Halloween is Coming...yay

You wouldn't know it to look at me..housewife, 43, driving the car pool to football practice...but inside beats the heart of the Queen of the Damned Vampires from the Underworld Werewolf Coven..in other words, I LOVE HALLOWEEN!

It probably stems from Halloween being my first taste of freedom. When I was little my father and our neighbor would follow far behind us, sipping beers (this wasn't frowned upon in 1975) and letting us run ahead to ring doorbells. We felt like we were big kids out there on our own - although secretly happy to catch a glimpse of moonlight reflecting off the Bud cans in the distance.

When I was eleven my parents released the reins completely on Halloween and my friends and I were allowed to go out in the neighborhood on our own unsupervised...at night...dressed up...scoring Reeses Peanut Butter cups...in the dark and everything...it was the coolest thing EVER. None of this was frowned upon in 1975 either in case you were thinking of calling child protective services.

So when October 31st approaches, I get that old giddy feeling and my jewelry-making takes a decided turn to the spooky. I already enjoy making steam punk pieces, so it doesn't take much to push a little more over to the dark side

Here are some pieces I made the other night and put in my etsy shop.
This is a vintage necklace and pendant I found at a yard sale, but it once held a plastic cabochon with a smiley-faced-sun picture...not anymore...bwaahaaa...I ripped out that smiley face and replaced it with an illustration of a cobweb from an old children's fairy tale book and sealed it with resin. Hoping this will make some little witch very happy.

I got a little spooky-Steam Punk with this piece made from a vintage chain and adorned with a crystal from an antique chandelier (picked up at an estate sale last summer). Also with a pendant made using an illustration from an old Four and Twenty Black-Birds book.


This one isn't really macabre, but has an old, mysterious feel. I cut out the word "sacred" from an antique dictionary and put it behind glass. The clear sealant gave it an even darker, more aged look than it had originally. Perfect gift for your secret society friends.

I am just a little sad this year that the boys might be officially too old to go out trick-or-treating. But maybe not, they may surprise me. They also like the freedom of running around with their friends in the dark without parental supervision. Although I never walked behind them with a beer in my hand...some spiked cider or a Cosmo in a coffee-cup maybe...but not beer.

Owls

A classic icon of the 60's and 70's, the owl.
This wise-old-bird decorates everything from pot holders to jewelry to salt-and-pepper shakers and has proven to be a popular item in the retro world.

I don't think it's just nostalgia that draws people to this nocturnal bird, but that it represents quiet dignity and wisdom in this chaotic world...plus they're just cool looking.

The pictures in today's blog are of items either currently in my etsy.com shop or have already sold.

The set of silver owl-shaped salt-and-pepper shakers below still hold the record for my quickest sale at just five-minutes on the site before they were bought by someone in Texas.

My own memories of the 1970s include a collection of ceramic owls on a window shelf, a macrame owl hung in a patio-room, and a silvery-pendant with turquoise-eyes hanging from my mother's neck.
In my first 20 sales in my etsy.com shop, five of them were owl-inspired items, including this great umbrella stand...so a quarter of my first sales were owls, and that statistic hasn't fluctuated that much.

Whether majestic or kitschy cute, we love our owls!

Blogging and Etsy

I have talked before about the connections made through etsy - online magazines and bloggers. Today, Aleya, who has a blog called StyleMache, contacted me through etsy and let me know she had added one of my up-cycled necklaces to her blog about creating with found objects (use what you have).

Here's the necklace I made with odd bits of vintage jewelry she added to her blog...


And here is the link to her blog...

http://stylemache.blogspot.com/2011/02/etsy-round-up-upcycling2008-recycling20.html

I did it!

I am no longer an auction-virgin! Amidst the smell if sauerkraut, dust and soft pretzels, I not only registered for a number, but finally raised it high.
I have to thank my neighbor John, who has recently started going to auctions himself, and encouraged me to go too - figuratively holding my hand during the process.
And what, you wonder, was my first fantastical purchase? I became the proud owner of a vintage jewelry box filled with all kinds of fun old jewelery.
I know, not earth shattering, but there are a lot of fun pieces that I have started to list in my etsy.com shop, and some others I put aside to dismantle and re-assemble in some new and strange form.

Here are a couple pieces that made their way out of the box and into my shop...

De-stashing

I learned a new word today..."de-stashing."

As I understand it, de-stashing is the act of going through your stash of leftover art and craft supplies - the remnants of your creative frenzy, as it were -- and offering them up for other artists and crafters to use in their own creations. Like when someone who makes stained glass windows offers up the smaller glass pieces that are left, and someone who makes mosaics or jewelry buys them to use in their own work.

It can als0 mean offering up any extra supplies you don't want anymore - like, some extra lampwork beads you made that are laying around after you finish that necklace.
No waste. Win, win. Love when that happens.

So after I learned what it was, I decided to try it out myself.I use small pieces of illustrations from damaged, vintage children's books in some of my jewelry making. I use only a small part of the book, so there is an alarming pile of them growing around my craft table. So to, hopefully, get the other great illustrations in these books out into the world for any artist or crafter that might want them in their own artwork or collage, I went through them and pulled out the best pages and have added them to my etsy shop.
I get excited about not wasting things... reusing, upcycling, repurposing...now de-stashing...yay.

Bits of This and That

On Monday I wrote in my blog about the bags of jewelry Linda and I bought at a community yard sale on Saturday...just bits and pieces of this and that, mismatched earrings, broken necklaces and charms. I've been playing with them all week and having a lot of fun creating Steampunk jewelry.

For those not familiar with the term, here's Wikipedia's definition...

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s.^[1] Specifically, steampunk involves an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century and often Victorian era Britain—that incorporates prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Works of steampunk often feature anachronistic technology or futuristic innovations as Victorians may have envisioned them; in other words, based on a Victorian perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, art, etc. This technology may include such fictional machines as those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne or real technologies like the computer but developed earlier in an alternate history.

Here are a few of the creations that emerged from the $1 bags...










The one below was popular in my etsy shop and sold a few hours after I put it on-line.

















This was once and earring I turned into a brooch and added the watch gear.



Growing up loving both Star Trek and Victorian era novels (yes, I was a geek) and now being a Dr. Who fan (my husband introduced me - grown-up geek) I'm finding this a super-fun genre to exlore.

Playing with Words

I love words.

I love writing them in stories and creating characters, dialog, places, relationships. They are my paintbrush.

Since I have decided to give that part of me - the author, writing part of my brain -- a sabbatical, I find it funny that even as I try a new creative outlet in jewelry making, I still come back to words.

Here are a few pieces I made last night and put up on my etsy.com shop tonight...

Words, words, words...it always comes back to words.

A Firehouse and Bags of Broken Jewelry

I was at the curb in front of my house waiting for the van with the other blond to pull up at 7:15AM Saturday morning, our destination was to first get my aunt Joan and then head to a firehouse in a small town having a community yard sale. All of these things are exactly how I like to start a weekend.

The drive to the firehouse was beautiful, over hill-n-dale - also how I like to start an early Saturday morning -- light playing off the fields with cows and horses grazing, stone and wood farm houses dotting the countryside. The firehouse was over two sets of bumpy railroad tracks at the edge of a quiet little town.

Inside we found mostly vendors, so the majority of the merchandise for sale was already priced too high to make a profit, but also provides a nice quality and variety of items to look at.
I found this great vintage radio shaped like an owl, which I ended up selling on my etsy site soon after I put it on-line.

We spent about an hour poking around, each of us with a few things in our bags, and were on our way out when Joan spotted a box on the floor under a vendors table selling a nice variety of vintage jewelry. We all rummaged through the box and found several zip-lock baggies full of bits of old jewelry for a dollar. Goody-bags for the creatively-minded - little bit of shiny...oooh, I can do something with those...not sure what...but I know I can...

We went back to Joan's and dumped our booty out on the table as we sipped coffee and thought of all the fun things that could be made with eighties jewelry left-overs. Linda modeled a lovely pair of giant-dangly earrings.
We came up with several ideas for all this great stuff and decided it really is more fun to play with broken jewelry than do our Saturday chores.











All things come to an end and the coffee cups were emptied and the jewelry put back in their bags for future craft projects...laundry, child chauffeuring and cleaning called. But for a little while, we felt like little kids playing dress-up in our mother's jewelry box.

You Just Never Know

I am often surprised by what people will buy on etsy.com, or more precisely, what will sell first.

Today was a perfect example. I hit some of my favorite Thrift Stores and found a couple nice things to add to my shop. At my last stop, almost as an afterthought, I picked up a small silver-toned ring holder shaped like a donkey...what? I thought it was cute.


It sold in twenty-minutes after it was listed.

Yet, I found this very cute vintage metal daisy pin - very popular right now -- weeks ago, same price as the donkey, and its still sitting unsold.

Or this beautiful set of very old, very collectible Pyrex bowls...they've been for sale for months now...nada.

Maybe that's part of the fun of selling things online, it is always a surprise.

The Jewelry Side

I've mostly talked about the side of my shop that is about finding and selling vintage items, but there is another side I've neglected here, the jewelry side. Most of it I make using bits of illustrations from old children's books that are damaged beyond viability.

I make jewelry from either altering vintage pieces I find at yard sales and thrift shops, usually they have a plastic cabochon that's scratched or tired, I pop it out and replace it with a glass or resin cabochon that I've adhered a piece of an illustration.

Sometimes I buy findings from some of the fabulous suppliers here on etsy, like bracelets, necklaces or rings, and create jewelry that way with the old pictures.
These are some of the old books I work with - only books that are completely beyond-repair and one step away from the trash (sometimes already there).

And above them are some of the findings waiting for me to put illustrations in them.

Wandering with Will

My youngest son Will asked to come out yard sale-ing with me Saturday morning, so we woke up at 6:45 on a Saturday which is no small feat for him -- see pictures of him on the blog about the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure morning, can you say zombie?

This summer both my sons came out yard sale-ing with me several times and if they find and buy something with their own money, I put it in the etsy.com shop for them and give them the money if it sells. They have both done pretty well and Will still holds the record for fastest thing we've ever sold on-line...silver owl-shaped salt and pepper shakers, sold in 5-hours.

Here is Will with his haul for the day.
Now that my kids are both teenagers, I really do cherish time that I get to spend with them one-on-one, especially when he asks me. We have fun together poking through things, enjoying the beautiful fall morning in some of the most rural parts of York County and meeting some interesting people...in short, sharing experiences together. I am all too aware, as I watch his eyes getting closer and closer to my own - seemingly overnight -- that his childhood is wizzing by at a dizzying rate, so if junking together is something we can share, than its another reason I'm happy to do it.
My favorite find for the day is a stool made from the wood of an antique milking stool and then altered sometime in the 60's with three metal legs.

Will's favorite was this toy tin top. Now its a race to see which one sells first!

My Style Article

I'm so psyched, My Style.com (In Style magazine's webazine) did an article on using brooches to brighten up your wardrobe and talked about my etsy shop and quoted me. If you click on my name in the article it is linked to my etsy shop.

Here's the link (to cut and paste in browser)...

http://www.mystyle.com/mystyle/b6014_ask_style_how_make_brooch_modern.html

Or click on link to the right...