pioneer.

xmas has come and gone. as always at this time of year, i'm ready to start fresh. i have lots of projects in the works for 2011, including a new website and hopefully a local chapter of Food Not Bombs. my overall goal for the new year is to purchase nothing new....shopping only at garage sales, thrift stores, and the like. when that's next to impossible, i'll shop only at local stores. i've been reading about Freegans...i like the idea and they're theories are very close to what i've had in my head for a while now but hadn't had the time to sit and put it all down in words. i've been dumpster-diving since i was a kid....never for food [yet] but for wonderful old pieces of furniture and usable household items that quickly become treasures in my own home. i remember the first thing i ever pulled from a dumpster; my mom and i were driving down an alley in a junky, urban part of the town we lived in and spotted a giant metal STOP sign peeking out of the trash. that's cool, let's get it, said my mom. and so began a life of looking into any and every dumpster i've ever run across.

recently, i've begun delving into the world of peddling antiques. i've been a 'picker' since we lived in savannah, georgia...knocking on doors of people who have 'junk' piled up in their yards and offering them money so i could haul it away. i aquired bathtubs, sinks, antique mirrors, doors, windows, old glider benches, tables, chairs, crates of american encaustic fireplace tiles, 100 year old house trim...and just about any other crusty old thing you can think of. and now i'm working my way in to a place to showcase and sell it. it's very exciting and it's such a wonderful feeling to bring home rotting furniture knowing that i can fix it up and re-sell it to someone that will love and cherish it as much as i.

today i'm working on an old vanity, probably from the early part of the 20th century. it's missing one of it's tiny wooden wheels, but i'm pretty sure i've got a spare rolling around this place somewhere.

i picked out a pale, silvery-blue paint from the 'oops' table at the hardware store. i like to recycle as much as possible but paint isn't really one of those things you run across in dumpsters very often...so i figure the mis-tints at the paint store are the next best thing. i have a stash of antique glass knobs and pulls, too....the reproductions are far too clean and tidy for the likes of my work. more pictures and updates coming soonly!

so this is xmas.

well, the year is almost over. i don't know what i really accomplished in 2010 but i'm hoping 2011 will bring more organization to my life. i'm thinking of quitting etsy....mostly because they don't seem to give a shit about resellers anymore. if you don't know what that means the simplest way to explain is that there are people selling mass-produced schlock over and over and over again and it's clogging up the categories and thus shoving us REAL artists to the bottom of the pile. i'm not going to really get into it because the anger will ruin my day.

that said, there's hope on the horizon with a plethora of shows coming up this spring. also, there's some underground talk of a collective. maybe....MAYBE some sort of brick-and-mortar storefront for antiquities and curiosities and frippery and wares from other local artists that Get It. anyway, maybe it's just a pipe dream. or wishful thinking. or me, once again, biting off more than i can chew. will definitely keep you posted.

maybe i will post again before the end of the year. maybe i won't. all i know is this time of year means it's time to start adding up receipts and thinking about paying taxes. and starting it all over again.

thift store holiday.

this is just a quick post because i'm busy but pretty excited. i went to the thrift store the other day and found four strands of this vintage pink + cream ball garland for $2 each! i'm not doing a xmas tree this year because things are a bit hectic and we'll have one next door at my mom's haus, so to at least get a little bit in the holiday spirit i draped a few strands around the dining room:
oh my beloved hutch:

also, i tried to 'distress' some beautiful fabric that i had and ended up totally screwing it up. so now, instead of 15 yards of rosey, toile-y fabric i have yards and yards of yellow fabric with a print on it that's barely visible. i've gone through 3 boxes of rit color remover trying just to make it almost white but it just stays yellow. today's attempt will be with a little purple dye to try to neutralize the yellow to a tan. and then maybe just an overall wash of brown. i'm working on pantaloons for spring....i wanted everything shades of cream and white (i already have some made from vintage frilly curtains) so maybe i'll have to have some earth tones mixed in. i'm excited to share the pantaloons with the public....i've been wearing my own pairs for years now and they're great for shows and even just doing around the house because you can bend and move and never worry about anyone seeing up your skirt. it took awhile for me to draft the perfect pattern; everything i did kept turning out too narrow. i finally bit the bullet and made a pair that looked huge (HUGE!) but once i put the waist band in and tried them on they were simply billowy and magikal:

i thought sewing with cotton voile would be alot more difficult, but it turns out if you use the proper needles and thread size it's a piece of cake. i love voile....i love sheer fabrics that you can layer and layer. i've sewn these with french seams for durability and they have a nice wide elastic waistband that doesn't roll or get twisted in its casing. i wore them all weekend at wheatsville and they were a hit! they have a lot of fabric in the seat so you can really move around and it feels just like wearing a big petticoat but with the advantage of being able to do cartwheels and not show your skivvies if you so choose.

i'm very excited about 2011....lots of delicate, sparkly jewelry with old bits and bobs mixed in and a definite edwardian feel to the clothes i'll be stitching up. everything will be a little bit frilly, a little bit punk. of course, the apron slip dresses will still be in full force if you lean more towards the kitschy side of things. ♥

zlammed + wheated. or something.

this past friday i schlepped all my wares out to austin in preparation for the 2010 wheatsville arts festival and promptly made my way out to emo's to see one of my favorite-est bands, zlam dunk.
they like basketball and know how to rock a crowd. they are incredibly passionate about their musik and their fans are even more enthusiastic about that passion, i think. everyone was singing and jumping, bouncing and crowd-surfing. it was 40 something degrees outside that night but we were all sweating (and losing our hairpins) in the club, as evidenced by this photo captured by photojournalist, tina phan.

after a late night my service-goose and i trudged out the door at 6:45am to set up my little home-away-from-home at wheatsville co-op. i was pretty jazzed about being near the stage....there's always lots of people around checking out the musik which usually means they'll check out your wares, as well.

the booth setup went smoothly and turned out really lovely with my new accoutrement. accoutrement being the edwardian mirror frame-turned necklace display and books. uh...turned jewelry display. whatever. it all fit together really well and drew in quite the crowds.

many folks inquired about purchasing some of the books. maybe i should quit this frippery business and devote my time to peddling old tomes. the favorites were obviously the little red tooled-leather canasta card holder book and the crumbling 1912 bible. a fan of the bible i am not; it's just not my thing. but i can respekt it as a piece of literature and especially when it's been loved nearly to death by a former owner from my own town of san marcos (it's inscribed on the front cover).

i started collecting more czech and german glass jewels for earrings....i think they make such lovely little accessories to fancier necklaces....just a tiny bit of sparkle here and there, you know? i also acquired an envelope of tiny turn-of-the-century tintypes from an estate in pennsylvania; they happened to be just the right size for little necklaces with a tiny little locket added on, just for good measure. i'm really pleased with the tintype necklaces. they're kind of like lockets, but open, where you can see the photo....and the method in which they were made is such a piece of history in itself. alot of folks asked how i put the piktures on the metal; i had to explain that they were printed [developed] on the iron plates over 100 years ago. i simply drilled a hole in them and filed the edges smooth.

the cameo necklace shown below has since sold, but i was rather pleased with this little vignette and its combination of the carved shell cameo and the vintage branch coral....sort of a wee ode to the sea, if you will.

i'm giving up using recently harvested coral in favor of hunting out vintage sources. i'd always felt a little guilty about using the new stuff as i know there's alot of reef destruction that comes with the territory. the vintage bits are semi-easy to come by if you know where to look and it comes with the added bonus of having a little history.

in closing, the 2010 wheatsville was a wonderful success. two full days of peddling, great musik, yummy wheatsville food, friends, and new inspiration. i'm really looking forward to next year and a whole new slew of shows, as well. cheers!

teaching an old dog new tricks -OR- making a short table taller.

in an effort to simplify my traveling katinka-ville setup i decided i needed to purchase a foldable table. i searched high and low, through the interwebs and retail stores. i finally decided on the 'timber creek' 6 ft. folding table with handles. i purchased mine at academy. i can't find it online but this is pretty much the same thing. the only problem was that it was waaaaaay tooo short. so i came up with a little rig...

i popped the little rubber ends off the table's legs...

so that they would easily slip into a 1 inch PVC pipe. now i could give you all sorts of measurements here, but let's face it, i suck at numbers. if i understood math or had ever passed a math class with a grade higher than a 70 i would've become an architect. so my advice here is to figure out how much higher you want your table to be and cut your pvc to the correct length based on the leggage you already have.

i added rubber stoppers at the bottom to keep the table steady and also to cover the rough edges from sawing. you can cut pvc with a hack saw, by the way. i don't recommend chop saws as they can sometimes splinter the plastic.

next slip you pvc 'leg' over the original table leg. (this is why i removed the original rubber feet)

1 inch pvc worked perfectly, but measure your own table to be sure about the right diameter. i took one of my table legs with me to the hardware store to be sure.

here's where that whole numbers thing came into play. see these little plastic bands around the leg? that's what stops the pvc from riding up any further. there's alot of the original table leg that sits down in the pvc...so you might think you could get away with using less pipe, but the more leg in it the more stable the whole thing is. or something.

once you get all the pipe slid on you'll probably need a helper to assist in flipping the table upright as the pipes want to slip off. gravity sucks, no?

so the new table is pretty tall. i love it. it's a perfect height so customers don't have to bend way over to look at the goods and also so i don't have to spend entire days hunched over a too short table writing receipts and whatnot. i used a vintage table cloth to drape the front with and a linen curtain panel i found at a thrift store for the top. i secured all of the cloth-age on the back with a few clothespins. now for the fun part--hooshing!

if you are unfamiliar with hooshing, or a 'hoosh', you should read Interior Alchemy by Rebecca Purcell. in a nutshell, it's either a noun or a verb defining a vignette. if you live in or near austin and you're familiar with Uncommon Objects, well, all those fantastikal displays? they are hooshes. anyway, on with the hooshing.

i built a new display for my longer junque jewelry necklaces. although laying them out flat on the table is great for people touching and investigating them, (i think people are more apt to buy something if they're not afraid of picking it up off a display like an old bottle or mannequin) it creates a time-consuming vicious cycle of constantly straightening the chains. don't get me wrong--i WANT people to touch and try on the jewelry but when things get busy in a booth there isn't time and it doesn't seem polite to constantly be reaching around customer's hands to straighten what they may have (in my eyes) mussed. i just like every customer to be presented with a fresh, tidy display so that it's easy for them to take it all in. sooooooo. that said, i made a hanging display from the frame of an old edwardian dresser mirror. i put little hooks on the back to hang necklaces from (still easy enough for customers to remove or ask for) and bolted the whole thing with steel L-brackets to a salvaged piece of wood that i had stained and edge-routed to help tie it together visually/stylistically with the 100 year old frame.

behind the table there is lots of space for storing my suicases, bins, and supplies. and kittens!

i bought this old chippy pink (PINK!) milking stool from my neighbors estate and the plaster bust i've had since the good ol' days of my brick-and-morter shop. she adds height and will make a good display for a possibly pricier piece that i might not want handled by 100s of people.

alot of people have asked about my little tree branch. it's rubber or some sort of rubber-foam polymer with an internal wire armature. it doesn't bend as much as i had hoped it would (i hang delicate chain necklaces on it) but it gets the job done and it's little twiglets don't snap off like the real branch that i had used previously. you can purchase one like it here. i secured it in a vintage planter with plaster of paris (you can always chip it out later if you want your planter for something else) and topped it off with some rock salt (though gravel, beans, or rice would look neat, too).

i've got a ton of old, tattered books to set jewelry pieces onto, as well. this is good for highlighting special necklaces or bracelets and also helps carry on the 'theme' and style of my upcycled/rustic jewelry.

et voila!

hope to see you this weekend at wheatsville art festival!