A Reunion on Etsy

One of the fun things about selling vintage on Etsy is the people you meet, both customers and other sellers. I've written here about some of these encounters.

Recently I re-encountered an old friend, B. J. Elvgren, who sells her amazing handmade creations on Etsy (here). Years ago we'd met each other through our husbands--both playwrights and both at the time teaching theatre and playwriting at universities in Virginia and New Jersey. Her husband had invited my husband to give a talk at his university and I went along, spending a wonderful several days with B.J. and Gil sight seeing, talking, and admiring their antique-filled home. B.J. also had a beautiful studio filled with her quilted creations, and I bought several pillows from her that still grace our living room couches.

Time passed, and after a hiatus of quite a few years, B.J.'s husband got in touch with mine over some business. During their email conversations, my husband happened to mention that I had an Etsy shop and gave the URL. Gil said that B.J. did, too, and almost immediately I received a convo (Etsy lingo for its internal email system) from her saying that she'd checked out my shop and loved it. So I clicked on her shop link--I knew I'd love everything because I knew how talented she was--and got back to her and before long were talking back and forth and wondering how we could all get together again.

Then, after responding to a convo from her, I went back to check my Etsy activity stream for any new purchases. Suddenly I saw that wonderful green "view order" sign on this item:

The Yellow Vintage Shirt: A Story

A friend sent me this today ~ it's a lovely story about a vintage yellow shirt (unknown author!), so I thought I'd pass it along:

The yellow shirt had long sleeves, four extra-large pockets trimmed in black thread and snaps up the front. It was faded from years of wear, but still in decent shape. I found it in 1963 when I was home from college on Christmas break, rummaging through bags of clothes Mom intended to give away.. 'You're not taking that old thing, are you?' Mom said when she saw me packing the yellow shirt. 'I wore that when I was pregnant with your brother in 1954!'

Etsy and Weddings

I had the happy task today of sending two packages off to brides: one item, which I blogged about in my last post, was a blue bitters bottle in the shape of a fish, which a woman in London bought, telling me that she was putting together a collection of "posy" bottles to use at her wedding reception:

The other was for a woman who just got married and wanted these two heart boxes to use as a place for keeping their rings safe should she and her husband ever have to take them off for some reason:

Oops! Or: There Goes Another Etsy Sale...

Well, it had to happen sooner or later.

That morning I'd gone out into the garden and found that the bleeding hearts, narcissus, and purple lilacs were in full bloom. And I thought: what a perfect time to photograph a bunch of my vintage glass bottles and put those up in my shop!

So I picked an armload of flowers, stuck them in a pot of water, retrieved the bottles from my storage shed out behind our house, and went up to the stair landing that I use as my photography studio. I've got a small table there, which I cover with a piece of white poster board, and put another white poster board behind it. I got out my camera and started shooting, doing the cobalt blue bottles first with a few stalks of bleeding hearts and narcissus:

An Unexpected Gift on Etsy

(Note written 4/7/16: For some inexplicable reason, all the pictures that were on this blog have disappeared, but I'm leaving the text here, because I still like the story ~ sorry not to have it illustrated as formerly!)
 
I'm getting ready to list a Norwegian wool cape on Etsy--a cape that belonged to my mother.

I've sold a lot of her things since I opened my Etsy shop--mostly jewelry, which she was especially fond of and collected at church sales and yard sales; some of it Dad gave her, too, for birthdays or Christmas. I've sold even her vintage thread on wooden spools (she was a great seamstress) to another Etsy seller who lives in Indonesia.