A heart felt confession.

Hello folks.  Have you missed me?

I have a really good reason I have been radio silent.  I lost my groove.  I lost my confidence.  I lost my shine.  I did a show in June I was super excited about.

It was an utter flop for me.  F.L.O.P.

My feelings were hurt.

Not I’m going to cry hurt, but I thought I might not paint anymore hurt.

It’s taken me a few weeks to shake that attitude.  And now I can’t believe I let one show get me down.  I’ve had bombs in the past, albeit they weren’t this bad.  But still, didn’t do as well as I had hoped or planned.

So, I’m getting back in the saddle. I will be posting some completed pieces soon. I have been heading over to the studio more lately and trying to get things moving. I feel bad being there during the summer with G out of school and at home.  Although, it isn’t as if he talks to me all day or asks me to take him anywhere.  He’s a bit of a home boy ….

So, just in case you were concerned about my spirit, worry no more!  It has healed and will be revealed – in the coming days!!!

These photos were taken at the show I did. I loved every piece I took. I will say that damn white dresser. More reason I just am not really a white girl.
See you soon!

 

My civic duty is usurping my blog duties.

Hello all.  Sorry for the radio silence, but I have been on Federal Jury Duty since LAST Monday.  I know you guys are suffering for me fulfilling my civic duty.  But you have NO IDEA how I too, am suffering.  Not that I mind the actual jury duty.  It’s the 5 days a week!!  IT.IS.KILING.ME.

(this is just a photo of one of the original sinks in the building.  I truly want to remove the soap dish, insert into my bag and walk out of the building.  What I have discovered is that justice is fair, but not swift.  I figure I could use it for a couple years before anyone noticed.)

Anyway.  People very often ask me how I do so much and work fulltime.  Honestly, I am routinely baffled by that question.  But now I understand why people who work 5 days a week ask that.  If I ever have to work 5 days a week, for sure my hobbies will be thrown right out the window, along with my sanity.  And my will to live.

I did get over to 400 West Rich where my studio is today and get it cleaned up.  I haven’t been there since 3 Tuesdays ago.  The space is pretty empty since Springfield, so I wanted to get it ready to bring a few things in over the weekend.  Now, if you click on the 400 link, you go to the tab that says 400 Artists, scroll down and you can find Furbished: repurposed, redesign.  I HAVE AN INTERNET LINK NOT CREATED BY ME!  I’m pretty stoked about that.  So take a minute and click on that.

(this is the John Paul Jones flag from his speech “I have not yet begun to fight.”)

So – did you check me out?  Thank you if you did!!

I have a show coming up June 13 and 14 at the Ohio Expo Center.  This is their very first time holding this event and I am really hoping it is BIG BIG BIG.  I’m having a hard time deciding on what to take though.  My space is only 12’x12′ but on a corner. I have a tendency to over provide at shows …..

The show is called Salvaged Treasures Marketplace.  The following Thursday and Friday I am hostessing the Bexley Vintage Market A Lawn Affair.  The public is totally welcome!!!!!

Okay, here is the last photo from the Joseph P. Kinneary U.S. Courthouse.  I have been taking Flag pictures the past two weeks and posting on facebook.  If you get the opportunity to go inside the building – do so.  It is amazing!

I think this flag is pretty badass.

I wish Mother Nature was my business partner.

This is the second year the weather has not worked out in our best interest at The Springfield Extravaganza Antique Show and Flea Market.  Last year was freezing.  Just plain freezing.  This year it was raining, gusting winds, raining, blazing hot, raining, storming and humid.

Day one our spirits stayed high. My friend Emi and I just kept dealing thru the wind, rain and heat.  It went really well.  For me, the most popular items were the Mid Century pieces.  A few shabby items sold, but the Mid Century flew out from under the tents.

I loved this set and was thrilled with the family it went home with.

These two honeys went home with some happy ladies.  The orange chair gently rocks and the round chair swivels.  Did they ever make fun chairs way back.  I don’t see these types of action packed seating at Pier 1, World Market or Kittles ….

Here’s the swivel.

Just so everyone sees the coral dresser, here she is. The girl this went home with had never been to a flea market before so I felt compelled to ask her if she wanted to ask me to bargain.  She said, will you not charge tax? Another reason Mother Nature would be a good business partner – she isn’t asking nobody nothing!

The green dresser didn’t sell. It is so graceful. And I honestly can not understand why she was left with me.

I am actually not taking it still being in my possession very personal. I modeled it after a Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint color, and her green items haven’t sold at her Lucketts sale so far either.  Maybe folks aren’t ready for green yet?  I still adore the color and believe buyers will be clammering for it here soon!  I’ll be ready then!

The next show is June 13/14 at The Ohio Expo Center.  It is The Salvaged Treasure Marketplace.  Jennifer Kerr from Tiny House Vintage and Art will be there also.  She had the concrete planters I Instagrammed. (@ivenad) She had a ton of other really cool finds! And was the owner of the tent carcass at the end of the weekend.

 Here’s the picked over carcass.

Always looking forward to the next show!!  Especially b/c it’s all inside!!

All that glitters …

Was at Target today looking for some kind of contact paper to finish off a little midcentury bar/side board I am taking to Springfield Extravaganza this weekend.  Sauntered past the lighting area and spotted this gold coral lamp.  It was gold, so it caught my eye.  BUT THEN, I remembered that I had a jar full of coral, sponges and other underwater whatnots.  A whole Bikini Bottom just sitting in my basement.  I had thought very little about how what I would do with this since it’s purchase. Until Target today.

When I won this at the live auction, I mostly just wanted it. I had no clue what I would do with it.  I had wondered all over the event looking at things and this was the ONE small/little I really REALLY wanted.  Believe it or not, I seldom have a hard core plan for anything I buy/win/covet.

But I won it, I paid for it and I brought it on home.  Then it went to the basement.  Until tonight.

When I brought it up this evening and went through it, selecting pieces to turn into gold, I found this little note about half way down.

Which was just an unpaid bonus as far as I was concerned.

To the point.  I took out about 10 pieces and sprayed them gold.  I LOVE THEM.  I have zero beach décor in my home so can’t keep, but I really love this little sparkle!

and …..

The biggest piece is about 3 inches.  These photos make them look like islands of coral.  I guess everything you see isn’t real 😉 But lots that glitters is gold!

Will post again after I set up Thursday night.  I’ll show you how I plan on displaying these lovelies!

 

 

Bread & Butter

I think I have said previously that I am not a fan of custom work.  I get so nervous.  I want the customer to be happy, but all I can see are the less than perfect quarter millimeters of paint. So I know right off the bat  they won’t be happy with the finished product. Or they wont’ be happy on how something isn’t exactly even, or wobbly, or maybe not as smooth as I think they would want. But then I ask myself.  Who the hell is running their hands ALL OVER A PIECE OF WOOD FURNITURE?Because lets face it.  That is not normal behavior.  They will touch the part they need to touch.  Move it where they want it and then most likely not touch for a couple years.  (I have been told not everyone moves furniture around frequently nor in and out of their homes on the regular.  I believe this may be an urban legend.)

This week I have been working fervently on multiple pieces of custom work.  Graduation is coming up, summer might be close, mostly just  things customers have put off for awhile but have decided to have done. And I am grateful for it!  I have learned some big things on one, had fun with another, and experimented (fyi, it’s National Honesty Day) with a new paint on another and lastly, almost finished my friends vintage secretary that I promised to paint two years ago.

This is what I had fun with.  It’s salmon now, or light orange, or coral.  Depends on who you talk to.  The pulls are amazing!

This is where a learned a TON!  12 year old outdoor furniture.  This took some research.  And my dad.  He has a power washer and I needed it.  Using the right wand tip was imperative.  AND in a totally off hand way, while explaining how to use the power washer Dad said the soap dispenser was not working, that I should just pour the deck soap onto the table and chairs. HUH?  My research just said clean it, not deck wash soap it.  GLAD HE SAID THAT!  Made  a huge difference. As evidenced by:

I mean, come on.  The difference is obvious.  Today I sanded all the pieces down and I swear to you, it is almost like new.  Tomorrow is supposed to be warm and sunny so really REALLY hoping to get the stain/sealer on it and delivered!

Lastly, I am painting a cabinet/oversize bookshelf that was painted a colonial red.  WHITE.  I guess she doesn’t read my blog. She does not want it shabby.  she wants it smoothly painted.  She wants a traditional white.   This one is making me sweat. And wash my hair.Ideally tomorrow all these pieces get dropped off.  And I get my bread and butter.  All the other pieces I post and sell, are just the jam baby!  And I am A.OK with that!  Here is the coral/salmon/light orange piece. Really jealous it won’t be living at my house.

The right side never looks good at first.

I’ve had this set of 4 chairs since right after the holidays. (the ones that come RIGHT before cupcake season, you following?) They had rattan seats and backs in their first life.  Somewhere along the way the rattan probably broke and a thrift minded person went ahead and added webbing and fabric seats.  The hubs helped me take the fabric off and they have sat at my studio since, well the real cupcake season started.  As I looked around for what to do next I spotted them.  So I put them up on my work table and got started.

I personally start with chairs upside down.  It’s so easy for me to miss huge areas if I don’t and I detest thinking I’m done and finding a huge naked wood spot. 

Chairs used to be my least favorite furniture piece to redo. There is a significant amount of detail work involved and generally you are doing more than one.  So it seems as a painter,  you are just redoing the same exact thing time and time and time again.  Monotonous I tell ya.

Recently I have rediscovered my  love for chairs.  I love what they do for a room, how they easily change up a vibe in a room, and how movable they are.  So working on them actually makes me happy. I know they’ll change someone else’s vibe and make them happy.  Now, see how almost completely painted these babies look?  ALMOST DONE YAY! So when I flip it over ALL I’m thinking is – just the back, that’s all that left to paint – for the fourth damn time. YAY!

WRONG. Look at all that naked wood.  LOOK.AT.IT.  I was disappointed like this FOUR times.  I pushed through that disappointment – covered that wood and painted all the backs.

Hopefully Friday I’ll be able to rough them up and put on a clear wax.  The wood will look richer that way and the gray paint won’t get any darker.  The seats are getting covered in a yellow, turquoise, gray fabric.  They’ll be paired with a round gray table.Can you picture them all sunshiney later?

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Black velvet, if you please.

Went thrifting yesterday.  Not that I need to add one more piece of smalls (that’s biz talk for anything not a piece of furniture) Especially ESPECIALLY any art.  But, I saw this.  And I swooned. I left the line. I put in my cart. I paid for it. And now, I am sharing with you.  When I styled the green dresser (to be seen later in the post, keep reading)  I really wished I had remembered to bring this with me.Are you beside your self too??  You are welcome for finding and sharing!

Went to the studio today and worked on a couple things. This  chair and buffet  only got primed, two coats each. They are midcentury pieces that I had to prime with an oil based primer because I want a sleek look to them. There is a blog I follow marthaleonedesign.com/blog and this woman works crazy magic with MCM pieces. I am trying to learn from her tutelage. If she’s kind enough to put all that info out there, I oughtta be smart enough to use it.She says prime. She says use a roller.  I’m priming and rolling. I do not like doing either of those things. I am confident when they are done, I will be thrilled I listened to her. And then I will have learned to like to prime and roll.

The green tape is where the wood will be exposed. The fabric I picked for the seat is a navy with wood grain. I’m pretty excited to get it done.  You can kind of see the buffet behind the chair.  It’s going to be all incredible too.  Just you wait.

This is the chair from the Why I’m not really a white girl.  Note: not white anymore.  She’s gray, with dark wax. It worked better with the fabric anyway.  See the nail head trim?  So far I have nailed 75 of them into place.  I need 75 more at least.  That is pretty tedious work right there. I also “restrung” the springs and wove the webbing back in. Just to be on the safe side, I would give this Lady Bird a seating limit of 350lbs.

Here my friends is what you have been waiting on!  This is what I just sort of accidently did today that I didn’t mean to finish and everything. But once I got started, I couldn’t stop!She needs to finish getting dressed.  I can’t decide if the handles should be green wooden ones too, or something way more awesome.

I’ll  see what I find, then you’ll see. I promise.

BTW. YOU.ARE. BEAUTIFUL!

THAT was a nightmare.

I woke up from a true nightmare this morning!  My phone had been stolen by some teen who asked to use mine to call his mom.  OF COURSE I let him!  Well off he ran! At a Reds Game no less!!  The whole dream all I could think or say was “I didn’t download my pictures for the blog!  And the cloud is off!”  I just knew all my readers were going to be heart broken.

Well, the truth is, you are going to be heartbroken anyway because I haven’t completed a project yet.  I have 6 started, but no finishers. So I’m just gonna show you a couple in the works and let you wonder.

HA!  Nope! Didn’t score this beauty.   Went to an auction the other day and waited for 2 hours for this long legged lady to come up and then they started on the other side of the room so she would be last.  Unfortunately, that day I was to badly  needed elsewhere to stick around for her.  Hoping to see her finished up at some of the nearby shows I will be doing this spring.  If I see her, I will be sure to snap a photo and let you guys too.

And here’s the hairpin table I spoke of last week.  It isn’t completed.  Needs the chalk washed off.  I chalk outlined the arrowhead and “feathers”.  It also needs a couple more coats in a couple places where I painted over the chalk which was not the correct manner.  As evidenced by – the blue chalk outline underneath.  Which looks bad.  After those two steps, I’m going to rough it up a bit and call it SOLD!!

Now, I am hoping you can forgive the really poor photography skills here, it was only supposed to be a quick shot to send to a friend, but in the upper right hand corner, behind the arrow table, beside the garbage can, is an Eastlake parlor table that I have painted the top pink with the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint. It is the same table I used twine as the clamps on. When I  am done, I will also add white porcelain casters.  It already had the holes for them but alas, no casters.  Casters are something I grab up when I find them loose at Re-Stores regularly so please do not be alarmed.  I have a stash.   I  personally also take all casters off items if I decide to donate the item.  To add to the hoard.  Because a hoard isn’t a hoard if there is only one.  Or three.  I think it takes four to get to a hoard.

And if you just got to those last 3 sentences – I.LOVE.YOU. EVEN MORE!

Okay lovely readers.  Off to the studio!

Why I’m not really a white girl.

Paint, I’m talkin’ paint here folks.  I have tried and tried for years to paint something – anything white.  It NEVER works out.  That does not mean I don’t keep trying.  Like I did on this piece.It doesn’t look horribly dark here does it?  A couple coats of white paint, some sanding and BOOM.  Awesome chair.

HA!! JOKES ON YOU!

4 YES 4!!! Coats of paint later and it still looked awful.  Wood coming through in bad places.  Brush strokes I could not sand out.  That white paint was just against me.  Me and the chair.  So,  I did what any self respecting furniture fixer upper would do.  I got out the gray. HA AGAIN!!  Jokes on you white paint!!!  The gray actually looks better with the fabric I intend to use on the chair, but I didn’t know that at the time.  I was just sorely irritated with the white paint’s refusal to finish like I see so many other folks accomplish.  So now it looks MUCH better!  Not sure it will be as versatile as I was hoping, but oh well.  Someone will love the chair!Hopefully I’ll get this finished today and be able to show you pictures of how white lost the war.

On a separate note.  I occasionally do some interior work for people.  It isn’t my favorite thing to do (like I thought it would)  because don’t ya know – home owners have their own opinions.  I was actually a little surprised about that.  So it isn’t as fun as I thought it would be and doing someone’s rooms is really stressful.  But my friend asked me to help with her kids rooms and we started in her little girls room.  And I actually SUPER enjoyed it.  Of course it helped that the friend had some loose ideas and didn’t really care.  And all I really did was organize, move things around and hang some photos.  But it is so cute.  SO freaking cute.  I still have 2 more things to add, but overall, I left with such a joyful feeling!  And isn’t it adorable?

There were A LOT  of stuffies to deal with.  So I tried spacing them out.  This is the “library nook”, I envision the little dear reading to her babies here.  And it made me really happy to think about!

I posed all the dogs, not sure you can tell here, but I did.

So – that’s a recap on yesterday.  Coloring eggs with 13 year old boys today.  Another surprise that they all wanted to, but tradition is tradition I guess.

Again, thanks for stopping by!

It’s all about the prep work

Today I made it down to my studio late.  My own fault, I dilly dallied at home this morning doing just about nothing.  Then decided I needed to do SOMETHING that at least LOOKED productive.  I have also been riding around in the truck looking like Fred Sanford for about a week.

Except it was ALL up front.  In the cab. It needed unloaded asap!  So minimum that was accomplished.  I toted it all in to the studio and looked around. The possibilities were endless, but  I decided to go ahead and prep what I could now so when I make it the studio the next time, I can just start in on the fun painting and not the cleaning, gluing and tightening.  Not glamorous, but necessary.

So today I am giving you all my secrets on prep work.  Generous to a fault if I do say so myself.

#1 EVERYTIME TSP – I use it to clean furniture of all types.  It REALLY cleans and to me, seems to degloss it a little bit.  You can buy it in powder form (as seen here) or you can buy it is a liquid.  Obviously, I prefer the powder.  Sometimes it takes 2 passes of clean TSP water to get an item really clean. The cleaner it is, the better the finish.  It’s that simple.

#2 today I used Bondo for the first time.  I have been using wood filler I picked up at Benjamin Moore, and before that the Elmers wood filler.  I did some research on what other furniture fixers were using and decided to try the Bondo – I’ll let you know how this works out. Clean up is a bit more with the Bondo versus wood filler.  Hoping the final outcome is worth the little extra work. The wood filler says it’s stainable and paintable, but I have not liked the results after staining, that’s why I went looking for something else.

So what did  I get completed today? Well, I washed 3 chairs, 1 table and 1 dresser.  Put 1 coat of paint on a table and 1 coat on a chair.  I left the studio a mess, which will bug me until I get back there to clean it all up.

This is the table that I worked on, and below that is what I am wanting it to resemble when it’s finished.  I hope I am not over reaching for this look …. Not sure either how it will translate on a larger scale.  Regardless it WILL look more modern!

I don’t plan on using the words, just the arrows.  And not EXACTLY like this, but just an idea.  The hairpin legs will still be center stage!

Thanks for stopping by!