Collecting Cast Iron

Every day I use cast iron pans in my cooking. Couldn't do without them.

Collecting vintage cast iron has become increasingly popular in the last few years. Not only are cast iron pans and other cooking utensils handy in the kitchen, but they're also wonderfully decorative when displayed on the wall.

Musings on Vintage Milk Glass

I didn't always love milk glass, as pretty as it is.

I knew that some people collected it, but I was into blue and white, my own personal collecting passion.

Musings on Vintage Mason Jars

I love vintage Mason jars!

If you came to my house and saw how many I have you'd realize what an understatement that is. I started out years ago collecting the big aqua ones with the zinc tops.

I use them in my kitchen pantry to store dried beans and peas and flour and sugar and various cooking needs.

Selling on Etsy: A Frustrating Lesson

It was one of those days....

Last Friday I photographed a terrific vintage glass cloche and gray marble cheese server for my Etsy shop:

I filled out most of the necessary listing forms: title, description, tags, etc., but ran out of time to finish it completely, since we were heading out to a football game in Vermont and I had to pack and otherwise get ready to leave.

Fabulous Finds & A New Friend at the St. James Fair, Woodstock VT

My daughter, who lives in Woodstock, Vermont, said I absolutely had to come. The St. James Fair there, now in its 92nd year, was something not to miss.

We live about an hour and a half away in New Hampshire, so it's not a long drive. And since it was a great excuse to spend the weekend with the family, we drove over Friday night for dinner.

But on Saturday morning, at 9 a.m., my daughter and I were there, scouting out what we wanted to make a mad dash for once the ribbons encircling the tents were cut precisely at 10 a.m.

The Unexpected Journey of a Kentucky Derby Hat

When I found it, I had to buy it. Even if I would never make it to the Kentucky Derby.

Maybe one of my Etsy shop customers would, I thought. It was definitely an amazing vintage hat!

Decorating my home for Christmas with vintage

Last week, after sharing some holiday decorating with vintage ideas that I found on the internet and put on one of my pinterest boards called "Decorating for Christmas with Vintage," I promised that I'd show you around my house and some of the ways I decorate with vintage.

First of all, I'll take you to my kitchen. Our house is just barely vintage, as in 1990 we purchased a high, wooded parcel of land in New Hampshire and in 1992, after clearing some of the trees, we built a one-room cottage (my husband purchased a book called "Building Thoreau's Cabin" and began building) which, once finished, served as our living room, dining room, and bedroom (that ladder leads up to a sleeping loft, which we now use for storage; on the ceiling is part of our extensive basket collection).

My Etsy Studio

Okay, first off, I often dream of having the perfect studio: white walls, tall windows with great natural light, lots of room to store all my items and pack them up when purchased,,,,,

Brimfield Bound!

Looks like it's finally happening, and I'm getting excited.

Even though I used to be an antiques writer and I've been an Etsy seller now for several years, I've never been to the Antiques and Collectibles Capital of the U.S.: Brimfield!

Since 1959, Brimfield, Massachusetts has been the site for three annual gatherings of antiques and vintage dealers--thousands of them--who come from all over the U.S. to display and sell their wares: 6 consecutive days (Tuesday through Sunday) in May, July, and September.

Farmhouse Decor: White, White, Wondrous White!

Before getting onto Instagram, I had no idea how widespread the White on White Farmhouse decor had become. If you're on IG, just put "farmhouse" into the search bar and see the incredible numbers of sites, plus their followers--pretty amazing, right?

You can find the same thing on Pinterest. Although the Farmhouse crowd can get much more interactive and chatty on IG.

Being an Etsy seller who wants to keep up with the trends (my home is rustic Country, which still has its thousands of followers, but not to the extent of the current Farmhouse rage), I started tracking some of these sites and their devotees and checking out how they liked to decorate their homes. Here are some examples:

Etsy Changes: New Shop Look, New Seller Websites

Changes abound on Etsy today.

Well, they were rolled out a few days ago and most of the sellers are still reeling from the shock of  so much newness confronting them all at once: new shop looks and now "Pattern," a previously un-announced "stand-alone" website being offered, for a monthly fee, to sync in with each seller's Etsy shop. 

Vintage Hats and Etsy

This week some of my vintage hats were featured in "50 Gorgeous Vintage Hats" in a fun blog
called "We Heart Vintage," written by Mary, who--according to her bio--is "a mum, web designer and vintage-addict from a small village in the UK":

You really should take a look at the amazing array of hats featured here--such a wide variety of colors and styles, really interesting!

Celebrating Three Years on Etsy

Three years ago this month I took the plunge and put my first items up on Etsy.

Actually I joined in December 2010, but it took me months to figure out what was going on. If you want to read how it all started, you can check out my first post titled "What's Etsy?"

Which was followed by my second post, titled "First Listing," and then "Filling Up My Shop Little by Little."

In April 2011 I finally made my first sale, a Beacon Hill Staffordshire dinner plate:

which I recount in a post titled "Life So Far on Etsy." Today I wouldn't take a photograph for my shop like that, because I now prefer to shoot against a white background--for a lot of reasons, one of them being a consistent "look" among the listings and another the fact of being more often picked up in treasuries, which hopefully gives the seller more exposure to a wider buying audience.  These things you pick up and learn as you go along. Not every Etsy seller agrees with photographing against a white background, but I've become a die-hard about this.

The Beauty of Vintage Bottles

Over the years I've sold a lot of bottles in my Etsy shop.

Last week a fellow teammate of mine on the Etsy Pickers and Sellers Team (known affectionately as "Epsteam") bought this bottle:

She said she has a collection of bottles displayed over her kitchen cabinets and took them all down recently to wash. After rearranging them, she found she could use a few more, so went looking on Etsy ~ "Of course I searched on "Epsteam glass bottles"!" she said.

A Passion for Books: An Encounter on Etsy

Books have always been a special love. I was a reader from the moment I grasped "Run, Spot, run!"

As I grew up, books were given to me for birthdays and Christmas because my family and friends knew I loved to read. Once I was out of college, married and living on a budget, I started buying books at sales, a practice that continues to this day. I always look forward to that final day "bag sale," where you can stuff in as many as you can for a few dollars!

Vintage Fashion and My New Etsy Model

There's a whole new look to my shop these days with the arrival of my new model:

Here she's photographed wearing a lime green silk sheath dress from the 70s. A great dress, but her presence among the pictures in my shop adds a real buoyancy to all the listings. This is a story about how her arrival came to be:

Plate Passion

I love plates. Colorful vintage plates. Not only are they functional, but beautiful when displayed in a hutch:

For a long time I've been collecting blue and white plates, like the display above.

New Year, New Etsy "Studio"

(Note  4/7/16: For some inexplicable reason, a number of photographs used to illustrate this blog post disappeared. I have re-written the post, accordingly, as I'm loath to simply delete it. Hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway!)

One of my New Year's resolutions is to write a new blog post every week. Well, we'll see how that goes...

So today, being snowbound in New Hampshire (schools are closed for the second day in a row, probably just because it's so cold here right now with temps of about 3-5 degrees and a good wind chill going), 

I decided that this was a good time to write a little bit about my new Etsy "studio."

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:

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: