in the shop that is two doors down - Betty's Trash to Treasures Too. This second one is a tiny booth.

It needed a little TLC. Do you agree? The first thing I did was take a crow bar and bust down that ugly lattice panel. The shop owner said that I was the first person that she had ever seen setting up their booth with a crow bar. I think I am really going to like working with her.

I like the fact that the booth has electricity. I'll just have to ignore the ugly wires.

I designed the bookshelf and my husband helped me put it together. He wasn't able to help me set it up, so I made 3 of the shelves adjustable so that they could be removed so the darn thing wouldn't be so heavy.

One of the shelves has Alice in Wonderland related items, one has Coca Cola glasses, one of the shelves has bird and nature items, and one of the shelves barely has anything.

It was hard to visualize just how much I could fit in. I will go back on Wednesday and take more goodies. I am sure that I can fit LOTS more in there.

I sold over $100 in my Third Coast booth just this morning. *doing a happy dance* I will try to take a nice load with me. February has been very good.

Nest building

My sister is starting to scout cool things out for me now. She says "WWTD" - what would Teresa do? She found some big, chunky wooden picture frames and wondered what I would come up with for them. I'm glad that she snagged them for me. It's funny how easily I am excited over old stuff. I jumped up and down when she handed them to me. I know; it's pathetic.

I had been warned not to put bleach on vintage linens but they were all stained and thought it would be fine. No, it wasn't. The bleach ate the delicate stitching on some family linens. Since they were no longer going to be family heirlooms, I decided that I would just need to create something with them. They told me that they would love to be backdrops for my next project. They were the first things that went into my Feather Your Nest piece. I fixed up the nest while the sweet little bird looked on.

Flea Market Style Magazine Giveaway!

Artist, Lara Harris is hosting a giveaway on her blog to celebrate being published in the new Flea Market Style magazine. She is a wonderful artist who paints in oils. Not only is she giving away an issue of this magazine, she is also giving away a giclee print. Trot on over to her blog for your chance to win. A Vintage Touch.

You are my Valentine!

I can already feel that wonderful sugar rush coming on from all the chocolate and sweet treats! It was so fun in Elementary School when we would decorate our Valentine bags and wait for them to be filled with all the cute cards from our friends and maybe even a secret admirer! I usually had most of the candy eaten by the time I got off of the bus that afternoon. LOL.

Year-end analysis

While it is true that I've only been in my shop since September, I decided to do an analysis last night to see how my sales break down. Thanks to having everything on a spreadsheet already, it didn't take but a few minutes.

I divided my sales into smalls, furniture, and my vintage-inspired art. Smalls, which by far is the easiest to deal with in the booth only accounted for 15% of my total sales. I like smalls because they really do not entail much work out of me. Buy it, price it, place it.

Next in line is the furniture. This includes the furniture that I was fortunate enough to be able to purchase and place as well as those pieces that I have cleaned up, painted, and put my touch to. The furniture, which you would think would be my bread and butter, only accounted for 20% of total sales.

The largest catagory is my vintage-inspired art which is a whopping 65% of my sales. As an artist, this really charges the ego. Good for the ego, but it DOES keep me busy!

Half table is whole again

Note the big, black circle on this pretty half table. It is a deep burn mark. I wonder what caused it. I'm thinking that it might have been one of those infamous votive candles. It took a several applications of wood filler to fill that crater.
After a good sanding or two, or three, I applied a nice, clean coat of white paint and made sure that it crackled some. She looks so much better now. I lightly sanded certain areas in keeping with the history of this sweet table.

American Pickers ROCKS!

I have a new, favorite show. It's on the History channel and it's called American Pickers. It may be dangerous for me. I LOVE to junk and this show just feeds that desire. From honey holes to windshield time, get the inside scoop on picker lingo from Mike and Frank. They even have a DVD for sale.They know how to find all the "good junk" and I'm taking notes. Monday's just got fun!

Photos courtesy of American Pickers

I'm a JUNKMARKET Style member

After spending a good hour and a half checking out over 3,000 junking submissions, I decided that I should become a member of JUNKMARKET Style and start sharing some of the ideas that I have put together. It only seemed right to "give back" to other fellow junkers out there.
As it turns out, there are over 6,000 of us on this site ALONE. I submitted my shutter hall tree that I made last week.
So far, I've made one contribution to this site. Hmmm . . . .

Hurricane Ike Hall Tree

Back in September of 2008, hurricane Ike paid a visit to the upper Texas coast devastating everything in its path. Galveston was one of the areas which was particularly hard-hit. Ike had a pretty powerful storm surge. Not a good thing.

When I was on my buying trip to Round Top, I came across a glorious pile of architectural pieces. These pieces were all salvaged from Galveston by a Galveston resident after hurricane Ike paid its visit. All kinds of doors, pieces of gingerbread, windows - you name it. Enough to make you just absolutely drool. Drool, I did. I made myself quite a stack - a $200 stack.
Today, I finished the hall tree I've been working on. It is even wired up with a light! I had a super time designing it. In fact, I was so excited about it, I had trouble falling asleep!

In the pink

This is one of the items that Joy gave me back in October. I decided that this step stool was just begging to be painted pink. The color is called Fifties Pink and it is actually a mistint that I bought at half price. I don't know if it's anything like it was suppose to be, but it is a beautiful pink. It's so pink that it is almost flourescent!
Joy will be surprised to see how much it has changed! I'm going to take it to my shop in Corpus later this week. Just in time for Valentine's day.