I'm dreaming of a dust*y Christmas...

For those of you who don't know me, I have a gi-normous love of everything Alice in Wonderland. It's so weird and creepy and delightful all at the same time, how could you NOT love it?! Anywhoo, that's what brings me to this blog edition. I know this isn't a crafty entry this time around, but i just had to share this new and old find of mine!

So...years ago when I was still living in Savannah I came across a website of furniture that made my heart ache it was so beautiful. I immediately wanted to live in a house completely furnished with only furniture from here, but after realizing I don't have the money to pay for ONE piece (from $1,600-$6,000 each), let alone an entire house full, my dream was never realized :(  sad face...

Now, to 2 days ago...for some reason I was thinking (again) about my favorite little book and that furniture popped in my head, so I decided to look it up and see if they had any new, super cool pieces now, but alas, I could not think of the name of the company to save my life! So, on to Google to search for Alice in Wonderland furniture and to my great surprise ( :D <-- happy face) there's not only my old company I love so much, but a NEW company doing even CRAZIER, ALICE-IER things with furniture! Oh bliss...!

I know by this time you wanna see some of this stuff, so here we go!

15 minute earrings

I have a tendency to not purchase things that I can make. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean I will EVER make it, but if I have the ability, I can't buy it, which brings me to this little tutorial blog! I have so many fabrics that I have collected over the years from people cleaning out their stashes to the remnants section of Hobby Lobby, so I love to find projects that use these smaller amounts that I have laying around, and this one certainly uses a small amount. I've tried my hand at jewelry making in the past...earrings and necklaces mostly, but I have never been very good with jump rings and spending hours putting links together, so this project is totally right for me.

This dainty little pair of floral print earrings were my first attempt. I made them in the 15 minutes I waited for pizza to be ready! Of course now I'm hooked and I just wanna sit around all day today and make pair after pair. Only problem I can find is I may not have enough different fabrics that have small enough prints to fit on the button...guess some will be solids.

I'm baaaack...

So, I guess you figured out what I'm NOT good at, and that is obviously, writing in a blog. I gots the procrastination fever and didn't work on projects for a while, but I've got a couple at least that I'm ready to show. PLUS, there are SO MANY tutorials I've been seeing online with Christmas coming up that I am gettin' wicked excited about trying out. Here's the first...

I found this tutorial for cute little flower rings from V and Co. and decided that since I have tons of fabric scrappies all over my 'art room' I'd try it out! Although I didn't have any rings to attach them to, I made it work with a bit o' fabric and a pin.

My little scrappy roses were made with 1"x9" pieces of fabric because i found a 9" piece of scrap and didn't worry with it not being the 'correct' length. I think I wrapped them quite a bit tighter than V, but with them being my first attempt, I was trying to hard to just get them together I think. I also left the extra bits on the end and made them into 'leaves' for the edges. Every time I looked at the tutorial I wanted her make leaves, but sadly the pictures never changed, HA!

labor day weekend...

yeah yeah...I know Labor Day weekend was 2 whole weekends ago...I'm just that far behind on showing you all what I did! Lots o' projects going on right now, but here's a few of them. I went a little spray paint crazy...

As if I NEEDED to spend any more money without selling anything yet, I bought this dresser mirror for a whopping $10 on craigslist and painted it a beautiful greyish blue color, then lacquered it all up and now all I have to do is trade out the dresser hinges for a couple of screw eyes and some picture wire. Trying to figure out which way I want to have it displayed though. Any thoughts?

close up of original

original mirror

vintage object sale pictures...

After shining, painting, washing, gluing and everything else I had to do with my Goodwill purchases, I'm finally ready to put a few of them on my Etsy site. My only problem now is, what kind of pictures will really make these sell? I took a few with my super nice, Canon Rebel xTI, but I'm not really in LOVE with them...they just look kinda plain. So, I jumped on the hipstamatic bandwagon and took a few shots with my new DROIDX to make my 'vintage' products look, well, 'vintage-y'. So, here's both of the different shots. Only problem now is...i dislike the DROIDx and am trading back to my beloved blackberry. So, the question is, will these 'vintage-y' looks pics really make my stuff sell better and I should make my Rebel pics look like this, or should I give up the vintage and just go with the regular everyday pics?

Above are some of the vintage pics of my cupcake plates and below are a few of my candlesticks.

 

I'd love to hear some feedback. I could really use the sales :) Gotta get my trip to Israel in October paid off...

So, answer me this...if the price was right, would you buy these pieces based on these pictures, or would you rather see 'normal' pics to make your decision?

46 for $46...

Goodwill is heaven. Especially when they've just restocked the home section of dishes and such. You may not know this (cause I didn't when I bought all of this stuff), but every price has a letter beside it and some of those letters mean HALF OFF...even if the item is only $.59 to begin with! So, after looking at my cart FULL of stuff and worrying about how much money I was about to plunk down, I begrudgingly made my way up to register to start ringing up my beautiful purchases.

When all was said and done, I had purchased 46 items for $46.60 total (including tax!). Now, some of these pieces I've got to shine up and some I have to paint or fix up, but all in all I'm pretty happy with my sale. Here's everything I bought laying out on my now, unusable dining room table :)

do kids today know what chalkboards are?

That's a sad notion to think that they don't, mostly because I grew up with teachers using them (although, we did have mostly dry-erase by the time I made it to high school) and that just means...I'm old.

Oh well, I still *heart* chalkboards cause they're vintage looking and raw...so that's what I decided to do with this $10 find of mine. Last weekend there was a yard sale about 5 doors down from me, so of course I had to go down and check it out. It was a super cool family who had lived on the street just about as long as me, but we'd never met! I'd like to say it's cause they live over the hill from me, but let's face it, I'm just not good at meeting my neighbors.

Anywhoo, they had this super cool little side table for sale and I scooped it up just as soon as I laid eyes on it!

don't pay attention to the dust or the dog toy :)

spray paint is my new favorite thing...

So, after stumbling up the All Things Thrifty site one day a few weeks ago and not stopping reading EVERY blog she's done, I came back to one specific entry for yellow furniture and absolutely fell in LOVE with it. At first, yellow furniture seemed kind of weird and over the top, but when you look at what she's done and where she places these pieces in her house, it's incredible! My only problem was, I just repainted a piece of furniture that I got at a discount store, white, but it needed to be black to match my other furniture, and it took FOREVER to sand, prime, paint, re-paint, and coat twice. Needless to say, I was a little nervous to take on painting any new furniture for a while until I read on All Things Thrifty and Miss Mustard Seed that they both spray paint everything and it comes out just as good, and with no brush stroke lines! All that to say, I had to try it, so here's what I found.

I first went to Craigs List, cause it's the best for furniture people just want to get rid of and I came across a few pieces at a little resale shop. After going to shop, finding other pieces I liked and them making an offer on 3 items, I took them all home for around $100.

and so it begins...

let me first say...

I am a HUGE procrastinator. I fully acknowledge that fact and am working on correcting that ONE flaw I have. HAHA! As if that's the only thing I need to work on...I'm also a pack-rat, a nail biter, an unenthusiastic exerciser and a great excuse maker. Even though all of those things need attention, I've started this blog to try and work on two of those little indiscretions...the procrastination and the pack-ratiness.

Before you continue on this journey of mine, I would just like to preface by saying, I'm no writer. I'm a crafter and an artist, but no writer, so bear with me and just look at the pretty pictures.

My blog name.

OBSCURE...vague or uncertain; of little or no prominence, note, fame, or distinction; inconspicuous

The perfect word for this blog. It describes my thought process when I'm working on a project...vague...uncertain. Most of the projects I do are just vague thoughts that happen to drift through my head and every once in a while I snag one and create something wonderful!

Ok then, here we go!