International Etsy

This last week or so at my Etsy shop has been an international experience with sales from all over the world.  Here's what I sold to Australia to a doll maker:

and this to a vintage jewelry collector in Russia:

An interesting Etsy sale, the Examiner, & Life in General

Starting out with "life in general," I haven't written a post for a month--hard to believe that so much time has gone by--but I must admit it's a challenge just keeping up with the stuff I'm doing on a daily basis: writing two articles a week for Examiner.com, putting items up on my Etsy shop, writing press releases for the Sharon Arts Center, babysitting my two youngest grandchildren every afternoon, and doing all the other things that have to be done to maintain a household. Not to mention spending time with my husband and friends and family members....

But everybody is busy these days--it doesn't matter who you are or what you do, we're all busy!

In addition to writing local antiquing articles for the NH Examiner, I've done some fun pieces as Vintage Home Decor writer for the national Examiner, such as:

Another assignment as a writer on vintage

I've been writing articles for some months now as the Manchester (NH) Antiquing Examiner, and recently I've been doing "Antiquing This Weekend" features on various locations in New Hampshire like Portsmouth and Peterborough, Amherst, Keene, and Milford, but a few weeks ago I was assigned a position as Vintage Home Decor writer for the national Examiner.com.

My first article in that position was called "How vintage lovers decorated for the 4th, and what you can do next year" and the most recent was "Decorating with vintage maps and where to find them." Both of these articles have slide shows, and here's some pix I used in decorating with maps (for credits, see the article)--all great ideas:

Happy 4th of July!

This is what we had for dessert today after our chicken barbecue, deliciously made and beautifully decorated by good friend Bonnie:

We had a lovely time celebrating our nation's independence with great friends. My decorations consisted of two flags stuck into flower pots on either side of our front door, but look at these fantastic decorations by Debra of Common Ground:

From Decor 8: 8 Decorating Trends in Europe

I came across a blog today called Decor 8, where I found an interesting post on 8 decorating trends in Europe ("trends you'll love," they said. They're right...):

1.Industrial lighting

Design Sponge-type Food Mills Found on Etsy

In a previous post I briefly mentioned and pictured this colander/food mill beautifully repurposed on Design Sponge:

Thinking About Antique Textiles: Coverlets & Quilts

Browsing on the internet today I found some pix from Brimfield and this one in particular caught my eye because I have an overshot coverlet that's very similar:

Here's mine, blue and white rather than black and white but also in a type of "pinetree and snowball" pattern. We found it decades ago in the Shenandoah Valley:

Inspiration from Design Sponge

What a great repurposing idea found on Design Sponge!

For more about how to make this very cool planter from a vintage kitchen food mill, go here.

Toot: My Recent Examiner Articles on Antiquing & Vintage

Okay, this is shamelessly tooting my own horn, but just in case you haven't clicked on the right sidebar, where my Examiner articles are located, I thought I'd give some titles out for those who might be interested:

"Where, Oh Where Have All the Bargains Gone"

Wherein I discuss one place I find them...

"Etsy? What's Etsy?"

Which I wrote after everyone kept asking me...

Life So Far on Etsy

Well, it's been an interesting learning curve these past few months....

I registered Either/Or Finds on Etsy in December, but didn't put up my first item until mid March...

...first there was Christmas and then I had to figure out how to do everything. If I know what I do now, I wouldn't have registered until I'd gotten some of those things figured out--like how to take good photographs, how to calculate postage, how to...well do everything.

Musing on Repurposing

"Repurposed" is a "green" term you hear a lot these days, so my latest latest article at Examiner.com, was on that subject, and while researching it and thinking about repurposing I realized that we've been doing this in our home for a long time.

For instance, we've made lamps out of coffee grinders, blue Ball Mason jars, and old tin milk cans:

Spring in all its forms: snow, rain, cold, garden vintage, flower earrings....

It snowed the day before Easter here in the Northeast. Unbelievable to wake up to that white stuff, and not just coming down--all over the ground!

Thankfully the temps rose and melted everything before our family Easter egg hunt, which this year was more complicated as treasure maps and clues had to be designed for three different ages: the littles, the middles, and the teens. My husband is the mastermind, so he spent Easter Saturday trying to craft hunts for each age range that weren't too hard or too easy. Way too much candy was consumed the following day by the littles, the middles, and the teens, but they had a lot of fun trying to find their candy baskets.

And even though I didn't have any candy, I did partake of way too much turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes and stuffing, ham, that old faithful green bean dish with French Fried onion rings that shows up several times a year, and my daughter's special dessert filled with whipped cream, strawberries, custard, and Oreo cookies.

Which is why we keep a huge tub of Tums in our bathroom.

Writing About Antiquing for Examiner.com

Years ago I wrote an antiques column, first for the Morristown Record in Morristown, NJ, and then for the state newspaper, the Newark Star Ledger. It was a lot of fun writing those columns, and back then I mostly wrote about my personal antiquing adventures out and about with my husband and daughter. I reviewed shops and antique centers all over New Jersey and wrote a bit about my own antique specialty--American primitive furniture and accessories.

Now my daughter is grown, we've all moved up to New Hampshire, and some of the grandchildren are taking an interest in antiques and collectibles--particularly my eldest grandson, whom I've taken with me on Saturday morning yard sale excursions. Both of us delight in the thrill of the hunt and the joy of discovering true bargains. He's put some of his treasures on Ebay and was the one who encouraged me to start selling vintage on Etsy.com.

All about roosters

I have a thing about roosters--for me they symbolize all things country.

Symbolically, roosters have a long history in world cultures: the ancient Greeks believed the rooster, with its hearty morning "cock-a-doodle-do," was a sign of victory over night. In Christianity, since a rooster crowed three times after the apostle Peter denied Christ, it became a symbol of his passion and resurrection. And even now a rooster on a weathervane (something we're looking forward to having one day, hopefully a nice big copper one) symbolizes a watchful vigilance over evil.

Thinking Easter--and talking baskets...

Some time ago I came across a pair of colorful vintage Easter baskets that took my fancy. For the last umpteen years my husband,  Buzz, and I have been basket fanatics--ever since we lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, where  Buzz was a professor of theatre. On the weekends we'd pack a lunch, get into the car with our daughter Keri, and head off to the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah Valley, where we hit the "antique trail," back then an amazing treasure-trove of bargains (I don't know about now but I'm supposing it's still pretty great).

Filling Up My Etsy Shop, Little By Little

Over the past few days, other than dealing with the flu (which hit a number of people in our family, including me--I'll spare you the specifics), I've put up a few more items on my new Etsy shop.

Figuring all this out hasn't been easy, beginning with trial and error taking photographs, one of the keys to selling in this online marketplace. Given the worldwide competition every seller is facing, each photo in a shop has to be colorful, compelling, well-lit, balanced, etc. etc.

First Listing!

So yesterday I finally bit the bullet and jumped onto Etsy as a vintage seller. Here's my first listing,a colorful enamel-on-tin teapot from my own collection:

What's Etsy?

 It was the desire to simplify my house and thus (hopefully) my life that began it: the idea of going on Etsy.

Actually my grandson led me to it--my grandson the sometimes Ebay dealer who used to sell lego figures he made to kids all over the world or, more recently, refurbished electronics.

One day I was trying to figure out how to put some of my excess collectible stuff on Ebay and asked him about it, but he only shook his head. "Don't even bother," he said. "Ebay charges way too much these days. What you want is Etsy."