Thrifting Finds

Mr. ShowMe and I made it to our favorite thrift store this past weekend. We were thrilled to see the 50% off signs as we pulled into the parking lot. I came away with quite a haul! Even my goofy golden Chistmas elf was impressed. You can see him surveying everything in this picture. 

The fancy bowl in the picture is a great last minute Christmas present for my hard to buy for Mother in law. She loves old fancy plates and bowls. Mr. ShowMe spotted it up high on a shelf as we were checking out. It isn't marked, but it's quite lovely, and I'm sure she will love it.

We found their fabric stash this time. Not sure how we've missed it in the past! I found a large piece of heavy weight red fabric that will be great for purses, a large piece of vintage lace that is soft enough for some great scarves or perhaps some gypsy bag embellishments. I also got a smaller piece of lace, that I'm not sure what I'll use it for, but at eighty cents it was just too fabulous to leave behind!

I know that's quite a pile of watches and you're probably wondering why on earth I would need that many. Well, you'll just have to keep wondering for a bit longer. I do have a craft project for them, but I couldn't do it any justice if I tried to describe it to you, plus I don't want to spoil the surprise. I probably won't get to work on it until after Christmas, as I'm running out of days to get everything done as it is, but I promise as soon as I get it made I'll be sharing it.

The rest of the jewelry will all be disassembled and used in pieces here and there. That's so much cheaper than buying it all new at the craft stores. I'm always needing "pearls" and chains for things. And see those orangy red ring things? They're wooden rings. They have the prettiest flowers painted on them in orange and gold. I'm not sure what I'll do with them. I just knew if I left them behind it would haunt me. So rather than that, I coughed up the twenty-five cents a piece for them and will store them with my beads until the perfect project comes along. :)

I hope you're enjoying the holiday season. Thanks for stopping by. Have a wonderful week :)

Brought to you by the letter H

I've had a busy holiday weekend. Our hot water heater went out, so we had that ordeal to deal with... ok, that's a bit of a stretch. The hubs is really the one who dealt with it. But I did go back to The Home Depot to get a thing-a-ma-bob during the installation. Don't ask me what it was. Luckily there were two and he had one, so away I went with it in my hand, showed it to the salesman and declared, "I need one of these". But, thanks to my handy hubby,  now we're good as new in the hot water department.

I wanted to try my hand at making Gypsy Carpet bags. I just love the feminine look of them. I have a lot of vintage linen and lace in my fabric stash, so it's a good use of that too. Here's the first one I made. I finished it about about a week ago.

 I added a piece of vintage jewelry to this one. The flowers are the satin ones where you burn the edges to curl them and stack graduated sizes of circles. I had some vintage floral tapestry fabric that I used for the purse base and handle.

Today I finished up another one. 

I think I like this one better than the first. I looked up how to make ribbon by cutting woven fabric on the bias. I had linen pieces left from where I had cut away lace corners to applique on other projects, so I was able to use up the remaining linen by cutting strips that I made into the fringe. I used the same method to make fringe of some more of the seafoam green sheer fabric that I ruffled on the first bag. I'm really happy with how this turned out.

Then I was back in Home Depot this afternoon. The hubs needed a piece of lumber to fill an order he had for another barbed wire cross like this one.

So I guess this holiday weekend was brought to us by the letter H... Home Depot, Hot water Heater, and Handbags.
I hope you had a safe and happy holiday!

Vintage Linen

I had all this vintage linen in my fabric stash that was just mocking me all the time with what to do with it. I'd look at my fabric shelf to select fabric for a project and would spend a few minutes looking at it, unfolding pieces, sighing, and folding them back. I finally got an idea and decided to try it. None of it has any sentimental value, but I still feel a sort of obligation to use it wisely. Much of it was once cherished by someone, I've been so afraid of wasting it on something that wasn't worthy of it.

Yeah, I know.. I think too much... go ahead and say so, you wouldn't be the first person to come to that conclusion!

So here's what I came up with. How'd I do?

Lace & Pearl Bracelet

I just love the Flamingo Toes blog. If you haven't been there yet I highly recommend it. You can get there here. She has the best tutorials. They're clear and concise and her projects don't cost an arm and a leg. I have a mile long crafting to-do list thanks to Bev there at Flamingo Toes.

A while back she posted a tutorial for a Lace and Pearl bracelet. It was a knockoff that she saw somewhere. I made one of my own, but alternated crystal beads with the pearls. I had the beads from a couple of old broken 1950's crystal necklaces that I had taken apart. That's one of the advantages of having a husband dabbling in the antique business. He buys a box of crap treasures at an auction and I get all the broken unsaleable items from it to craft with.

Here's my version of the bracelet.

I had to make a second one for a good friend at work who positively swooned when she saw mine and just had to have one!