Trinkets From The Past

 I was at my Mom's helping her move some things in the house and found this. That's my great Grandmother's photo on the front. 

 It contained some of her jewelry I had never seen before.... Mom had been hiding it from me! (No, just kidding. ) There is nothing I like better than old Family goodies.

 Like this glass necklace. It is exquisite. And not strung on string.... it is strung on a fine and delicate sterling silver chain, with a very Art Deco clasp. 

Pendants, a tiny china dog, a sweater clip, a tie clip belonging to Mom's uncle Henry,  and a tiny padlock I am planning on using in my sister's wedding bouquet in  February. Her groom will be wearing a tiny skeleton key on his lapel.

 Some of my great grandfather's things; including his WW1 dog tag. The bronze medal is from the Pennsylvania National Guard, and on the back it says "Mexican Border Service".

Of all the old things I have ever seen or handled, it is my own family heirlooms I love the best. And I am so blessed that we have so many in my family! My family keeps E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

Happy New Year! Shop Update: Purses

I have been trying *not* to reflect much on 2012, for reasons of my own. Much of the year was spent on a daily emotional roller coaster with my personal life and my work life entwined in a jumbled up wreck that only ended in misery and death... the effects of which I still am reeling from, in many ways. 2012 will always be a year to try and not remember.

But anyway.

I added new purses to the shop today; some from my own collection; which I am cutting back on with great reluctance.

1. Black wool 1960s handbag - really classy.
2. Lipstick red 1960s boxy purse
3. Navy blue faux leather boxy purse, really unusual shape-60s
4. Hand embroidered white linen Bermuda handbag with wood handles 60s

Shop Update: Vintage and Vintage Inspired

1. 50s Chunky turquoise colored bead necklace
2. Antique, Victorian glass faceted button (shoe button?) earrings with bows
3. Vintage assemblage: key necklace with pearl bead charm 
4. Vintage assemblage: Cameo and skeleton key necklace 
5. 50s faux pearl 2 strand ncklace
6. Vintage assemblage: 20s-30s black lace applique with glass faceted button charm (Available 12/29)
7. MOP bangles, set of three

I am really excited about the up coming new year; especially when it comes to growing my little business of selling old stuff.
In 2012 my shop grew beyond what I ever expected - it definately out grew "hobby" status as far as the IRS is concerned. And I am excited to see it grow even more in 2013!

In the coming weeks I'll be changing my shop's name, and URL. I'll be operating as plain "Carolina Vintage"  in 2013.

I'm also going to be using a new photo studio space in my friend's closed antique shop.

I'm also consigning items for people now; mostly some high end furs and coats; coming in 2013. 

For now my burlap banners are still residing in my main Etsy shop but I have been contemplating giving them a shop of their own and adding more wedding decor items to it as well; we'll see what happens. I don't know if I can run three shops all at once with any success. In the meantime, check out  the banners; they all ship FREE worldwide! They were a huge hit for the 2012 Christmas season.

I am also hoping to travel around to more craft fairs/antique shows/flea markets in the Spring and Summer; I enjoy interacting with customers in person.

Thanks for reading my blarney and nonsense this past year, lovely readers! See you all in 2013, with a pile of new inventory!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

My Christmas decor is like everything else in my house: simple, natural, and vintage. I keep Christmas decorating in the back of my mind all year as I visit thrift stores and yard sales and antiques shops. That's where my little primitive Santa and Father Christmas collection started this past year. I adore those primitive figurines.

I also like to use things I already own and incorporate them into my Holiday decor, especially vessels like old silver, cast iron, wood boxes, jars, etc. etc.

I always start with a trip into the woods for any and all kinds of natural things. My driftwood fits into the nature category; I picked that up while we were vacationing on the North Carolina Outer Banks this past summer. I only which I'd picked up more of it! I made my own two front door wreaths and went with simple gold bows instead of my usual red.

I'm loving a stripped down, neutral and natural look this year, too. I usually like red; and I used a lot of red and gold on our tree (which I haven't pictured yet) but in my office/studio my theme was green and white, and I used things from my bird collecting - figurines and nests and such.

On my newly re finished stair case, I went with fir boughs instead of my usual hand-crafted garland, because I didn't feel like covering it up so completely. And I used my big red and gold bows there. :)

Things that really inspired me this Christmas:

Primitive Santas
Vintage bottle brush trees
Deer
Birds
Vintage mittens (Not shown here)
Vintage greeting cards (Shown in the wood box in the photos above)
Vintage flower frogs (stick some of the greeting cards in them)
Vintage wood boxes
Vintage "Shiny Brite" glass ornaments. (I have tons, but I'm afraid to get them all out and use them!)

 As well as:
Twigs, moss, feathers, tree slices,evergreen branches, pine cones, berries, rosemary sprigs, boxwood, ivy, holly, driftwood, magnolia, rocks, odd pieces of wood, and fruit - which are all pretty much free.

What inspires your Christmas decor?

Finally. Staircase Makeover Before and After

Warning: lots of photos in this post!

This project took me all.summer.

It originally started off as "just stripping the paint off the newel post and the steps and add a little white paint and brighten up the foyer". But like everything else in the house, I got started and realized it wasn't going to be as simple as one weekend of "let's take the paint off he newel post and the steps and add a a little white paint", oh noooooo. As I got deeper and deeper into it, it became painfully clear just how much work this was going to take to get the job done right.

At the time, my work schedule went haywire and I had very little free time at home to do projects. And Kevin was constantly on the road working and hardly ever home, either.

So almost all my free time  - including many very late nights - was spent stripping layer after layer of paint off. I was using a toothpick to remove some of the paint. A visitor  to my house during the stair case re-do would would find me hunched over the stairs or the railing with my face about two inches away, sanding away.

A few weeks into the project, I started having horrible eye pain. It got worse, and wasn't going away, so I ended up having an emergency visit to the eye doctor, where it was determined that I had some kind of infection in my eye - most likely from the contaminated dust stirred up from the sanding. After all, much of the old paint was lead. I had several prescriptions given to me, and it cleared it up - but from then on forward I wore eye protection and a face mask.

 (I know, I know, you're thinking what on earth that rug is doing covered in scrapings and sandings! But t his rug was ruined already by my dog, and I kind of just used it to catch all the stuff. Then it got banished.)

 (With the paint all gone)

Then the stair project spilled over on the the floor, and we decided to strip the whole foyer down to the original black pine flooring from the 20s. There were about three layers of gross brown paint on top of it. I spent weeks and weeks on my knees and every spare moment I could get.

Of course once the stripping and sanding was all complete, the walls all needed re painting, and the trim... and the exposed wood needed touching up with stain to even out the tone... meanwhile, fall is setting in, and colder weather. And my work schedule is still ..... complicated .... at this point. Even more complicated than before.

But finally, it was done. It's not perfect - and that's OK. We're going for lived in cozy farmhouse, not perfect. We're not shellacking anything either - we might wax, but we don't want high gloss. High gloss and farmhouse just don't work well together, in my opinion.
I still have to strip door frames and re paint doors but that is for next year's warm season.... when I can open all the doors and windows for ventilation so I don't get another eye infection. That, and I am just plain worn out from months and months of this remodeling work. I feel like even though I worked for months, we've still barely scratched the surface of the volume of what has to be done to this house before it's done-done.

For the past year or so, I've been buying framed vintage prints in a similar color scheme and collecting them in my stash. By summer's end, I had enough of them to complete the look for my newly re finished stair case wall.

 Thank you, Pinterest - the idea of cutting paper to the exact size of the prints and arranging them on the wall before putting holes everywhere is genius. 

(The stairs and floor turned out to be a rich walnut color, which we love. I didn't want light floors.)

You'll notice, in this photo,  that some white paint remains in the cracks of the newel post. I gave up on it. I was scraping it out with a toothpick hour after hour and it just got old.

You can't really tell here, but there is faded painted stencil lettering on the bottom of the newel post, from the lumber yard in South Boston where this must have been purchased back in the 20s.I left that, too. I find it super cool.



 *huge sigh*

I'm so glad I got it done before Christmas. Now I get to festoon the railing with real pine/cedar garland and bows...