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.