Magpie Ethel

That Last Estate Sale Item

I had such a long post for my last estate sale weekend that I decided to share this find separately...as I thought it more unusual.

It is an old metal egg mailer.  The two windows on top are for the address and stamps.

It was in the garage and I had never seen anything like it before.  I also have never thought about mailing eggs. There were four of them listed on Ebay last time I checked ranging from $9.99 to $139. I did not pay that much.

It has the original paper insert with directions for mailing. It also states that you could insure it for a nickle and the post office would pay for broken eggs (up to $5).

It has this neat little gridwork to place the eggs in for mailing.

I think it would be neat to use for a display at Easter. I also found this chicken and rooster at the sale and they seem to approve of the purchase.

Cluck, cluck..have a happy day!

Collection Challenge #23 Talcum Tins

Kari suggested the topic for the Collection Challenge this week.  I do have a collection of talcum tins. A tiny collection which is all neatly displayed in a vintage cabinet in my bathroom.

Here is the cabinet with the door open so you can see how it is displayed.  You will also notice I use an old turquoise salt shaker as a vase for a vintage beaded flower (bottom shelf).

I collected these out of decorating necessity.  I needed something interesting to fill this cabinet in my bathroom.  Talcum tins fit the vintage bill.

As would be expected Avon was a big manufacturer of these tins.

They really do have lovely colors and wonderful graphics.  I found this pair at the same sale.

They had never been used and sport the original Fred Meyer price tag of 50 cents...plus a nickle tax.

I like the 4 inch tiny size of this Mavis container.

Pam from One Gal's Trash gave this gem to me the other day.  It found the perfect spot in my cabinet.

And as a side note to my talcum collection..when I display them in the cabinet I wanted something interesting in the background so I picked up some old hair accessories in original packaging to liven things up a bit.

A short, but sweet smelling assortment and a perfect collection to display in my bathroom.

Remember if you have a suggestion for a future Collection Challenge, just leave me a comment and finish the sentence "Show me your collection of ____." You never know what I have hanging about.

Estate Sale Friday...Still Squirreling Away

I hit a few sales on Friday and was quite pleased with my purchases.

I did well with Christmas goodies. 6 old bottle brush trees and some orange ornaments, a color I don't see often.

One of the ornaments even had a message on it.

More ornaments and a bunch of glass garland...hurray! Some of the garland had larger and more unusual beads.

Paper Honeycomb snowman in original packaging.

Vintage stockings for my collection.

Vintage chalk boxes for my collection. A pair of angel heads to be crafted for Christmas.

Birthday candles and holders.  One of the boxes of candles is one that I have not seen before.

A couple of old plastic Easter baskets that will be repurposed.  I also got some wired chenille type yarn. It is like a super thin pipe cleaner but came in a 36 yard skein.  It says it is for crocheted hats and accessories.

Old paper lanterns.

A bunch of old enclosure cards from a florist.  Great graphics and I like to include a note on this type of card with my Etsy orders. 

A pair of squirrels for a friend that collects them. A tiny turquoise glass vase and some floral tin bridge trays.

I was attracted to the box of these pick up sticks. The bird will live in my bird tree during the holidays.

A great old smaller fan.

Remember the Collection Challenge that I just did on paint boxes?  I found another one.  The original price of 69 cents is on the back.

In that challenge post I mentioned how the boxes are always well used.  I don't think anyone had ever used this one.

A vintage puzzle. I hope all the pieces are there.

I have one more find to share. This post is pretty long, so I will save that last item for another day....

I need to go squirrel away my goodies.

 

Teen Bedroom Update

The last time that we redid my daughter's bedroom was when she was 14.

This is the OLD room.

She will be 17 in a month and wanted to redo her room again, but this time in a vintage vibe with a twist. While I liked her old bedroom, it was fun to work on this project with her and watch her come up with some new ideas and colors.

We took down the 17 yards of graphic IKEA fabric that I had stapled over the wallpaper that I love.  It came down quite easily and didn't damage the wallpaper underneath (which I was hoping would be the case.) We now had this darling wallpaper with white wainscoting below to work with.  She decided her colors would be green, turquoise and a bit of pink.

She wanted to repaint the furniture from pink to green. This bedroom set was mine when I was growing up. It was white Provencal style with gold trim when I was a kid. Kate and her friend drove to the paint store and picked up paint chips and then came up with two shades of green (Liliana and Goddess Green) that were in the same color family. 

One thing I loved about doing this project is that Kate really did quite a bit of the work.  She had a friend over one day and between the three of us, we powered through painting 5 pieces of furniture.

I spray painted all the pulls on the furniture so we could reuse them as they were gold before. 

I know that this idea of the fabric in the embroidery hoops has been circulating for awhile, but she wanted a vintage feel and I had a ton of vintage fabric.  We got the hoops at goodwill and I had the fabric. This wall art was less than ten dollars.

We got a new comforter at Target that was on sale. It was part of the Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic line and was perfect for the room. The pillows I either sewed or we pulled from other spots in the house.  The round turquoise pillow is new. The hooked rugs were made by my grandmother.

Kate really wanted a big bulletin board to display photos, magazine clippings and such.  We got three big bulletin boards and hung them side by side to work as one board. I like that all that teen clutter is concentrated in one spot. We painted the frame of the bulletin board turquoise.

 

The light fixture from the old room got a new coat of spray paint. I also recovered the pelmets over the windows in some fabric that I had.

I had an old medicine chest floating about in my garage for a couple of years and Kate claimed it for her room to hold her jewelery. The sweater hanging below was hers when she was a baby.

The inside of the medicine cabinet was pretty dismal so I covered the back of it in some old wallpaper.

Kate repainted her vanity and added Christmas lights across the top. We still need to find a small lamp.

 I did find this cute little vanity chair.

We had fun adding vintage details.  Like a swell kleenex box.

Old fan in a great color.

Milk glass containers corral her colored pencils and pens.

Old lampshade with a dainty ruffle.

Another fun light from Target many years ago.

Still tweaking the room a bit and need to paint her bench and chair a pale pink instead of the hot pink.  I liked this project as I could pull quite a few of the items we used from my stash and we did not have to buy a ton of new stuff.  Kate is thrilled with the way it turned out and I love how bright and cheerful it is.  It was fun to do this room as a mother/daughter project!

Collection Challenge #22 - Vintage Paint Boxes and Books

I had a challenge for vintage art supplies.  I am narrowing this suggestion down to vintage child's paint boxes.  I narrowed it down as I just found a darling paint box a couple of weeks ago.  I was also inspired to post about them as I had a comment from a blog reader about their daughter who had scored a paint box at an Indiana flea market.  Abigail, this post is for you and may you find good junk your whole life!

I think i collect paint boxes for three reasons. They are quite graphic. They are made super colorful and they remind me of my childhood. This is one of my latest finds. It is made of tin and is from England (13 x 8 in size).  I like that everyone is interacting with the penguins.  One girl is even feeding one a banana!

I found this one recently too. American made by Binney and Smith.  I like the girls with their big hair bows.

Most of the boxes I find are never very tidy inside. They have all been well used.

 

This is my favorite box that I have had for a  number of years. It is huge at 19 x 9 inches and also made in England.

My favorite thing about it is the correctly named colors and their unusual titles.

 

Green Rice, Prussian Blue and Rose Doree

How about Purple Lake or Primrose Yellow?

Not only is the exterior of the box cute, but the interior has great graphics as well.

I also have simple boxes like the kind I remember having at school.

In addition to the paint boxes I also have this set of coloring books where you just brush the page with water and the colors appear.

 
I always thought this was magic painting, as the colors always magically appeared.

The cover of each little paint book has wonderful illustrations.

 

I am happy that someone saved these little books even tho the painting inside had been completed.

That wraps up the collection challenge for this week.  If you have a challenge for a future post, leave me a comment and finish the sentence "Show me your collection of _____." I will see what I can do.

happy day!

Out Of The Nest

Today we dropped my oldest son Ben, off for his freshman year of college at Oregon State University.

I held it together pretty well when I said good-by.  My nest will not quite be the same anymore.

It is time for Ben to spread his wings and start that next stage of life, but oh, how I will miss that kid.

Estate Sale Friday...Better Late Than Never

I got a bit behind in my estate sale posts. Between the giddy basement sale, Halloween goodies on Etsy and getting my son ready to head off to college...a couple of decent sales fell in the cracks.  As sales this weekend were EXTREMELY dismal, I decided to share what I missed showing last week.

This was from one sale. I like the handmade rabbits (I think they were made for a ring toss game or something like that) The large tin with the open lid is an old red metal cashbox.

Some old plastic game pieces (mini golf game?) that included great plastic horseshoes to be used in crafting.

 

Old price tags and some great floral pushpins.

Two little game piece Scotty dogs....that always, always remind me of my friend Lynn.

These were from another sale that I hit on the third day after it had gone half price.

I was on a vintage tin kick and picked up two tin paint boxes and a chinese checker board. The one tin paint box has a great zoo scene of people feeding penguins.

I could not pass by Christmas at half price.  I did pass by some pipe cleaners tho. A few holiday candles found their way in my stash as well.

One great donkey. He is going to live in my studio with craft supplies in his side pockets and a flower garland around his neck.

 

The oddest thing I picked up was a bag of old bowling patches (1970s and on, from all across the USA).  They had never been sewn on anything so are in great shape...great colors and graphics as well.

One thing I do like about these estate sale Friday posts is to occasionally go back thru them and see the goodies I have found throughout the year. It reminds me my teen years when I kept a diary.  Only now it would read "Dear Diary, today I found some vintage spun heads and some old pipe cleaners in yummy colors"....oh how the times have changed!

happy weekend!

One Handful

I went to an estate sale last weekend that was pretty much a dud.  I did rummage through a box of plastic flowers after I saw some mercury glass picks jumbled in amongst everything.  I found a handful of them and walked up to the cashier and stuck out my bouquet of them and asked her how much.

She said I could have them for FREE! I skipped away from the sale quite happy.

I went home and added them to my stash.

A happy handful of free for me!

Collection Challenge #21 - Vintage Puzzles

This weeks suggestion comes from Mary B. who asked to see my collection of vintage puzzles.  I like old puzzles for a couple of reasons.  They often have great graphics and usually they are fairly cheap.  I do not like it when I do a puzzle and discover missing pieces...but that is a gamble I am willing to take when it comes to puzzles.

First I have puzzles intended for children.

Usually these puzzles really show their age as children were not very careful with them  I really don't care much about condition...the images are what captures my heart.

I have quite a few adult puzzles. I love to get a puzzle from an estate sale and set it up on an extra table I have in the basement. I will leave it out and do a couple of pieces here and there between loads of laundry or trips to the basement.  My son is really good at puzzles and often I will pass by and he will have done a good sized section.

When I was taking pictures for this post I realized for the most part I am drawn to two types of images...flowers or cute people/dog scenes.

While I like to do puzzles. Sometimes it seems a shame to break it apart and put it away in the box.  I often use the completed puzzle in a project.

I used some old cigar boxes and covered the lids with a puzzle.  I modge podge the puzzle so it stays together and cut it down to the same size as the cigar box lid. I used silver tape to tidy up the edges and then glued it on the lid.  I also added a wooden bead to dress it up and make opening it up easier.

This is a really good solution if one section of the puzzle is missing quite a few pieces.

This is my next puzzle project destined for the lid of a cigar box.

I must really have issues with taking a puzzle apart and putting it back in the box after all the work to finish it.  Sometimes I just add a couple of coats of modge podge to a completed puzzle and it becomes art for my wall.  That is the case with these floral gems. I really do love the graphics and colors on old puzzles...they just don't compare to modern ones.

I also like holiday themed puzzles.  I love the expression on the man's face. I modge podged this one to use at Christmas.

This puzzle had a couple of pieces missing. I wanted to modge podge this one together and I have discovered that if the piece that is missing is not really a key piece (like an eye or part of the face) you can often "make" the missing section.  I color copy part of the puzzle with a similar pattern or shading.  In this case the dog was missing part of the body as well as a section below that.  I color copied a similar area and then haphazardly cut it to fit.  The borders of each piece offer some camouflage and busyness and often you can't tell there is a patch unless you know to look for one.

There are two patches in this photo...but I think I did a pretty good job at concealing them.

Fun stuff.  Puzzles to make my mind sharp as I do them and puzzles to re-purpose into a new item once I finish them.  Thanks for the challenge Mary!

If you have a suggestion for a future challenge, just leave me a comment and finish the sentence "Show me your collection of _____." I will see what I can come up with!

Still Giddy in the Basement #4

A few more items to share in the giddy department. I found this little sign in amongst some of the vintage bump chenille. Evidently my stash belonged to Wilda Appleman...thanks so much Wilda for saving all these awesome crafting things.,,I notice she also taught lessons..would have been fun to have her teach me a crafting trick or two.

This is quite a random assortment...the odds and the ends...but GOOD odds and ends.

A box of birds. The two parakeets are ceramic and marked Japan. The spun owl is my favorite and I think he will become part of my Halloween display.

Unopened box of vintage angel hair and a gift box with great Santa graphics.

A Halloween clicker!

A nice stash or rick rack.  I have tons of it, but this all had the metallic threads running through it.

I just could not pass rick rack by that had yummy patterns like these two.

Crepe paper flower making book.

A tree topper.  Not as exciting as the last one I found with the dangly bells on the side...but a vintage topper is a always a good find.

I had a photo of this little box in a previous post.

 
This is why it was saved.

She kept her tiny crafting shells inside.  They will be perfect to use for my mermaids next summer.

 

An empty leather cream jar and some very cute tiny wooden heads in an oblong shape that I have never seen before.

One of my best finds was a shoebox size bin of old belt buckles.  Colored plastic buckles, rhinestone buckles and some that I am pretty sure are bakelite. I think I counted about 75 buckles.

As I sorted through them my daughter and I were watching t.v. I commented out loud to her that I just couldn't understand why a woman would have so many buckles like this.  Without missing a beat she said, "Mom this woman is also you." Oh but the truth hurts....I do already have a tin full of them in the studio, but these are much fancier.

Goofiest find of the giddy basement. These two unopened birdcages.

You take them out of the package and just hang them up. You can add a bird inside or whatever strikes your fancy. They are made of metal and a gimp like material.

And last but not least this sweet little doll.  She needs a little TLC...but I could not leave her alone in the basement. 

And that concludes the giddy basement posts.  One of the best sales I have been to this summer.

Also I did hit one estate sale today. It was a total dud. I got one pack of playing cards with horse graphics.

I want to thank everyone for the love on Etsy last night as well. It was really amazing to see so many things fly out of my shop. I love what I make and was nice to know that others enjoy my creations as well.

happy weekend.