You Give A Girl A Vintage Curtain and...........

Dan brought home these fabulous vintage curtains last week that had lots of wear and I couldn't have been more excited! Working around the holes and wear spots is easy when you turn them into "other" projects. So far I have used some of it for the darling stool that Dan built using reclaimed feet and old door or window casing. So chic don't you think!

I also have made several of these charming gardening aprons using all kinds of different vintage and reclaimed fabrics. You may see both of us wearing these this summer at the shows. (I don't' think Dan's will have flowers!) Good also for any kind of creative project - garage sales etc. 3 pockets, one size fits all :-)

Next, is another fabric that I have been hording for quite some time. Vintage linen gray toile - be still my heart! I used some here to cover yet another stool and I stitched this great French style market bag using a pattern from Kaari Mengs French General Home Sew Book.

I also used bits of it and other great fabrics to cover these journals.

Instructions for the journals and the garden apron came from another French General book "The French Inspired Home" also by Kaari Meng.

RePurposed Up cycled Lamps @ Bluedoor

Dan & I have had this notion to try lamp making, he having a background as an electrician and me well.........

Any way here is a look at our latest creation on it's way into Bluedoor here in Grand Rapids.

Dan also refurbished these wonderful old vintage goose neck desk lamps this week. The base of each one is different and unique. I personally love the pale dove gray one that has it's original old paint.

We also added lots of product to our space @ Bluedoor, including signs, oil paintings, stained glass windows, 3 beautiful Gothic windows, industrial, drawer and cubby cabinets. Lots of repurposed, up cycled and vintage charm.

You can also see lots of our product on ETSY - see the side bar here for a quick link.

Mary Randolph Carter

We are always looking for new books or magazines. that cover our favorite subjects namely, interior design, antiques, old junk,and crafting or repuposing with vintage items. One of our favorite authors that seems to cover most of our interests is Mary Randolph Carter. We have featured one of her books before in our book reviews but recently we came across three more of her books that we were able to buy at a very affordable price. The first of the book pictured is entitled, A Perfectly Kept House Is The Sign Of A Misspent Life. How can you not like a book by this title?  This is our kind of book!

The second book we got is called Garden Junk. This appealed to our love of garden and our love of  vintage garden junk.

The third book we got is called American Junk. We can only recommend that if you love collecting vintage and "junking" you have to take a look at these books and any others you can find by this author. There are lots of great quotes and lots of great pictures. You will find that Mary Randolph Carter is truly the patron saint of the bad, the chipped and the distressed.

Distress Painted Furniture

 Pictured here is a wonderful vintage cabinet that we currently use in our house as a bookcase. We have always loved these primitive pieces of old painted furniture. I have long wanted to learn the process of distress painted furniture for some of the furniture I create or redo. So this week after weeks of research I started playing around with some techniques of painting that give me similar results on the newer pieces of furniture I have been working on. Pictured below are some of the first pieces of furniture that I have been working on that are still in the paint spray booth.

This night stand is one of a pair of night stands that will soon be available at Bluedoor. I have really enjoyed the process and hope to use this on more of our furniture.

The crackle and worn edges give this a beautiful time worn look. This photo was taken before I applied a glaze today and tomorrow I hope to clear coat the two night stands and a matching chest of drawers. This creative process has me very excited and my brain is now running with other furniture items that are currently in the shop that I hope to use some of the same techniques on. More pictures will follow.

Valentine's Day, Romance, and Other Thoughts

Tomorrow is Valentine's day and so this week CJ and I thought we would share with you a few of our favorite romantic movies. Earlier this week we made a list and over the week we have added to our list as we remembered movies that didn't make our original cut. Our list is as follows- Chocolate, French Kiss, Love Story, You Have Got Mail, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Time Traveler's Wife, Message in a Bottle, Forest Gump, The Note Book, Casablanca, Dr. Zhivago, Havana, Titanic, City of Angels, The Way We Were, Somewhere in Time, and our most favorite movie of all is Out of Africa.

Out of Africa was our most favorite romantic story and our most favorite musical score. A bonus for us regarding this movie was the set and wonderful interior spaces.

Of the other movies we picked Somewhere in Time got our vote as having the second best musical score. This week we have spent a number of our supper hours listening to both musical scores and have been moved by them all over again. We love watching movies and never get tired of watching some of our favorites over and over again. So this week we will be watching a few of the movies we have listed and we invite you to do the same and enjoy the romantic holiday tomorrow.

This time of year is abit slower for us. We will not be doing any shows until Allegan this spring. We are however going to be putting some of our product at a new location that is planning on opening in May. A friend of our who's blog is on our blog list (Elements) is planning on opening up a store in a great old furniture factory warehouse location. We are planning on putting a lot of vintage industrial, primitives, and vintage architectural in her store. We are very excited about this for her as well as this opportunity to do a different expanded new look for us. So more on this as this all unfolds.

                                                                                     

For the LOVE of learning!

It's always a joy for me to teach - anything. But right now I have the privilege of teaching adult watercolor painting. It is amazing to see the progression as each student learns a little more each week and finds their way with the medium. The assignment pictured above was to draw repetitive shapes and  paint them overlapping, touching and with space between, getting the feeling of what the paint does when overlapping another color or touching another color or simply by itself. There is such beauty in all of these experimentation's. Each students personality comes out so naturally.

I also loved all of these above mini paintings. The assignment here was to mix paint colors to duplicate the colors that they were seeing in the swatch of fabric. Again I was amazed and delighted with all of the outcome.

So I am not sure who's having more fun with this class, me (the teacher!) or them!

I also had the opportunity this past Saturday to sub for 2 youth drawing classes at Kendall College of Art & Design. I had 6-12 year old's and we drew cartoons. I got to be a kid again for a few hours - so FUN!

Lucky me :-)

A Wild Wonderful Weekend

We had a wild wonderful weekend this past weekend. We drove to Petoskey with a large load of furniture to restock our space at Then & Now. We were so please to make this trip - our space was nearly empty. December/January sales were good for furniture as well as smalls. So restock we did! Above are a few images of how it looked when we left Sunday afternoon.

However it is winter in Michigan and we had a slight delay in getting there when we hit a patch of black ice and the trailer decided to drive the suburban. Dan did an excellent job of keeping us from rolling as we headed for the ditch. Can't say much for the "trailers" driving ability, it wanted to go another way.Needless to say we had quite a bit of triage to do to furniture once we got to Petoskey. But of course a carpenter is never without his tool and touch up kit.We were greeted by Tracy and Cindy @ Then & Now with with a glass of wine to calm our nerves - perfect!

Later that evening we tucked into my brothers house with his family for lots more destressing. The warmth of family and friends can never be over estimated.

We stayed at the Bay Inn and cannot way enough good about it. It is a wonderful  inn overlooking Little Traverse Bay with an amazing view!

We woke Sunday morning to -15 degrees and the most beautiful clear sunny day.

And see now we have an exciting story!