Piles and Piles

I photographed a stockpile of things yesterday, all of which I found this weekend when I went thrift shopping in Helena. I took a snapshot of everything to document what I purchased, so I figured why not post the photos here to share?

Vintage Moccasins and red Justin granny lace ups

both of the above are made in brazil. To the left is a pair of Quali Craft heels, leather with wood soles

To the right are some tall campus equestrian boots leather tops and a stacked leather heel

Here's some designer finds. Tony Lama boots and a Coach bag

An antique pharmaceutical crate, and a cropped mini wool coat with a large sheepskin/ shearling collar

Gold Lame peep toe heels, and a bunch of crocheted gloves

a cover for a triangular stool, bought because the tooling is really neat and unique

Well that's most of it, but not even everything. I also bought a mint condition hudson blanket, a handful of tooled leather belts(including a Tony Lama one) a 70's sears bathing suit, a leather ammo case from the 50s, and a 40's woven basket purse.

Wow looks like the majority of the things I bought are shoes. Really though I didn't plan that, shoes aren't my favorites or anything. When I go into 2nd hand stores I look for anything wood, leather, wool, or silk. These materials are dollar signs because they aren't synthetic and usually mean they're well made, high quality, and old.  Apparently this time around, most of the wood/leather found was in the form of footwear!

As I mentioned before, I have been extremely busy with my new etsy store. You’ll see I have about 22 things listed now, but I have hundreds of photos on my computer waiting to be whittled down, and numerous items to list, and even more to photograph, measure, weigh, and research.

I had Janyssa over last week to do a photo shoot. I had some things I really needed to put on a body as opposed to a mannequin, and I can hardly model my stuff since I'm way smaller than the average person, plus I like to be in control of the camera. So she came over and we had a ton of fun playing dress up. I loaded her with beads and feathers(basically I dressed her up the way I look on a daily basis) retro glasses, headbands, make up. It was a blast. Here’s some of my favorite photos from the whole day:

 

Above is a bohemian dress, a tribal print, which looks like it was sewn from a tapestry. it has these awesome bell sleeves, and drapes beautifully

Janyssa's face was made for modeling 40's hats. On the left is a vintage 40's leather turban hat, and on the right is a beehive fur hat.

I also made my first sale this week which was really exciting. Hopefully that continues to happen! On a side note I sold a bunch of earrings in november at Upcycled. I only wish I could have had a booth at the made fair last weekend, I hear local artists did extremely well. It’s definitely on my venue for next year.

I was commissioned to whip some jewelry up for my roommate Emerald to give as Christmas presents. She wanted me to make some pendants, which I haven’t done before. I was excited with what I came up with

I will definitely continue to make these, I made another one of the last you see pictured above, and I wear it often.

etsy

Wow I’m really no good at consistency. I’ve been trying to stick to at least a weekly post here, but time continues to slip away from me.

I finally started an etsy account, which I have high hopes for but at the same time, understand it will be a  slow start. 

Last week I worked for hours in GIMP creating banners (because I’m too poor for photoshop) I just kind of pulled whatever images I had and played around with resizing, color effects, transparencies, and millions of fonts. Here’s the one I ended up using, but hopefully it’s only temporary, since I’ve got a slightly different vision for the final result.

However I made two others, which I like but decided not to use

I also have been trying to list a new item every day. You can be very startegic about when you post your listings. If you’re  really with it, you research the hour of the day/ week with the most site traffic and post then. This is my goal today; RESEARCH!

You can see my store by clicking here. I was excited this morning to wake up and see that someone “favorited” my charm bracelet. I’m still working on figuring out treasuries and circles of etsy friends. One step at a time!

as a side note, here’s an AWESOME video I found on facebook via miss Cassie Stone, who also happens to be a great artist.

see the photos here

Also I have a new business I’m idolzing. I stumbled across this little jewelry shop; Agas and Tamar in the east village while in NYC. The beautiful window display caught my eye, and then from there I just fell in love with the rest of the store.

They have this awesome rustic and raw looking jewelry which is worn by celebrities (I guess Sex and the City’s cast are big fans, as well as the Olsen Twins) but what really stands out are the simple but gorgeous natural elements in display. In the photos you can kind of see what I mean. They wouldn’t allow me to take pictures, but these are from their blog. They had old fashioned dress forms, antique barn wood, and sets of extremely old wooden boat oar tips they’d lay bracelets on.

getting organized

I apologize for being M.I.A. these past two weeks. Since the funky junk fashion show it’s been a whirlwind of Halloween costume collecting, snow tire gathering, and jetsetting madness. But here I am, back on the blog to fill you all in.

Here are some pictures of my Halloween get up; Lisbeth Salander(the girl with the dragon tattoo). I’ve always wanted the chance to dress up kind of Goth, with piercings and tattoos. Coincidentally, the day I decided to put this costume together, was the day that one of my favorite stores; H&M, announced their new fashion line inspired by Salander's character! I thought this was crazy cool. Heres some of the new line with the costume designer for the 2011 film; Trish Summerville

Anyways, last week, I flew home to Niskayuna, NY to for an 18 day trip, the first time I’ve been home in 10 months! Since landing in the east, it’s been hard to find time to sit down and post on this blog due to the funk that being here puts me in. When I get home suddenly the important things on my to-do list get shoved into the back of my brain and all I want to do is sit by the fire, go goodwill shopping, eat all the delicious food in the house, and work for my dad (which pays $10/hr to chat with interesting people and catch up on all my People and Whole Living reading).

One thing I’ve forced myself to work on since arriving is creating a method to pick up my mother’s Ebay/ Etsy selling momentum,(as well as my own). We both are avid thrifters and collectors, with online stores, but it’s difficult to stay organized when you start selling a lot of stuff, and buying even more. Also this is the biggest selling season of the year, which puts the pressure on us to get the ball rolling. I had talked to a creative entrepreneur a week or so ago who had given me some advice he’d learned in the business. He said that what most creative business people don’t know and have trouble with is that you really need to spend 70% of your time making sales, and 30% creating products, because essentially, whatever order comes up, you’ll always find a way to fill it, but it’s getting that person to request what you’re supplying that’s the uncertain part.

I see my mother and I spending 70% of our energy accumulating merchandise, and only 30% of our time making sales. In order for success that needs to change, so I started brainstorming ways to go about this. I came up with this spreadsheet that we intend to use to stay organized(sorry the photo is so awful, best I could do);

This along with an inventory/ index will hopefully help us to better visualize what we have, and what we need to get done. It also helps us to stop shopping so much when we see how much stuff we have at home waiting to be photographed researched and listed.

I’ve pulled out so many treasures from our closets since getting here, I'll be posting photos here shortly!

Funky Junk Competition

This past weekend was the 3^rd Annual Funky Junk Fashion show at Green Light. Every year they invite anyone interested to create an outfit out of recycled materials. Green light is a local boutique in downtown Missoula which specializes in green products; clothes made with organic cotton, upcycled garments, fair trade items, sustainable home decor, etc.

  

I competed last year and had a blast. I entered with my friend Sofi and we both spontaneously made our outfits 3 days before the show. This is the outfit I made last year; It won “most creative use of recycled materials” which awarded me a $75 gift certificate!

This year I put more time into my outfit, and had my vision developing since last year. I knew I wanted to use coffee filters, and had been salvaging them from our compost over the summer and fall. (I did have a few set backs when entire piles gathered mold)

This was my first time working on a dress form, which was so much fun. It’s like a 3- D inspiration wall of all your ideas; you drape your materials and they suddenly come to life.

I started on this very curvy form because my slimmer one was unavailable. I bought this one in an antique shop, and I’m pretty sure it’s from the 40’s. VERY old and falling apart but it looks awesome sitting in my room.

My first draping session with this dress form, was expiremental. I didn’t have my coffee filters together yet, so I used pattern paper where I wanted the filters to go. I originally thought I’d make a mini dress out of the rubber bike inner tubes but they were brutal to sew through by hand (I don’t have an industrial sewing machine). I remembered I’d kept my scraps of canvas from my painting class, so I dug them out, and draped a short pleated skirt. I knew I'd saved those scraps for some reason ;)

I then retrieved my slimmer form which was practically identical  to my model's actual measurements (which made fittings so much easier). So here you see my outfit coming together. The top is re-used from last year, but I basically had to re-stitch the whole thing anyways, plus re-work all the closures in the back, which lead to me stabbing my fingers with pins and killing my fingernails since I tend to use them as a thimble. If that makes any sense to you…
You also can see the canvas skirt, and my first steps in laying down the coffee filters. Keep in mind that this is all just pinned together, so the next steps involved laying down the permanent stitches, figuring out how and where to put closures so I can get it on and off my model etc. etc.

Below is photo of my model getting dressed the night of, a good view of the canvas skirt (Which I tried dip dying in coffee which looked more like I just spilled coffee on it.. not sure whether I'd do that again) and this is without the trail of coffee filters attached to it. The other photo is a close up of my Bicycle Bit Earrings, this pair in particular was inspired by galaxies.

This year I won crowd favorite. My model was Janyssa Overturf, just a friend who knows how to work it. She had her hair and make up done by Boom Swagger, who do everyone’s for the show, and as you can see from the group photo (which wasn’t everyone just to clarify) that they went for a consistent look this year, not exactly my styling request but I think it worked and I did like that everyone looked cohesive and unified.

so just a side note about the skirt; I ended up making the train removable, it was a layer of pattern paper that went down to the floor, and I glued the coffee filters on(and they are used ones, hence the coffee grounds still in tact). 

To the left is a photo of myself on the runway, and to the right is Janyssa in motion. Funny story; right before she stepped up to the runway she bent over and her top came unsnapped (I know it makes me look bad but I mean I could've used safety pins, so at least I put in legitimate closures despite their failure). She was so good at keeping her cool, just walked with one arm behind her holding her top on, kept calm and collected, and a slow even pace, and THIS is why I have her model my stuff, because nothing phases her, I know I'd have completely panicked.

The Missoula Tweed Ride

The Tweed Ride has finally come and gone, and after occupying my thoughts, and to- do lists for the last two months, I'm now left with reflections, lots of free time, and lots of tweed in my closet. All in all it was a huge success. We had double the crowd (around 100), and many more activities planned.

prepping! mopping/ sweeping? or pushing the dirt into
 the floor cracks? hard to tell the difference

I was able to put the finishing touches on peoples outfits the day of with I Need Tweed, but let go of the idea of expecting  money from it. We decided this year we'd just suggest people donate whatever they can for what they use.

The doors we put against the bike pit and tied twine cob
webs to

Also I rode a 3-wheel bike for the ride, which looked really neat, but was really hard to maneuver. I'm pretty sure everyone who saw me trying to get up the hills on the dirt path, and take sharp turns resulting in a collision with the curb, thought I was drunk. I would like to clarify that I was not.



Our first stop was for a photo, taken by Sean Kochel, who uses all antique photo equipment and prints on wet plates. It takes him about 10 minutes to get the camera focused (which was a challenge for kids), and then for the photo itself, we had to stay perfectly still for 30 seconds which sounds easy, but in those 30 seconds, every peep makes you want to giggle, and you suddenly get an itch under you nose, or feel like you have to cough. For the photo we also were fortunate to have "Doc" supply his antique bike collection to put in the foreground and make us look more authentic.

 We then went on, stopping for tea twice; once at Buttercup Cafe which was very quaint. The lady who runs this new little cafe set out homegrown apples, pastries, tea, and coffee all for free! The second stop was at Bernice's Bakery for more tea, and we then concluded our ride at Free Cycles where we ate soup, listened to music, got photos taken by Annie Florin, had a fashion show, and gave out prizes.