Where Bloggers Create v.4 - 2012

Thanks to the hard work of dear Karen Valentine at My Desert Cottage we are all back together for year FOUR of Where Bloggers Create.  I am a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a blogger, an Etsy shop proprietor and a sometime artist.  Oh, and I have a big-girl job in my spare time.  If you visited last year then welcome back.  If this is your first time then get ready for some conspicuous accumulation.  The photo above is the view from the doorway of my art room.  You can click any of these pictures to get a closer look.

This is a closer shot as you step inside the room.  Hold on to your hat and I will take you around my world in 43 photos.

This is left side of the room.  Most of this wall is taken up with a large closet.  The door on the left is a bulletin board and the one on the right is painted with chalkboard paint and used to keep a quick-reference for my family genealogy hobby.  The ribbon storage below the shelf is new since last year and you can read more about that project here. The shelf above holds collections and jars filled with bits a pieces I accumulate and use in the inspiration kits I sell in my Etsy shop.  This is a small room so I try to utilize every space I can.

Behind the bulletin board is a chest of drawers.  I store millinery flowers and a portion of my Etsy inventory in the drawers.

Behind the chalkboard door there is a bookcase that holds most of my collection of Buxton-style jewelry boxes and other vintage containers that I find interesting. 

I use and sell a lot of vintage lace and trims and I cannot bear to part with the tiny scraps so I save them in this jar.  I think they look pretty and it is amazing how often I dig in and come up with the perfect little piece I need.

Last year I said the jewelry boxes were mostly empty but I now use them to store my vintage bling, sorted by color.

The sweet pink floral canister on the left is filled with ric-rac.

This is the corner next to the big closet.  It is actually another closet that houses our water heater.  The door is hung with cutters and a vintage shoe bag that holds bits and pieces I don't want to forget I have.  Keeping things out where I can see them for inspiration and remember I have them is always a challenge for me.

Moving around to the next wall.  This room has an odd shape because it is a portion of an attached one-car garage.  This is the biggest wall in the room, although I still have to work around keeping the electrical box accessible.  It is behind that curtain and gauzy white blouse on the left.

I like to call my big rolling tool chest "The Husky Girl".  All that red was a little much so I used wallpaper to make her a pretty dress.  She stores my tools as well as, paints, stamps and ink pads.

Among many other things, the bookcase holds my collection of glove, hankie and vanity boxes.

They are a work in progress.  My plan is to use them to sort my ribbon and trinkets by color.

More vintage boxes hold beads, beading supplies, embroidery floss, stickers, ephemera, trinkets, you name it.  I try to keep things sorted by category so I have some hope of finding what I'm looking for.

I accumulate old books in foreign languages and buttons are one of my passions.  I use apothecary jars to store some of the smaller categories like fabric buttons and uniform buttons.

The tops of the bookcase stores a necklace "manikin" I made from a wicker lamp base and a vintage typewriter.

There is that Husky Girl again!

This is the wall and corner above the Husky Girl.

I have recently started collecting some vintage clothing, especially lingerie, both adults and children.

The top of the Husky Girl holds my paint spinner, more buttons in apothecary jars and my favorites - the glass buttons.  The boxes in the bottom of the photo hold vintage buckles.  The little mixed-media painting was in the Somerset Gallery Summer 2012 issue.  You can read more about it here.

Buttons, buttons and more buttons. You can never have too many buttons, that's what I always say!

Now we are in the next corner.  The tower of boxes hold more buttons and next to then, a big glass jar filled with wooden spools.  You can read more about the round assemblage piece on top here.

Above that I have a narrow little shelf of curiosities.  Random things I think are interesting (or creepy)

Now we're on the third wall - my workbench.  It is a big, heavy, vintage, oak buffet and it works perfectly as a workbench.  The veneer on the top drawer fronts was peeling when I bought it so I covered them with cheetah-print paper for a quick fix-up.  It is topped with a large self-healing cutting mat.  It is just the right height, provides a ton of storage and solid as a rock.  Love it!

The shelves above the workbench.  The bottom two shelves keep things I use on a regular basis handy.  The room has 9' ceilings so the top shelf requires a stepping stool and holds seldom-used items and display.  The vintage rose shelf paper edging was new this year.  A little fix-up inspired by last year's Where Bloggers Create.  You can read about that project here.

Tins and books and boxes and a funky yardstick.

Yes, I have a box just for paper scraps.  I do scrapbook and started years ago when everyone was using 8-1/2"x11" paper.  Once the scrapbook companies switched to 12"x12" paper I continued with my original size and just cut the papers down and save the scraps.  Like the lace and ribbon scraps, it's amazing how often I turn to this stash and find just what I need.

The view looking back down the bench toward the second wall.  Somehow it doesn't seem so chaotic in person!

I keep a big jar of plastic buttons on the end of the bench to entertain me while I work.  I did a give-away based on this jar a while back.  There were 1734 buttons in the jar at the time.  A few more added since then!

A lovely tangled mess of vintage seam binding - another thing you can never have too much of!

Moving down the third wall to my sewing machine table.  This is the only window in the room and it faces north so natural light is at a premium, hence the bright yellow color I painted the room.  I also installed daylight bulbs in all of the light fixtures in the room. Anything I can do to make it brighter!

A large apothecary jar holds my collection of vintage pink Christmas ornaments.  They are just too pretty to put away so I keep them here year around.  Not just for Christmas any more!

The jar doesn't have a top so I keep a pretty metal dish on top and this is where I deposit odd bits of nature and "faux" nature I pick up here and there.  The metal "bug" is made from an old-school bottle opener and two "petals" from a vegetable steamer.

Now we are on the fourth wall which is really a corner.  My son built this custom desk to exactly fit the space and my specifications.  It is one of my favorite things in the room and absolutely the place where I spend the most time.  The book shelves are 8" high so there is a huge amount of storage.  He made the desktop sturdy enough so I can stand on it to reach the top.  Love, Love, Love it!

The tiger-print dresser was my baby dresser 50+ years ago and holds lace, seam binding, ribbon and wrapping paper.  The top holds this display of some of my favorites from my postcard collection.

Milk glass hands hold some of my religious collection and a salt box shrine I made a long time ago.

This is the "nerve center" - probably the place where I send the most time in my art room.

Shelves above my desk hold button collections and things I use on a regular basis.  The book in the back in my never-ending altered book project, something I do to relax.  I have done a LOT of posts about the pages I have made in this book.  Itstores my collection of favorite quotes.  You can read more about it here.

Books and magazines and a sweet little birdie nest - I am glad he made the shelves sturdy!

More storage and things to fill up my eyes.

Jewelry boxes that contain more of my buttons collection.

Books and magazines.  I put a piece of blue painters tape on the spine of the ones I have been published in.

Time to close the lid and click the latches and declare Where Bloggers Create done for another year.  Thank you so much for visiting.  I am off to visit the other blogs and soak up the inspiration!

Project Percolation and Getting Ready

I'm going to be spending the next few days taking pictures and getting ready for Where Bloggers Create #4.  Seriously.  I swear I am going to stop goofing around and start taking pictures.  There, I said it in front of everybody!  So, until we meet again, I will leave you with this little teaser about what has been rattling around in my head lately.  I better not set it too far out of sight!  8+)

There's A Storm Brewing

 The Emergency Alert System just issued a warning there is a severe storm brewing just south of us.  An angry sky overhead.

 Summer has finally arrived in Portland and I took a picture of these cactus flowers this morning.  Yes, we can grow cactus in rainy Portland, at least The Husband can.  He puts them in the garage over the winter, not because of the cold but because of the rain.  He completely ignores them, no water, no nothing.  Come Spring, he pulls them out and WaLa - cactus flowers!

We started watering today, for the first time this year.  This is about a month later than normal.  Nice for our water bill but odd, indeed.
A busy weekend 'round here.  I hope yours was good!

A Vintage Beauty

 I was paying for my sad little purchase at the VOA on Saturday when I glanced past the clerk and spotted this vintage beauty on a rack that had just been brought out.  Hold the phone!

 As Mike and Frank say, the time to buy it is when you see it.

 And how often do you find a vintage Edwardian lawn dress, complete with jacket at the VOA?  Well, one time, if you count me.

 You can click the pictures bigger to see the exquisite handwork and detail and, yes, decades of yellowed dust and stains.  I had no trouble seeing her for what she once was and had no choice but to rescue her.

After 24 hours of wash, rinse, repeat, this is what I ended up with.  I also learned why women didn't work outside the home in Victorian times.  It took them endless hours to make a dress like this, endless patience to hand-wash something so delicate and then endless hours to IRON it.  Oh.MyGosh.  This was so hard to iron!
Can you imagine a wasp-waisted young woman playing croquet on the lawn?  I cannot help but wonder if it was the same young woman who made the beautiful millinery bouquet and hair wreath I found in the same store last week.  What I find hard to imagine is that no one in the family wanted these treasures.  I am happy to rescue them. 
I don't have a dress form to display this, nor the waist to wear it so this will be headed over to my Etsy for someone else to love.

We Are Americans - We Are Proud!

We are Americans, we are proud of the U.S.A.

And that is why we celebrate

Independence Day

So fly a flag from every pole

Shout hurray for the red, white and blue

Happy Birthday America

Happy Birthday to you!

From The Romper Room Song Book 1966

Sunbonnet Girl Rescue

 I grabbed this sweet little doily during my last forage through The Bins.  The embroidery is so sweet but, alas, someone wiped pink nail polish on one corner.  No amount of chemical intervention can remove that so I decided she needed a rescue and repurpose.

 I cut off the damaged portion then removed the same amount from the other side.  Yes, I could have saved the other side but, but.  It seemed like the right thing to do at the moment.  I rummaged around in my stash and came up with a piece of terry cloth (okay, I got it out of the rag bag) and a blue stripe.  The crochet butterfly came from a recent estate sale.

 I attached the terry cloth to the back of the doily, like batting, then sewed it into a bag, open on one end.  I made a bag from the blue stripe, inserted it inside to line the bag and then hand stitched around the top edge.

 WaLa!  A much-needed curling iron cozy.

I slightly offset the seam in the back so the embroidered butterfly would show on the front then hand-stitched the crochet butterfly on the back.
It works perfectly so I can slip my hot flat-iron right inside and put it away without waiting for it to cool and the little sunbonnet girl lives on.