Trolling for tips...or it's gonna be a brown, BROWN booth

Shameless solicitation here....

You see this sorry excuse for a paint job?
Don't avert your eyes, cowards, LOOK. 

You know you've seen worse, albeit not lately I'm sure.
This small dresser started out black,
and had obviously been painted numerous times prior.
No before pics, which officially makes me a dink.

This is pretty much ugliness on a biblical scale.

I think it's 'cause I kept painting over tacky paint that had yet to dry.

I have a surplus of overly brown vintage furniture 

I want to sell in my booth. Catch is, I'm not sure I want it to STAY brown. 

I'd like to give it all a dreamy wash of antique white with a tea glaze over it, 

but for now, I'd just be happy not to have the butt-ugly results you see above.

Here's what I'll be working with....

Brown #1

Brown #2

Brown #3

Just a few of my brown beauties that I'd like to give
new life to and then send off to a new home.

Prior to this afternoon, I'd never painted a lick of furniture in my life.
Tuck that bit of info away into the painfully obvious files. 
But knowing it would be a steep learning curve,
I armed myself with an el-cheapo gallon of paint
from the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and got busy.

I'm pretty sure the heinousness in the first pic was due to dry brush, 

which not unlike dry socket, produces equally painful results.

Lesson learned, load the brush up with mo' paint.

FYI, I was using a brand called Color Place: Interior Latex Flat Wall, Country White. 

Never heard of Color Place, but I've got a gallon of it, 

so no sense mucking up perfectly good furntiture 

with Ralph Lauren, right?

After some trial and error, 

here's the not-quite-so-heinous side....

Still nothing you'd want in your home or your booth, but better.

Right? Please say yes.

Hooray, I managed to finally get it right
on a sad little lonely plank of wood!

Cut to the chase....purpose of this post is to shamelessly solicit
my infinitely more talented friends for helpful hints
and/or heretofore unshared trade secrets
on how to re-paint old furniture.
In my perfect world, painter extraordinaire Troy from Junk Exchange
would swoop in like the superhero he is and save me,
but I know he's busy, busy getting ready for Warrenton.

So the onus is upon on all of you, my friends. 

Links will be happily accepted, as will prayers to the junking gods.

Off for now, whiteness awaits!

XOXO,

~ Anne

Thrift Store Bonanza....or how my dog offered himself up for the greater good

I don't know about you, but at the tippy-top
of my list of things I don't want to hear at 6am Monday morning is this:

"Honey, you're gonna have to take the dog in to the vet...he had an encounter with a porcupine."

Oh no he di'int.

Hubby would've been more than happy to take him in 

as he has done before, but he was due at school bright and early (physics teacher), 

plus I was off work today. Fair enough. Still, it sucked. 

I had been up until 2am working on the booth and the blog, 

and I had serious brain fuzz going on. You want me to do whaaaaa? 

Handsome husband bid me farewell, and off I went into town.

Got to the vet's office at 8am sharp and dropped off our boy Havok,
who actually came out pretty well, all things considered.
He only had about a dozen quills, which is not bad at all,
if you know how bad it can be. No? You say you don't?
Google "pit bull vs porcupine", but only if you have a strong constitution.

Dropped the dog off with time to kill, 

so I did what any good junker would do: I hit the thrift stores. Yeah, baby!

First up was my fave consignment store 

where I unearthed this sign that I had somehow, 

inconceivably, missed on all my prior visits.

Could you not just DIE?

This baby is gonna (now and forever) have a "NFS" tag on it! 

It's big, about 3 1/2 feet tall and 2 1/2 feet wide. 

I plan on lugging this puppy with me wherever I hang my proverbial shingle.

As if that weren't fab enough, I hit the junking lotto 

with a series of finds that were only $1 each.

The bell: $1

The silver serving pieces: Two for $1

The hatbox? A DOLLAR! I mean, look at those colors! 

How could a day so wrong turn out so, so right???

Bless Havok's heart, had he not taken one for Team Fiona & Twig, 

who knows where these gems might've ended up?

Still no call from the vet, so I ran a few blocks over to Salvation Army. 

Now I usually can't find anything there of interest, 

but the junking gods tossed me a bone (sorry, more bad dog puns) 

and revealed more swell loot and swag.

Badminton rackets, 99¢ each.

Since I've been wigging about wall decor for my booth,
I saw some primo potential in these.

Sconces. Going, going, gone for a George Washington each. I may paint these.

Nifty wicker thingamajigger. What do you s'pose it was?
Check out the pocket sized Flemish art I scored, too.

Sweet little bird (quail?) on silver serving tray.
Second verse, same as the first....a buck.

An interesting bit of framed ephemera....
a speech Herbert Hoover gave to Wilmington College in 1948.

Large wicker basket for $3.

Best of all....a puppy healed and whole again? PRICELESS.

Happy Monday, Y'all!

~ Anne

A thirst quenched....

An eruption of color lit up the late afternoon sky
after a steady rain this afternoon. Driving home from work,
I phoned my husband and said "Get the camera. Now.
There's a rainbow outside like you would not believe!"
One of these days, I'll learn to take my camera with me,
but after seeing these images he captured,
I'm thankful he was the one behind the lens.

Wow.

It's been a brutal Summer here in the Texas Hill Country;
the water supply has been substantially depleted as a result
of the extended drought. It's also gone down as one of the
hottest Summer's on record, with temperatures lingering
well over 100 degrees for weeks on end.
Crops and gardens dying. Wells drying up.

And then as if by divine providence.....

Prayers answered.

We've received a good soaking this past week,
and the parched earth audibly heaves a grateful sigh.

Just beyond a grove of trees 

across from our property.

There are no words, except "thank you, Father...."

On second thought.....

Ever go back sometimes and re-read your blog entries?
And what sounded wry and ironic and erudite at 3am
suddenly sounds puerile and petulant by the light of day?
Welcome to my world.

Kindly consider this posting an apology
for my for carnival-themed entry yesterday.
Upon re-reading it, it feels jumbled and a bit peevish,
neither of which I want to convey to anyone gracious enough
to read what I have to say.

Mea Culpa.

Unrelated to that, I'm sort of obsessing about
how to decorate my booth. Anybody know a good source
of either canvas or muslin backdrops? And by good, I of course mean cheap. 
In particular, I'm looking for something to cover up the fugly pegboard.
I'm not the least bit crafty and I can't sew a stitch, so easy is the name of the game.

Ideas?

Have a blessed Sunday....

~ Anne

This post was edited to remove

any photos not taken by myself, Anne Lorys.

Musings from the Midway....

"Yessir, folks, step right up and see Lola,
the slippery, slithery Cobra Girl: She walks, she talks,
she crawls on her belly like a reptile, a leapin', screamin',
creepin', crawlin' mawnster! She's eleven feet lawng and she's ALIVE!"

"Now move along, move along...just follow us this way
and peek behind the curtain, if you dare.......

She's perplexed, she's bamboozled,
she's LIT-ER-ALLY flyin, without a net: She's......

Annie, the Clueless Shop Dealer! "

How the heck-fire do you guys do it?
I have a newfound respect for all of you shop dealers, believe-you-me.
The sheer amount of time invested in research,
acquiring inventory, cleaning, refinishing, pricing, booth set-up, travel time....
if I didn't love what lies ahead of me so darn much,
I'd likely feel pretty overwhelmed right about now.

Pricing is proving to be a prickly point (too much alliteration, I know).

After signing my lease for my first booth space at the local antique mall,
I took a leisurely tour of every booth there (well over 50)
and jotted down how each dealer had priced their wares.
To say they were all over the map would be a gross understatement.
One dealer had vintage suitcases priced at $15,
another had almost exactly the same thing going for $55.
To be fair, the mall I'm going to be in is one of the better ones in the area.
In my research of other malls, I've come across lots of dealers
who didn't know Milk Glass from Milk Duds....
venues where the descriptors "rare" and "antique" were tossed about
rather freely, as many items designated as such were clearly neither.

Methinks I'm going to stick to just calling everything I sell
"vintage" as a sort of pre-emptive CYA move.

See how I feverishly whip around that muslin and cheesecloth
in a booth decorating frenzy?

Trust me though when I assure you that I'm not complaining,
not by a longshot. I'm loving every minute of this,
addled and discombobulated though I might often feel.
Just sharing thoughts here....keepin' it real, like I've promised you
I will always, always do. I just feel a little out of my league,
especially when I compare myself to the likes of you pros.
Here you guys are gearing up for Warrenton, the Mother of All Shows,
and I'm having a minor wigout over how to price some twee tchotchkes. Sheesh.

Hmmm, maybe being a midway denizen isn't so bad after all....

The way I see it,the chief role of the carnival barker
is to charm and to sell, correct?
And rather than luring them in to gawk at poor old hapless
Lola the Cobra Gal, my aim is to weave a fanciful world
within the walls of my booth. Isn't that what we all try to do?
To create beauty, to expose the unusual,
to sell our customers on the possibilities
of (warning:overused cliché alert) thinking outside the box, stylistically speaking?
To lure them in with the unexpected and to
present a challenge to view the world through fresh eyes?

Rewrite in progress: " Yessir, folks, step right up and see the Amazing Annie,
proprietoress ex-tra-or-din-aire!
Right this way ladies and gents, into the world of Fiona & Twig,
a world of whimsy and wonder and just a whiff of danger....."

I think I like the sound of that.

Wonder if I can hire him for my grand opening....

This post was edited to remove
any photos not taken by myself, Anne Lorys.

9/11/2009

God Bless America

I rented my very first booth today!!!!!!!

 This is the banner I'll be hanging in my booth!

Do you think that was enough exclamation marks in the title?

Naaaah, I think not. Here's a few more...  !!!!!!!!!!!

Can ya tell I'm just a wee bit excited?

Doin' the happy dance here,
I cannot believe that it's FINALLY a reality!

Here's the scoop:

This is where I'll be located.

It's a well established antique mall with tons of foot traffic.
It's a gorgeous, two-story, turn of the century building
complete with creaky wooden floors and a tin ceiling.
It houses over 20,000 sq ft of antique bliss! Here's a few interior pics...

Lots of nifty retro signage above the front entrance.

Didn't I tell ya the tin ceiling was pretty rad?

Mmmm, hmmm, thought so.

Hey looky, we're headed up the stairs
to where my booth space is located!

I even love the stairs here!! Get a load of that patina.
Errr, maybe I oughta turn the gush factor down just a tad, ya think?

Okay now, kindly disregard the not so cool crap other dealer's stuff
in the space right now and picture all my rusty, chippy, industrial,
dreamy treasures instead. Got that image locked in? Okay, here's my spot...

Angle #1....I'm just off the stairs,
so I'll be getting loads of traffic!

Thankfully, the cruddy looking carpet is going,
leaving me with the glorious, original hardwood floors beneath.
Yippee Skippy!

Angle #2:

Angle #3:

That black bookcase might be staying, not sure yet.
It doesn't exactly rock my world, but I guess I could make it work for me.

More views...

So whaddaya think? It's not my dream space, but it's a start!

Here's a review of the mall that I cribbed from the web:

★★★★★ by Yahoo User
This is great fun! You can spend a couple of hours here poking around the many different dealer's areas. You'll find antique dolls toys vintage clothing coca cola memorabilia books china furniture and all the stuff you can remember from either your life your parents' life or your grandparents' life. The prices are great and the building itself is vast. The wooden floors and high ceilings sets you in the mood for years gone by. Poke around at your heart's content and find a few treasures to take home. Also because it is right in downtown Kerrville take some time to walk through some of the art galleries museums and shops all within walking distance. And...stop and have lunch at one of the good eateries right in downtown - lots of choices!

Here's two of the owners. Nice, nice ladies!
They even posed for this pic for me!

I head downtown bright and early to pay my deposit.
I don't think I'll actually taking possession until after Warrenton,
so that's good news for all you dealer buddies
who'll be selling there....you hear that Theresa? Mindy? Troy?
That means I'll be making one last hurrah
to stock up on inventory. Bring your good junk, k? ;-)

Big hugs to everyone who has walked this walk with me thus far!

XOXO,

Anne