Gathering Dust

Don't Do This With Your Buttons

An antique dealer once told me that since most dealers don't go to school to learn the "trade", we get our education from our mistakes.  Usually those are mistakes in what we buy.  Even though I've been doing this for 15 years, I still make mistakes.  I guess that means I'm still learning.

At an estate sale last weekend, I saw buttons, lots of buttons, buttons on cards.  Buttons in a bag or a jar will make my heart beat a little faster. 

Buttons that have been put on cards by other collectors make my heart skip a beat. They're special, because someone went to the trouble to collect them, lay them out, attach them to cards.

When I saw this button card at an estate sale, I was overcome with button lust and I bought the card without really considering my purchase.

My first mistake was assuming these were glass buttons.  They LOOK like glass, but I think they're all plastic.  Worse than that, they had been attached to the board with wire- METAL wire. 

Metal and plastic, especially old plastic, do not mix well.  The metal in the wire causes the plastic to deteriorate and crumble.

When I tried to take this button off the card....

...the back fell right off and the button crumbled. Button crums- ick!

The same thing happened with this flower button.

There were pleny of clues that this wasn't a great purchase:

• Many missing buttons.
• The wire holding the buttons to the card was green colored from corrosion.
• It's pretty easy to tell the difference between glass and plastic.  Glass will feel cold when you hold it next to your cheek.

At the same sale, I bought another card of buttons, all "V" for Victory buttons from the WWII era.

These buttons have some condition issues, too; but I really like keepsakes from WWII homefront era .

These buttons had been attached with wire, too; but I very carefully took them off.  A few crumbled, but these were keepers.

Lessons learned- don't buy in haste, make sure you can live with the condition of whatever you're buying and don't mix metal buttons (or wire) with plastic.

If you're looking for some buttons to add sparkle to a holiday project, I have some nice rhinestone buttons (backs intact) in my Etsy Shop.

 

Estate Sale Friday BUTTONS

Love it when I buy a bag of buttons at an estate sale, get it home and realize the buttons are already strung together and sorted!

Speaking of buttons, I've added a bunch to my Etsy Shop SugarPinkMoon.

And bunches of flowers, too.

And you'll find ledgers and other vintage paper in Gathering Dust.

Thanks for taking a look!

Sixty Years, Sixty Buttons

I don't have any sisters, but I'm lucky enough to have four great sisters in law who I'd be happy to be friends with even if we weren't related.

One of them, Jan, turns 60 next week.  Our niece, Melissa came up the idea that everyone should give her 60 of something- sixty phrases, sixty memories, sixty diamond rings. 

No, not really about the rings- the idea was that the gifts didn't have to cost much or anything at all.

One thing I have no trouble coming up with is 60 buttons, so I made her this little art quilt with exactly 60 buttons. 

I think there are 60 buttons, I've counted and recounted- you can count and see what you come up with.

Jan likes hearts, so I scattered some throughout the sampler- and squeezed her name into the heart at the top. 

I used some of the pretty rhinestone chain that Karla gave me for my birthday, and some of the new embroidery stitches that I learned from TAST- Take A Stitch Tuesday.  If you look really closely at just about the middle of the picture, to the left of the rhinestones, you can see a green and peach "60".

Happy 60th Birthday Janie Sue!

Auction Goodness Vintage Sewing Basket

A few days ago at auction I won a very full wicker sewing basket.  Besides actually buying the basket, a good part of the fun is digging through the basket to see what kind of treasures it hold.

I had to dig past a lot of flotsam and jetsam- dried out old rubber band pieces, nails, screws, rusty paper clips, the rings that go around canning jars- but in the end it was worth it.

Buttons had been stored in these vintage Christmas boxes- the top one if from Daytons- my favorite department store when I was growing up.

Cute snap cards- a picture of a couple kissing and the caption reads "Two parts with but a single snap"....sigh, how romantic...

I love this cute little strawberry pin cushion- actually, it's not a pincushion, it's an emery "needle cleaner"- an advertising giveaway.

And of course, lots of white and cream buttons- I usually sort those out first because I love the way they looked grouped together.

I've had several people email me about kits from my Paper Cowgirl class.  You can find them in my Etsy Shop.

Etsy Shop Update- Selling Still Gives Me A Thrill

I like to set goals- I don't always meet them, but I if set a goal, and make it "official", either by writing it down or fixing it in my head, I accomplish a lot more than if I just have some vague ideas about doing "stuff".  Writing it down makes me accountable to myself.

But enough Oprahsizing- this weekend I said my goal was to get the total number of items in my Etsy shops- Gathering Dust and SugarPinkMoon up to 100. 

When I started yesterday, I had a total of 30.  Now I have a total of 70- but along the way people are BUYING things, so the count goes down.  Geez....

Ok,you know I'm kidding.  I LOVE it when you buy things from me.  Even though I've been selling antiques for almost 14 years, I still get a thrill when someone wants to buy something I picked out.

When I got my first booth at the antique mall, my rent was $250 a month, and I had a 6 mos lease.  I remember talking it over with my husband, and realizing that I was committing myself to spending $1500.

But I really wanted to try it, so we decided I should risk the $1500. I moved in and went back the next day and realized that I had sold two pieces that I had brought in on the first day - for a total of $18. I was SO THRILLED.  I remember thinking "Now, the most I can lose is $1482"- always the accountant with the financial statement running through my head.

So, I haven't quite met my goal yet- but I still have a few hours.  In the meantime, here's a look at some of what I have listed so far- including a bunch of funky plastic stuff- buttons, jewelry, even a clothespin. 

I'm going to take a listing break and read some of Tina Fey's book BossyPants.  Tina is my new hero ever since I started watching 30 Rock a few months ago.  I relate to Liz Lemon because she wears clothes with food on them and sometimes has lettuce in her hair, and sometimes, I do too.

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...

Button Floozies

If you'd like to hear more about buttons, or more about my Yorkie puppy who's name is Button; I've written a guest post on the Button Floozies blog.

Button- hiding under the bed.  Maybe I should wrap a Swiffer around him so he could tackle some of the dust under there.

Dear Santa

I've been a very good   pretty good girl and if you have room in your sleigh,do you think you could bring me something? I don't want much, just some old thing.

Maybe something with drawers, like the pharmacist chest in the first picture, or a folk art chest like this one.  An elf put a lot of work into this.

If one of your elves is talented with a paint brush, I really like this grain painted table.

I'd be happy to rearrange the furniture in my house if you bring me an old store display like this to keep my lace in.

Or, if the sleigh is already full, I'd be happy with what's in one of the drawers.

Sorting these buttons could keep me busy for all of Christmas morning.

Thank you Santa- there will be milk and cookies for you by the fireplace.

(All pictures taken at Mission Road Antique Mall.)

New Old Stuff in the Etsy Shop

Since I don't have any antique shows planned for several months, I've been working my fingers to the bone  spending a little more time than usual stocking my Etsy shops.  I've added button cards and some cool buttons- square mother of pearl and rhinestones to SugarPinkMoon.

Jewelry in SugarPinkMoon including an ART brooch, a Lisner Rhinestone snowflake pin and couple of awesome stickpins, including an a deco pin made of old plastic- maybe Bakelite.

Victorian "stuff"- including a wonderful mirrored velvet photo album with floral photo mats.

Some fun little cuties- figurines, a hanky in a presentation folder and Cracker Jack charms.

In my Gathering Dust shop, I've got cabinet cards with great BACKS, German music, and handwritten ledgers.

If you're looking for some NEW old jewelry, supplies or just something fun- check them out.

Button Card Collecting

 
Back when I started my blog- about 4 years ago (oh my!)- it seemed like I was posting about buttons all the time.  I loved buttons and wrote about them so much that I was afraid people would refer to my blog as "that button blog".

I haven't had a button post in a long time,  because I haven't found a lot of great buttons or button cards. 

At an auction last week, I sat next to a dealer who bought a tin of buttons.  We looked at them together and found quite a few pearl buttons.  We started talking about Muscatine Iowa, which was once a huge producer of pearl buttons because of its location on the Mississippi River.  My friend Tami, who is a button collector extraordinaire wrote a post about her visit to the Pearl Button Museum in Muscatine.

Thinking about the pearl buttons got me to take a look at my little button card collection. 

 
I have lots of cards- but not a lot that have all their buttons, or don't have some other problem- like "pushed" corners.

 
Simple but so sweet.

 
Love this one- enamel and glass from "Czech-slovakia"- I'm guessing it's from the 1920's or 1930's.

 
While I was taking pictures of my button cards, I wanted to get a picture of this Button, too- but he was being shy and hid under the bed.

 
I want to give equal billing to Button's brother Buddy- but it's so hard to get a picture of Buddy- he's always busy patroling, with his nose is to the ground. 

I scanned some of my favorite cards, so you can use the images in your projects.  Just click on the image to enlarge it and then right click to save to your computer.
 
Bluebird pearl buttons- from Iowa 1923.

 

Mermaid Pearls.

 
Another Bluebird card.

 
Lucky Day was another brand of pearl buttons.

 
 Another Bluebird card- I'm not sure of the significance of the camel and the desert....

Happy creating- I better get that fuzzy Button out from under the bed.