Come browse our "Romantiques and Mantiques" booths!

The heat has me confined to the house and as much as I'd love to work on repurposing some junk projects or trying to salvage and nurse what's left of my annuals, its just too hot as most of the rest of you probably can identify! At least I am getting a chance to get caught up with blogging and today I'll be showing you all the treasures my husband and I are offering in our booths.

Decorating my booth is always fun and although my husband is quite tolerant and appreciative of some shabby chic at home, I get to go overboard with the girlie-girl-vintage-Frenchy look with lots of whites in my booth, while my husband gets to junk and stock his own "Mantiques" booth which has some really cool stuff in it too. Take a look around!

Mantiques:


My sweetie made the old-looking "Mantiques" and moustache signs out of salvaged wood from our attic renovation. He's so talented! I have such a great "partner in junk!"

                     Isn't this luggage great? My husband and I both love vintage lugguge of all kinds so this grouping only lasted about 2 days in his booth until we decided we were crazy for selling it. We brought them home and stacked them beside our bed where they are now being repurposed as his night stand.

He loves to go junking for war memorablia, vintage sporting equipment and other mantiques. He added a bit of  imagination and humor to his booth by draping some vintage stockings and lingerie over the mirror along with a picture of a lovely lady, signed, "Sincerely, Marie." Looks like the soldier had a romantic rendevous!

Speaking of romance, let's move on to my "Romantiques" booth.

Here is the rear wall of my booth back in  May.

                                                       

 Here is the same view this summer

 We found this fabulous blue distressed table at a yard sale recently. Its over 6ft long and would make a great sideboard or kitchen island. Or garden shed table. Or booth display table. Did I mention that it's fabulous?

Silverplate love.

Composition doll love.

My back wall was due for a little change so now a shabby console table is hanging as a display. This darling old composition doll is on the bottom shelf awaiting her new home.

Here is the top of the little console table (please excuse the shadows). 

More vintage Huldah prints and girly-chic things.

A simple and decorative use of old canning jars is to dress them up in burlap, jute, coffee-stained antique lace, or just about any other fabric scrap and use them as vases or candle holders. I sold several of these to a friend who is hosting a bridal shower. I can't wait to put some on my new deck to hold small citronella candles.

You can always count on a vintage scarf to add just the right flair!

As for the beautiful jewelry mannequin bust, I just can't describe how gorgeous she really is. I had noticed her long before I became a vendor at the antiques mall when I used to shop there. She is absolutely amazing and I was lucky enough to buy her from another vendor just before a local historical museum snatched her up. The curator had just purchased six similar antique mannequin head/busts from her other antique store so I bought this one and the one shown below while I had the chance. I had been researching them online and they are getting harder to find and can be quite pricey so I didn't want to hesitate when she offered me two for the price of less than one on ebay.

This mannequin head was drastically reduced due to serious cracking and breakage in her neck . Once again, a vintage neck scarf does the trick. I specifically wanted this larger mannequin head for hat and scarf displays and she is simply junktastic!

                    This summer I went vintage wedding crazy, buying anything wedding related including two vintage gowns. I had already been moving toward decorating the booth displays very "romantique." This dress is very similar to the one Kate Middleton wore in the royal wedding.

                                                                    Divine details!

More vintage luggage for a romantic honeymoon! Why buy new???

Same view of the booth a couple of weeks ago. I sold the shabby green side table, garden planter screen and garden accessories.

                        This old chest of drawers is all decked out with wedding pretties.

                                             Repurposed drying rack to accessories display

                                                                       WHITE LOVE!
My absolute favorite display in the booth is this 1950's wedding dress "pictured" in one of my antique chalk painted frames. I think I'll use this as my blog header for a while. Oooo I just realized I have an extra frame that would look awesome on the dress form in my living room. Yay! I'll mess with that right after I finish blogging...

                 As you can see we have been really busy and we have junked most of the summer. Unfortunately school starts back on August 3rd in our area (YUCK!) so we have decided to take a break from junking to get caught up on things and completely finish our home renovations. We have enough projects stockpiled in the basement and around the house to give me plenty to blog about so don't forget to stop by the blog to see what we've been up to.

Hope you have enjoyed the booth browsing. Stay cool!

Summer Parties!
http://thecharmofhome.blogspot.com/2012/07/home-sweet-home-74.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheCharmOfHome+%28The+Charm+of+Home%29
http://fadedcharmcottage.blogspot.com/

Celebrating the 4th of July, White Wednesday, and 100 bloggers!

 Thank you to my 100 followers who have been so encouraging as I started this blogging adventure. I hope all of you have a wonderful Fourth of July!

 Today I will be sharing a few white projects that have kept me busy lately. As usual I don't have a lot of before pictures because I am always so excited to get started that I forget to take them until its too late.

Here is a "Frenchy" estate sale chair that I made over using a homemade chalk paint recipe. It turned out great and I sold it in a recent craft show I did with my best friend Amanda in our new business, "The Junkin' Rubies." (I will be publishing our Junkin' Rubies blog soon so be sure to follow along, I think you'll love what we've been up to!)

This chair was originally just an ugly shade of brown with a hideous 80's fabric tacked over the orignal seat cover. I simply painted away with my chalk paint and distressed the wood like crazy with my hand sander. The chalk paint adhered really well and I didn't even need a stain or wax on top. Then I got brave and painted the original fabric on the seat and it worked great. I used chalk paint so I just lightly sanded it with my hand sander when it was dry and voila!!!

Here it is on display at the show. Love! It was so hard for Amanda and I to part with that

gorgeous flapper necklace she made and this fabulous chair but we are so glad to find customers who love our treasures as much as we do!

I also used the same chalk paint on some very old frames. They were in rough shape but the white made them look amazing! I sold several of them in the show and had it not been 110 degrees in the shade and half of our city out of electricity, I bet they would all be gone!

I am really going to have to get back to using my real camera since these iphone pictures

aren't the best, but i wanted to show you a garden chair and night stand that I remade. I chalk painted this estate sale chair and added some chicken wire to the empty seat so that the new owner could fill it up with plants of his or her choice. There was an article in Flea Market Gardens magazine that showed how to DIY so I used it in my display and the chair sold to a lady who happens to live in my neighborhood, so now I get to drive by and see my chair all decked out with flowers.

I also sold the little night stand (sorry for the shadows). It looked quite pitiful when I bought it at a yard sale but I loved its shabby-French possibilities. Again the amazing chalk paint came to the rescue. I used the same color of paint but I finished with a dark walnut stain. Since I am a music teacher I often incorporate antique sheet music in my projects, so I decided to decoupage some on top where all the veneer was scraped off and it turned out great! I sold to my high school choir director which means I also will be able to see my junk-find again (you know how hard it can be to part with good finds!)  She decided to use it next to her piano instead of by her bed, but that's the whole idea of repurposing! She loves it!

I have a few more things to show but I'll save them for upcoming posts. Right now its time for some lemonade!

Celebrating with:

http://fadedcharmcottage.blogspot.com/2012/07/white-wednesday-159.html

http://frenchcountrycottage.blogspot.com/2012/07/feathered-nest-friday.html

http://commonground-debrasvintagedesigns.blogspot.com/2012/07/vintage-inspiration-95-porches-and.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: blogspot/bCGJMl (Common Ground)

http://www.redouxinteriors.com/2012/07/giveaway-with-vintage-casters-online-winner-plus-link-party-63-and-mes-preferes/

http://www.atthepicketfence.com/

Busy Junking, Renovating and Crafting!

Hello to all my fellow junkers who certainly understand what its like to take time off from blogging to get caught up on all those junking projects that have been piling up! So much has happened in a month, from finishing up a four year home renovation, to my husband and I actually running the antiques store one day a week on top of everything else we do...to teaming up with my best friend Amanda from Ruby's Pocket to form "The Junkin' Rubies" and doing our first real craft show...time has flown and I have had no extra time to blog! I have missed all my blogging friends so much and I have lots of catching up to do and projects to share.

For tonight's post I want to show you my vintage embellished bottles. I have been so inspired by some of the beautiful bottles I have seen online and I have found yet another junk/craft addiction. I can't wait to make more! I always buy old bottles and had plenty of them to use. I wanted to throw some together quickly for The Junkin' Rubies craft show this past weekend and I made these in a matter of a couple of days and I am so pleased with how they turned out. They really are even prettier in real life!

First I took some of the bottles that I just couldn't get very clean and spray painted them out of necessity. They were so dirty that I had to almost cover them completely so spray painting was a cheap and fast way to get started. It covered better than I expected and I left any chipping and even added to the distressed look by lightly sanding in some areas.


Then I just covered them with whatever I had in my junk stash. Antique lace, burlap, tulle, old buttons and brooches, vintage stickers, tiny vintage belt buckles or watch pieces, and some vintage-steampunk looking craft pieces and ribbon from Hobby Lobby. I filled them with a little scroll of antique sheet music or I used vintage drawer pulls or antique buttons as toppers. When I started on the bottles I had nothing particular in mind, although white and light is the dominant color scheme and as I worked each one developed a unique look and a name.


                                                                      SONG OF FAITH

                                                            WIND AT NIGHT

WINGS OF FAITH

                                                         BLACKBIRD SINGING

                                                              BUTTERFLY KISSES

                                                                      KEYS OF TIME

                                                                 ROYAL TREATMENT

I will be listing these bottles in my Etsy shop sometime this week (if I can part with them) and I will use my camera to get better pictures, as these were all taken with my iphone. They are so much prettier than the pictures show. They display beautifully as a set but they would also be wonderful as individual gifts. I hope you love them as much I do!


Partying with:
http://knickoftimeinteriors.blogspot.com/2012/07/knick-of-time-tuesday-41-vintage-style.html