Flea Market Adventure

There's a flea market near our house each weekend. Mr.ShowMe and I decided to venture out to it today. It's blazing hot here, more typical of 4th of July weather than Memorial Day weekend. We figured we could get out to the flea market early and be back home long before the hottest part of the day. I found some real treasures and captured many more on film like this pressed glass compote. 

Here's a little peak of our adventure. 


It's a popular place.

An old large domed glass oval frame with a baby photo. I always find these to be sweet, but a little creepy too.

 Some pretties placed on an antique dresser.

 Old cast iron.

 A doll house.

It wasn't all old items there. This dealer had fishing stuff, here's a just a few of his tubs of rubber worms.

An old pink grocery scale and a really cool stylized bird lamp base.

 Check out this neat old hat box!

And these gorgeous vintage dresses!

Several dealers had tables full of old oil lamps. These were particularly lovely.

Old teddy bears and their little black lamb friend.

The bright colors in this old painting really grabbed my attention.

More oil lamps.. these with metal bases.

This old Sante Fe railroad clock reads Hollywood Cal. on the face.

 This old rocker upholstered in red velvet was in really good condition.

I couldn't walk by without taking pictures of the old sewing machines.

Retro Anchor Hocking Fire King Tulip Bowls. (Their condition was so perfect, Mr. ShowMe and I wondered if they were repros.)

Here's an electric typewriter probably from the early 70's with the case and the proud union label from a time in history when we still manufactured things here in the U.S. and a World's Fair poster that might be a repro, but still had cool graphic images.

A really big wheel!

This dealer had a neat assortment of old, tiny, stuffed animals and had them arranged in and on a tiny wooden dresser.

Here's the items that were too tempting to leave behind.

A dealer had a basket of vintage fabric that contained a bag with 39 pieces of sample fabric. Each piece is 11" wide by 9" tall. There are 3 or 4 color variations of each print. I think they're upholstery samples. They're lovely and just the thing to use for some bags I'm going to make, (stay tuned for that!). They only wanted $2 for the bag, so they came home with me.

This tiny (3.25" diameter) Hot Springs souvenir plate came home with me too. It would have to be The Bargain Of The Day since it was free! I collect Florida souvenir plates, so I always look when I see one to see if it's from Florida. I just couldn't believe it when I saw it said Hot Springs. That isn't in Florida, rather Arkansas, but it's where I lived with my Grandmother when I graduated high school, so I just had to have it. When I asked the dealer the price, he told me, "It's yours". I tried to insist that I pay him something, but he told me again that I could just have it, so I quit arguing and put it in my camera case for safe keeping till I got home.

Old watches are great to craft with so at $2 that Elgin was mine, and when the dealer told me those disc earrings were only $1, I decided to find a second pair for the price and selected the turquoise drops with the red beads too.

So here's my whole $7 haul. (I keep telling Mr. ShowMe that I'm a cheap date. I think this proves it!)

The clamps and note pads for $1 rounded out the rest. I'm always scrounging around for clamps and clips to hold things until the glue dries, and I need to start keeping a note pad in my purse to jot things down when I have moments of inspiration for blog posts or purse & craft ideas.

I hope you're having a great weekend. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Organizing Ribbons & Fabric

I've already posted about how I organized my beads, and my sewing patterns. Today I tackled my ribbons and fabric. 

Here are my "after" pictures. I recently read a post by Tiffany at Making the World Cuter, and she said you should start with the best pictures on a blog post. And since I'm still learning, I'll take free advice, especially from seasoned bloggers.


So let's start back at the beginning. This is what my ribbon mess stash used to look like.

Remember that roll of wallpaper that I scored from my mother-in-law's basement? I've already used it to make beads, sewing pattern envelopes, and covered a box to store my patterns in. We can now add ribbon organization to the many uses of the roll of paper. I started out with Oatmeal containers. 

 I had one scrap left from one of the other projects that was large enough for one of the small containers.

I marked out what I needed and cut the paper for covering with a glue stick. (I had previously figured out that school glue didn't stick to this textured wallpaper.)

I knew I wanted a slot in the oats container so I measured and marked it out down one side.

I don't have an X-acto knife. I'm really clumsy and think it would only be a matter of time before I lopped off something unintentional... not to mention painful and messy, so I opted for a serrated steak knife. To aid in cutting the slot I used my trusty sewing awl, (still haven't found a use for it in sewing!), to punch some holes along the cutting lines to serve as a sort of perforation. If you're brave enough to use an X-acto knife you could probably skip this step. 

 With the opening cut down the side of the container, it was time to get the paper ready for gluing. I made two cuts so the part that would have been over the slot would fold to the inside.

 Changing the subject.. have you made pattern weights? Mine are three washers glued together with E-6000 glue. They are the best thing ever!!! I use mine all the time!


So here's the first one all glued down and clamped till the glue takes hold.

 I realized I needed a longer piece for the inside. That first one gave me a little trouble, so on the next ones I made the cuts more generous.

I have a much longer tab here than I had on the last one. I also curled those center tabs the opposite direction from the way they wanted to go, so once inside they would follow the interior curve of the container.

 Here's one all glued, set, and filled with ribbon spools.

 Here's the final product. I can see all of my ribbons at a glance without digging through that messy pile. Much Better!

On to the fabric!

 My fabric stash was getting out of control, so Mr. ShowMe brought a couple of shelving racks up out of the basement for me. The ends of the racks were open so I wove some twine back and forth across the ends and tied it off so the fabric wouldn't fall out.
We drink a LOT of Diet Coke, so I cut apart 12 can cartons to make bolts to wrap the folded fabric around. I cut tall ones (14") for the back of the shelf and shorter ones (8") for the short stacks in front.

I used that system for the top two shelves. The very top of the rack holds shallow tubs for smaller pieces of fabric, fat quarters and the like.

The bottom shelf has some larger pieces that didn't lend themselves to the bolt system, like vintage drapery panels. 

I have one shelf finished. I'm still working on the other. Once I get them both done I'll probably do some color groupings, but for now, I'm just trying to get everything bolted and in place on the shelves.

What organization challenges have you conquered with your craft supplies? I'd love to hear about it!


Thanks for stopping by :)