Display For My Booth

My friend Cathy found the perfect display cabinet for me on Craigslist!  They were asking $100.00 and at this time with my husband out of work is way to much for me. So I asked if they would take $50.00. They said yes! So the day I was going to pick it up, I called to make sure they would be ready for me to come. They told me they decided to keep the cabinet. Sad face!!

The good news is, I didn't have to spend a dime on the cabinet that I am going to use for my display!! It's the cabinet I have most of my jewelry tools and beads in. So all of that stuff got put on a bookcase. 

This cabinet didn't have glass doors so I took off the top doors and removed the inner panels to replace them with glass. My friend Andy is going to teach me how to do it!! 

The picture below shows the before, and it all apart. The back was made out of cardboard so I had to replace the back with plywood that Cathy gave me! I painted the inside white so my jewelry will show up. The outside is going to be rose over black. My plan is to have my jewelry and small items I don't want people walking off with up top in the locked case. On the bottom will be shoes on the very bottom shelf next one up will have handbags. I'm leaving the bottom doors open and using them for display purposes. More hand bags, sun glasses and what not. This cabinet will be a girls dream spot to shop.....I hope! 

The shelves were painted white. The doors were painted black then rose. I can't wait to scuff them! That is my favorite part! Seeing how the wood grain shows through. 

The back of the cabinet I decided to paint the outside color just in case it gets moved to the middle of the room I wanted it to look finished. Plus I could always add hooks or shelves! The inside of course is white.

Now all that needs to be done is the glass put in, scuff and wax. Then it's onto making things to display my jewelry on!

Thank you so much for checking out my blog!

New Projects of The Week

Here are my newest projects that I have been working on this week. I will be putting them in my new booth at The Willows. I'm really excited about this new adventure! I have never done a booth like this before.

The first one is a dresser that I found for sale on Craigslist over 2 years ago!! I stripped all the parts with a commercial-grade stripper.  I then sanded them and glued all loose  joints. 

My plan with this one is to stain the draws and mirror frame. The rest of it will go a blue..... I'm still not sure if I' want to go a dark or light blue.

 This is a small end table that has two sides with magazine racks. I was very lucky with this find because it was given to me. I knocked all the loose joints apart, sanded everything, and then glued it. I'm going with a white paint then going to scuff and then going to use a little brown wax to finish it. The top which is not pictured is going to be stained.

Here is a small half round table that was also given to me. This one had gray contact paper on the top. I had to gently remove it without taking the veneer off the top of the table. There were a few loose pieces of the veneer that I had glued down, then I was able to strip it.

This is a small record cabinet my husband was using and decided to give it to me!! He upgraded to a bigger cabinet. I sanded it all down,  glue the little loose joints then painted it white. I taped off the gold feet and handles.

Keep following along to see the end results. I like to post as I go and unfortunately I'm always working on more than one project. So I do tend to jump around quite often!!!

House Painting Is Done......For now

The painting is all wrapped up on my end. My coworker is going back to do touch ups. Then all the doors go backup.  Then when the weather is warm enough we go back to paint the outside!!!

If you go back a few posts you can see the before pictures.

I love the colors the home owners picked. Now the fire place looks beautiful! 

 Painting the ceiling white made the room look so much bigger.

 Fun colors in the bedrooms. 

 The bathroom was a dark blue. Now with the yellow and white its so bright in the small space that was once dark and cold feeling.

 Into the master bedroom. 

I can wait to go back and see all their furniture back in place.

New Adventure

I'm taking another step in trying to sell my work. I already have my items in two other stores. One is The Drinker of The Wind Studio, that is selling my stuff pretty well. Only its my smaller items because they don't have the room for my big pieces of furniture, which I really enjoy doing. The other place is The Secret Garden, which has room for all my items but the hours its open aren't that great and my stuff isn't selling as well.

My new adventure is The Willows. The building itself has been there for many years but it now has new owners who have wonderful plans for it! You can check out their facebook page.  https://www.facebook.com/thewillowsfleamarket?__nodl

My basement has a collection of furniture that seems to have multiplied over the years. I keep finding great pieces at yard sales that need my love. Just not having the space to sell them made me stop working on them. So now I'm pulling things out left and right getting them ready for May when The Willows is going to be opening if plans go right.

I am really looking forward to this and hope this will be my new place to let my work be seen and loved. I really love what I do and need this outlet. :)

Here are a few items in the works.

My Day Job

For my day job I normally work in a workshop that is in an old mill. I work on and repair antique furniture. We moved into that space less then a year ago. This is our first winter there and it's been quite cold. We have put plastic over the window to help keep it warm.

The other part of my job is going to work sites, where we do interior and exterior painting. We also refinish kitchens and stairways. You name it we can do it. Well we went to a job site today where we are sanding and painting the whole inside. We got there and saw the driveway that we were told would be plowed and sanded. It was only plowed. :( We knew the driveway was steep.  The picture below shows the driveway!  If you look close you can see my coworkers walking up. Where they are is not the end of the driveway. It turns right then it's the house. The building you see in the picture is one of the sheds. I knew my van wasn't going to make it back up if I tried going down it. I wasn't sure I could get it to stop before going into the ocean!! Yep working in a house that sits right next to the ocean!! I was super excited about hearing the waves. My favorite spot is the ocean anytime of the year.

So I parked my van waaaaaaayyyyyy up top of the hill. We had to unload the van and walk all the equipment down to the house.  We should have brought a sled!! Before going to the house my boss picked up a heater because the oil truck that was going to deliver oil there, never showed up. Once we got down to the house, we found out it was not shoveled out. There must have been 3 feet of snow from the snowbank from the plow to the front door. There was no snow shovel to be found around. I looked around to see what I could find to dig out a path..... I found a yellow bucket :/

Finally we made it inside! Remember no heat. The part we didn't think through was if there is no heat, there would be no water!! No water means.... can you guess? Ya, no bathroom!! And what did I do on the 40 minute drive there? I drank one big fatass  mug of coffee!! So we had to....... gosh don't know if I want to tell you what we did... :/ ... ugg why not! We put a heavy duty trash bag in the toilet. Hey when you have two girls that have to go, you go! Anywho!

Here are some of the rooms we will be doing. A new master bathroom.

The master bedroom.

Front doorway.

The master bed and bath are the ONLY rooms with sheet rock.  The rest of the house is wood and wood paneling that has to be sanded then painted. Every wall, window trim, and  foot boards! 

 Here are the bedrooms.

A hallway.

The hallway leads to the big living room / dinning area. Yes the ceiling is wood and will be sanded and painted. Oh I guess the floors are wood to, but we are not doing the floors. They are having someone else doing them.

When my boss rented the heater, she told them the size of the biggest room so they would give us a heater that would do the job. Well it didn't warm it up but 5 feet in front of it. The only place we could feel the heat was the kitchen! 

I forgot to take a picture of the kitchen before we took the doors and draws out. Yes we are painting the kitchen cabinets too! 

We take all doors and draws back to the shop to work on and spray them out.

This is a view of the windows.

Did the view and sound of the ocean make it worth it..... nope!

Organizing Beads in Glass Jars

I started working with jewelry November 2010. Since then I have quite the collection of beads and was having a hard time figuring out how I was going to store them. I have beads in plastic boxes with little section so they don't want mix.  Over the years I would stop at yard sales, Goodwill and buy already made necklace, bracelets,  and earrings. People also will give me beads and jewelry they found or didn't want anymore. I would get them, take them apart and use them in my projects. The left over beads I would put into plastic bags. After awhile I had bags and bags full of mixed colored beads.

I went shopping for glass jars to store the glass beads by color. Well, me being a penny pincher I could NOT pay the prices they were asking for these jars and storage racks.

I took matters into my own hands , or should I say mouth! I started looking at the glass jars in my recycling bins. I wanted ones that didn't look like "food jars". We buy these Hannafords Inspiration jars. They were prefect!  The Square jar and gold top with no writing was a winner! The bad part was we don't use the Inspirations that often.  :(

So I looked for the next best jar we buy a lot of! Ding, ding we have a winner.... that would be the salsa jars! I think I must eat,.. two jars a week!! And I wonder why my ass is so big!!

Now the problem with the salsa jars are the green label tops that don't peel off. That was one reason I didn't want to use them. The other jars were super easy to clean and use right away!  I'm all about saving time and money. Or you could just say I'm just freaking lazy!

I wasn't going to paint the lids but having them on the shelf with the nice gold top jars it looked like crap to me and I couldn't take it anymore ( They were only on the shelf about an hour)  So I looked through my cans of spray paints and found a gold can that had the sale price of  $2.49! Not to bad for free jars!!..... oh wait I didn't pay for the can of paint! It was given to!! Win, win!

The golds don't match but it's a heck of a lot better then everyone knowing my addiction with salsa!

In the picture below you can see the green tops. It's like a billboard saying fat ass, right!

I hope you enjoyed my post on a great way to store your beads! Oh now I'm going to have to sort out my button collection!! Anyone in the mood for tacos?

Breast Cancer Awareness Necklace

My weekend started Friday because of a big snow storm here in Maine. So I stayed home from work. I took that opportunity to work on some pendants.  It all started with this Breast Cancer Awareness one. I was asked to do 4 necklace, and earring that would go with the set.  I posted it on my business Facebook page then on a few group pages just to show what I was working on. Next think I know I'm getting more orders for it.

I then posted a pick of the set all done. Then I got even more orders! 

The cool part is I'm taking part of the sales and adding to our fund raiser for Cans For A Cure with Q97.9 That we do every year!!

I usually start selling a Breast Cancer Necklace in September but now I will do it all year! The picture below are the ones I sold last year.

Oh ya I forgot to say I took Monday off to because of another snow storm! Tomorrow I have to go back to my day job :(

I hope your weekend was as good as mine!