Springtime at the Flea

Springtime weather has finally arrived in the midwest and with warmer weather comes the flea markets. I thought I'd share a few of this past weekend sites.

Mother Nature & Father Time always create the best distressed finishes.

I feel like I should know exactly what she is, but I don't.

There's always nice framed art there.

Then there were these creepy babies.

Cool old store display pieces.

Old lamps that have seen better days.

I can't pass up the opportunity to take a photo of a neat old purse.

Pretty painted glass shades.

Play kitchen appliances.

What a sharp looking old piece of luggage.

Julia was there.

  And Mel too.

  A crude little Gypsy fellow.

 Someday I'd like to restore an old trunk.

 I bet some fun times have been had on this bike!

 What regal chairs!

 A clever sign, but I didn't see any ladies flocking there to buy the new models.

 A floral dog :)

 Old glassware and an old fan with super shiny brass blades.

I told myself last year if I lost enough weight I'd buy one of these pretty dresses. Hmmm... 15 pounds to go. It seems achievable. Wish me luck!

Please keep the good folks in Boston in your thoughts and prayers tonight and in the coming days and weeks, as another city tries to heal from a senseless tragedy.

Thanks for stopping by :)

Picture Displays

I saw some cute photo displays at Pinterest. Rather simple in design, a plaque of wood, corner embellishments and a small clip to hold a photo. I like that they're so versatile. I have some favorite vintage postcards, and think these are perfect to display those. I can imagine a few of them clustered on a mantel with postcards. They're great for school pictures. The ones I saw online had fabric flowers embellishments, but I decided to try a few different things. The hubs crackle painted and sanded a couple. I think I like them the best. What do you think?

 I hope your week is going well, thanks for stopping by! :)

I'm linking up here and at a few other sites that can be found on my Link Parties page.

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!

Jewelry Organizers

Mr. Showme has been busy making some really cool jewelry organizers. He's been experimenting and figuring out how to transfer a printed image directly to wood. This isn't decoupage or decals. The process is really neat the results are quite breath-taking.

These first two are images from vintage sewing patterns. The lady in the green dress and the next one with the pin-up are printed onto reclaimed cabinet doors.

This one is from a vintage pin-up.

Some old advertising.

And a couple that weren't printed images, but were stained glass.

Here's one showing how much jewelry you can get on the pegs that he attached around the frame. I'll have my own jewelry a bit more organized than this, but we wanted to show how much it would hold. They're in our Etsy shop if you want to see more pictures or any new ones as he posts them.