Ginny's Small Studio

Dilemma

(Artist: Lenard Buffet for an Ella Fitzgerald album)

Here is the dilemma...we want to save the post office because we love our post offices and the wonderful people who work there. So we pledge to mail more cards, more letters, more post cards and more packages, but then a new piece of information comes to the front. Read this:

If all US households decided to start paying their bills online, the annual benefits would be:

Saving 16.5 million trees

Saving enough energy to power every house in San Francisco for a year

Decreasing greenhouse gases equivalent to removing 155,000 cars from the road

What is a thoughtful person to do? Save jobs or save trees?

The stencil words I made for our room at the antique mall a few weeks ago and shared with you have sold out. So I made more. This isn't as easy as it seems since each stencil alphabet only has one of each letter. This really limits the number of words that can be made from each set.

"Jingle" in the background is 8" tall! To buy a new 8" stencil alphabet cost hundreds of dollars.

 

Spooky

John cut wood.  I painted wood.  We glued.  We clamped.  We were happy with the results. 

These particular stencils had been used over and over and had several layers of paint which suggested Halloween to us. So we made up as many words as we could and off they all go to our booth at Brothers Antique Mall in Medina OH.

We also framed a few more of the numbers from the 1920s London bus destination scroll. I love how they look, but then I have told you that before.

The other spooky thing is our local Borders store with the huge "going out of business" banner in front. We went in for the first time since they started to close. It is a shambles. It looks like the worst second hand store. There seems to be piles of stuff on sale that I have never before seen at a Borders. Chairs and empty display racks are jumbled up towards the front of the store. Bookshelves are mostly bare. Half of the lights were off so there was an eeerie feeling to the whole store and it was so quiet.

I will really miss this Borders.  I will miss the perky clerk with the enviable curly hair and lovely Irish accent.  I will miss the great craft section of books and the nice selection of stationery items.  I will miss the live music in the beautiful gardens and patio.  I will miss the great selection of magazines and the easy parking.  I will miss walking out of the movie theater and right into Borders. We have a Barnes and Noble nearby, but the parking is more difficult and the selection of books I like is fairly bleak. Our Borders had a wonderful vibe to it that was very welcoming and always full of people.  I will really miss our Borders.

Odds and Ends

Last week we filled our room at the antique mall with 1920s linen bus numbers.  They sold the next day. Back we went and put up the remainder and that same day all the single numbers sold...all 17 of them! So again we spent our week cutting and framing bits of those rolling signs that tell one where the transport is going. Our wall at Brothers Antique Mall (Medina OH) is now loaded with 1940s London bus signs.  I forgot to take my camera so you will just have to be satisfied with seeing the one that came home because it wouldn't fit on the wall.

I am so enamoured with these signs and we have quite a few to sell at our antique mall shop. Too big to ship. Sorry.

John and I really enjoyed the Small Studio Workshop Series that we did in 2010.  We had to cancel it for this year due to some pesky medical stuff, but we are planning our Series again for 2012 and we have lined up Keith Lobue and Michael deMeng already! All info will be available on this blog when dates have been confirmed.  I am awaiting word from other instructors.

Last, but certainly not least, I am abandoning John for a whole week while I go make books at Pam Sussman's.  She hosts and teaches 6 students in her home studio for a one week intensive workshop.

Here is what I made last time:

I can't wait.  Working with Pam is always fun, well organised and so instructive.  I haven't made anything artsy in quite awhile so I am excited to begin.

While I am gone my etsy shops will be closed and will reopen Aug 27th or 28th. 

Today at Our Antique Mall Booth

John and I have spent the week cutting and framing a destination scroll from a 1928 London Transit bus.  In the 20s, London was recovering from WorldWar I.  Cars and trucks were still considered a somewhat new form of transportation.  

Today John hung the framed numbers in our little room at the antique mall. Regular readers will understand how difficult it was for me to part with these graphically wonderful pieces. We sold five others before we even had these hung. I am quite in love with these train, bus and subway signs. They have been showing up in decorating magazines with increasing regularity. 

Last week we added these other British bus destination signs.

Below are a few views of our room at the Brothers' Antique Mall on Rte 3 in Medina OH.

I may be late to discover the blog In My House. I have really enjoyed looking at the flamboyant photos of this (maybe Danish?) blog. The blogger also likes the vinatge destination signs.

And other signs, too:

It is an absolutely glorious day here in Northeastern Ohio.  I am going outside!

What is it About White?

We went shopping for vintage yesterday and as always I am immediately drawn to the booths that feature a white theme. Drawn to them like a moth to a light.

This booth was so inviting and so pretty.

I like how a little bit of silver was added to the white to give the display some sparkle and reflection.

Now that I am looking at the photos I took, I am wondering if I was just unconsciously drawn by the little number 5 in the background.

In our antique room at Brothers  Antique Mall we started out with all white tables and display units but quickly the bright reds of advertising, the primary gasoline station numbers and the wood boxes took over.  Oh well.  

What always draws you in.

Oops...Forgot to Blog

Where did the week go?  We were just busy doing stuff.

We went to an auction.

We went antiquing.

We added stuff to our antique mall room.

We attended a basketball playoff.  Our grandson's team won!

We had breakfast out with my son and his family.  Love that.

We did lots of mundane stuff.

I may not have blogged, but I did add some things to my Etsy shop.

Here is the question of the day: 

What is your most memorable Valentine's Day?

 

 

Today at Our Antique Mall Booth

John and I spent the majority of the weekend sprucing up items to take into our little room at Brothers' Antique Mall. When we went in last week, we were informed that this weekend is a big open house at the shop and vendors were expected to have their booth chock full (no problem there) and at  least a little bit decorated for the holidays.  Maybe this would be a little problem.  

When I married John, I gave all my Christmas decorations to my daughter.  After all, they were decorations from a previous life and I was starting all over.  I kept a few choice ones, of course like the ones that were handmade by friends and family who were dear to me. John and I have been adding just a couple of special things each year, but we are still a bit sparse to my eyes. My daughter was thrilled to have them and drags them all out each year in her own home.  They are fond memories of her childhood.

So, what to do in our small space that would be, or at least look old, be inexpensive and not look too shabby.  One of the things we did was take old brass stencils, line them with old music pages and mount them on wood.

We were pleased with how they turned out and wished we had more brass stencils on hand to make more.  We did make about 6 of them, I think.  Here is how they looked in our booth today.

Here is how our booth looked today:

Good Mail...Again!

Earlier this week I received a wonderful box of goodies from my friend Judi Delgado in CA.  Today from closer to home friend Jane (Ambrogi) Becerra, I received two awesome sugar skulls.

Sugar Skulls are a tradition during the celebration of Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday honoring and celebrating those loved ones who have died.  It is a day when gravesites are cleaned up and decorated. Personal shrines may be erected and filled with sugar skulls and the departed's favorite foods and drink. The final touch is to scatter marigolds around which are believed to lure the spirits to the offerings.  It is not a morbid holiday, but rather a festive party holiday honoring those we have lost and miss.

Thank you Jane for these wonderful skulls.  You did a superb job making them and I am honored that you shared them with me.

Each week, John and I drive down to the antique mall where we have a room, a very small room, all to ourselves to decorate and fill with vintage and antique goodies to sell. Today was our day for this week.

We added some new things such as these burlap coffee bags:

And we added this small red bookcase and filled it with old jars filled with old stuff and more doll parts and we added a good assortment of those very useful old cheese boxes and just a ton of stuff.

We are really enjoying this little project of ours.  John loves the hunt (as I do, too) and I love displaying the goods.  We have been moderately successful so far and we have learned quite a bit in the process.  It is always good to keep learning and challenging ourselves.

Our Room at the Antique Mall Today

Today was our day to go clean and fluff up our room at Brothers Antique Mall in Medina. We love doing this.  First, we get to see what has sold and second we (me) get to move stuff around and restock.  We have this room and a glass case located in another room.

Next to the glass case is an empty corner.  Well, it was empty until today.  A new vendor is moving in.  She has painted the wall a deep russet and built a distressed wood display wall unit.  It is beautiful.  That empty corner now looks so inviting that it has improved the entire room.

We think (no, we are sure)we had a bit of shoplifting in our booth.  Time for cameras to deter.  It really upset me. We had shoplifting in our store years ago and I took it so personally.  I have always felt we treated our customers as friends and in fact, many of them became good friends over the years.  Of course, at our booth, they took expensive items.

We are always surprised at how much stuff we sell and yet the room always look full when we stop by. We are having so much fun with this project, both the hunt for goods and the sale of goods.  It is especially wonderful to do this together.  John really loves the hunt and outlasts me no matter where we are looking: malls, estate sales, swap meets, antique fairs.  He will look in every corner and pile.  I am more a scanner perhaps from my years of shopping trade shows for The Creative Block shelves. 

We are planning a long car trip across the states next year to find more stuff.  Fun.  A road trip and an antique hunt rolled into one is my idea of bliss.  John's too.  He is the best!

Workshops:  Next Keith Lo Bue in Oct.  and Lyne Perrella in Nov.  There are spaces available in all workshops but not many.  Sign up now.  These are the final two workshop series weekends we are offering.

Oh Brother!

We did it. We have a tiny, little room at Brother's Antique Mall & Annex.  We have spent the last three days slowly adding things and arranging stuff. It has been so much fun.  The sign above really says "Small Studio".  

I tend to buy small stuff and John tends to buy bigger stuff.  It only took a minute to realize how much small stuff it takes to fill a booth.  So, we are a work in progress at this point, adding more each day. When we arrived today at the A-Mall, we were pleased to see that 5 items had already sold! Some of the things we have to offer are cabinet cards, wonderful old boxes, coffee bags, Metal signs and numbers, Victorian albums, small bottles and jars, tins and lots more.  It will grow as we get the hang of this.  It is quite different than our retail show booth.

 
Brother's is located at 6132 Wooster Pike (Rte 3 South) in Medina.  Our room is located in the main building not the annex.  Visit Brother's when you have a chance.  There is lots of good stuff in all the dealers "booths".  It has long been a good place to shop for us.

The Circus

Clown theater available in our Small Studio Emporium

Life is sometimes just a circus. 

This is one of those times.

We laugh.

We are amazed.

We go in circles.

Yes, life is just sometimes a circus.

And we are the clowns.

I pride myself on being pretty organized and in charge of making sure the chaos is held to a minimum. Somehow it has all piled up on me.  It has piled up all at once.  

Memorial weekend was filled with family BBQs, kids baseball and a run to the airport to pick up John's daughter, Kate, who has just left after visiting for a few days.  It was a great weekend and has been a really nice visit with Kate.  Kate just completed her second masters program.  We are all very proud of her.

Tomorrow I leave for a few days in Indiana while John holds down the fort here.  Coffee break Design is having their annual warehouse sale Saturday morning (1227 Indy Way, Indianapolis).  It is always a great bargain hunt.  Come and join in.

Michael deMeng arrives mid-week for his workshops here.  We can add a few more if you want to come be inspired and play with us.

Right after Michael leaves John and I begin our new endeavor. We have rented a small room in an antique mall.  We will be moving in the third week of June.  More details and photos then.  I am really excited about this.  

July Teesha and Tracy Moore will be here for their workshops and then in August we welcome Ingrid Dijkers and we will also have a booth at Stampaway in Cincinnati.  And on it goes.

This is all going to be great fun and a lot of work and a lot of excitement.  We hope all of our friends will join us at these different events and venues.  That means you, of course.