Gathering Dust

Hunting for Junk in 2012

Want a head start on planning your junking excursions for 2012?  My friend Sue from Vintage Rescue Squad has put together her annual "Dreaming of Junk" calendar that has a great collection of antique show dates.

Each month is also illustrated with a fantastic photo of junk contributed by junking bloggers.

I'm tickled to say that one of my pictures was selected.  I'm "Miss June"- well, my picture is.

Of course, I can't take a lot of credit for it.  I took the picture at Bottom's Up Antique Market in Sarah's- My So Called Junky Life booth.  Her decorated spools are darling- anyone could have taken a good picture of such a pretty vignette.

You can get your own Dreaming of Junk calendar in the Vintage Rescue Squad's Etsy Shop.

Quick Christmas Wrap

One of my favorite ways to package a small present or gift card is to make an envelope from heavy duty wallpaper. This wallpaper is flocked and metallic- great for Christmas. 

I cut a piece of wallpaper about 6" x 10".  On the 10" side, I measure about 4", folded the paper to make a pocket and sewed on both sides.  The 2" piece is the flap that gets folded down to close the envelope. 

I glued a strip of feather boa (from the kids craft section at Michaels) to the edge of the flap.  When the glue dried, I slipped in the gift, folded the flap, added a shipping tag covered in vintage wallpaper and used a paper fastener to hold the while thing shut.

I wrote the "to" and "from" in pencil on the back of the tags- so the whole thing can be recycled and given to someone else. 

The recycling of gift wrap reminds me of my Grandma.  She opened every package so carefully, refolded the paper and saved it.  At the time I thought it  was silly, but as I've gotten older, I appreciate her "waste not" philosophy. Did your Grandma save paper and bows?

If you like old fashioned "low color" Christmas, my friend Lisa of Tarnished and Tattered had her house featured in the Dallas Morning News.  You can see more pictures here.

More magazine news- my friend Carol of Raised in Cotton recently had her farmhouse featured in Kansas City Home and Garden magazine. Carol has an "elegant country" style and her house is pretty, peaceful and serene. 

Now, I don't want you to think that I've forgotten the publishing accomplishments of my good friend, Karla, but when you look at her magazine resume you can see that it's stranger for Karla to NOT be in a current or recent publication than to be in one.

My Christmas to do list is almost done, I'm planning on a Sunday of crafting.  Hope you have a pleasant (and not too hectic) day planned, too.

Round Robin Pages- Two Styles

So far, the pages I've made for the Her Life in Stitches round robin have been heavy on using fabric, cross stitch and embroidery. The pictures on top and bottom left are my book, the bottom middle is for Karla's book and the lower left is for Sandra's book.

I kept the same kind of theme by using fabric and stitching for Lisa's book.  Lisa had a story about her book- it was about a farm girl named Sarah.  I tried to keep up the story by adding a page about Sarah's wedding- I call it "The Farmer Takes a Wife".

Besides the wedding picture, I added a bit of a marriage license printed on fabric.

I knew I wanted to add a locket or charm, but I needed more than one "dangly".  I looked in a bowl of old rosary chains and couldn't believe it when I found an old charm that actually said "Marriage License". 

Lisa's book was the last one I worked in in our first "round" of pages.  The next page to make was in Sandra's book- the second page I'd make for it.

I decided to go  a completely different route.  This page is bits of vintage wallpaper sewn to chipboard.  The ladies are from Green Paper Packages Vintage Catalog collection.

Patchworking the wallpaper together took longer than I realized it would.  When I finished, I told my husband "you have no idea how much work it is to make something look so random."

It's kind of ironic that my first four pages were all sewn by hand- but on this page, which except for the bow and netting, is all paper- I used the sewing machine.

Friday Estate Sale Finds Version No ??

Yesterday was Friday- guess what I did?  Estate sales- you betcha.  Want to see what I got?

Buddy and Button were curious.

From the first picture, I got some serving pieces whose specific purpose I'm not sure about.  The set of small spoons are demitasse spoons, but I don't know what the pierced spoons are for- and the mother of pearl spoon is so fragile I can't imagine trying to scoop anything heavier than dry Rice Krispies with it.

Some pretty soft mohair yarn- I love when it I can get nice yarn at estate sales- these were only 75 cents a skein.  I also got two celluloid or bone or ivory crochet hooks- just because I thought they were pretty- and an unopened package of hairpins.  I covered up the label in this picture but in the first picture you can see that it says "Scoldy Lox".

One of my favorite finds- a book containing bound copies of Home Needlework Magazine from 1900.

Instructions for all sorts of "fancy work"...and some beautiful color plates.

I think I'll make myself a nice cup of tea and curl up with this book and imagine what I would make if I had really mad needlework skills- the kind of skills where you don't leave big holes in your canvas from pulling out threads, or poke yourself with the needle, or get tomato sauce on your stitching because you're trying to eat lasagna while you stitch.  Eating while you sew is not really an appropriate use of multi- tasking skills.

This doll had to go home with me- her arms are painfully short compared to the rest of her body.  Someone had to foster the poor thing.

A feather duster- to go with my French maid costume <--kidding, do not really have a French maid costume. 

I bought the duster because I'm tired of the Swiffer and  just wanted to "shake up" my dusting a little bit.

Vintage paper Christmas tray- made in West Germany.  Of course, things aren't marked West Germany anymore because it is no more.  But for post-1950 Christmas stuff, West Germany is good.

This is an idea I saw on another blog and I thougth it was cute so I've been keeping eye out for tea balls to hold my baker's twine.  Just pull on the string and more comes out.

Maybe even cute enough to use as an ornament.

These bags were a purchase that got me thinking.  I track my business expenses by keeping a separate check book for my estate sale/auction/business purchases.  Sometimes I tend to not treat that money like "real" money.

For six dollars I got two full bags of kind of dirty little statues of presidents.  There are a lot of them- probably 40- that's less than 20 cents a president. 

But I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. 

If I was at Cheesecake Factory and they asked if I wanted dessert, I would think "oh no, I'm not paying $6 for cheesecake".

If I'm at Starbucks, I order coffee, pour some of it out and fill up the container with milk- I'm not paying $6 for a fancy coffee drink.

But put 40 dirty plastic presidents in front of me and I don't give it a second thought- they're coming home with  me. Guess I've got a thing for old statesmen.

30 Seconds of What I Was Thinking at the Estate Sale

I have a post over at the  Button Floozies blog about buying a box of buttons at an estate sale.  I use about 300 words to explain what went through my head in 30 seconds while I decided if I should buy the box.

Oh my gosh, that sounds really boring- well at least there are some pictures of pretty buttons...

Favorite Things: Spencerian Script and Flourishes

As I was sorting out some shelves in my craft room, I came across a book that had a dirty torn cloth cover and was more or less falling apart. 

"Why did I buy this?" I asked myself.

Then I opened it and saw why- it's written in German, and the typeface is that great gothic looking German font.

The book also has some beautiful Spencerian script style images.

I scanned a few of them for you to use if you'd like.  If you click on the image it will open in a new window and you can save it.

If you'd like to look at more of the book, it's for sale here.

Because I "Felt" Like It

This is a mini quilt I made from felt scraps and a fabric remnant.

(Sorry for the bad pun in the title- I couldn't help myself.)

I've always thought of felt as a grade school craft supply, but with some embroidery floss, buttons and a few doo dads from my sewing box, I had fun making this.

I used the Cuttlebug to cut out the flowers and traced around a wooden craft heart for the heart shapes.

I cut out a few flowers from an old floral print and a heart from a bit of barkcloth.  After I made my hearts and flowers, I sewed them onto a piece of cream colored felt and added some embroidery.

I didn't have a pattern, I just grabbed a couple shades of green floss and a few shades of pinks and reds and started stitching.  I think that free form wandering embroidery like this is my favorite- I don't worry about the shape of the stitches or if they're all the same size.  I stick with a straight stitch, a backstitch, blanket stitch, French knot and a lazy daisy.

When I thought I had filled in enough of the empty space, I found a pretty piece of quilted fabric that had a former life as a toaster cover.

I pinked the edges of the quilt and attached the felt using a blanket stitch.

I'm going to try and increase my stitching repertoire by joining the Take a Stitch Tues Challenge sponsored by Pin Tangle.  Every Tuesday, a new stitch will be shown.  I'm planning on stitching a band sampler.

The inspiration for a band sampler came from looking at this 75 foot long sampler.  Incredible!