a peek behind Lark Studio...

Have a Heart Bazaar

It's that time of year again folks! Time for Costen Floors' huge annual yard sale to benefit the American Heart Association. This year the event has a new name - Have a Heart Bazaar. In addition to yard sale items, this year's event will have local crafter/artists, food vendors and other great items for sale.

I'll be there with great yard sale deals! Housewares (bedding, vases, etc.), furniture (Ikea chairs), plus-sized clothing (size 22-24 casual, business), records, and tons of craft supplies (fabric, knitting needles, yarn, etc.), and much, much more all priced to move!

Come see me and buy some stuff!

Have a Heart Bazaar
Saturday July 31, 2010*
8:00 am - 1:00 pm

Costen Floors (Parking lot)
9840 Mayland Drive
Henrico, VA 23233
(Between Gaskins and Pemberton)

*Rain date Saturday August 7, 2010 8:00 am - 1:00 pm

Thrifting Extravaganza!

I often tweet about my thrifting finds around Richmond. Last month a few friends who are also into thrifting had had it with me. They wanted in on the places so we made a plan to have a big thrifting extravaganza on yesterday. Unfortunately cold & flu season, a sprained ankle and some fabulous international travel dwiddled the group down to just three of us - but we still had a blast!

The Loot - photo by Dawn Anderson

Kelly, Nicole and I hit my favorite spots on the Southside and I scored some great supplies for Lark Studio. Then we had the best fish & chips and luxe desserts for lunch, then hit Kelly's hot spots in Lakeside. It was really fun shopping with the girls and I vow to do it more often!

Chocolate pudding courtesy of Sine Irish Pub

Apple Cobbler courtesy of Sine Irish Pub

Yard Sale!

Costen Floors is hosting a community yard sale this weekend to benefit the American Heart Association. Come out and see me and about 20 other vendors on Saturday from 8am - 1pm. I'll have household items, craft supplies, fabric, men's clothing and more for a steal! Details and directions are below:
 

Yard Sale!

 Saturday August 29th
8:00 am - 1:00 pm
Costen Floors (Parking lot)
9840 Mayland Drive (between Gaskins & Pemberton)
Click here for map to get you there!

Envelopes + Eye glasses = Jewelry

For the past few years the craft world has been buzzing with a variety of ways to show off the wonderful graphic design work of security envelopes. Security envelopes? You know, the things your bills come in and sometimes junk mail when it wants to look official. If you ever take a look at them you will see that clearly the paper industry has hired graphic designers to create them. The prints are phenomenal!

For a few months earlier this year I was collecting envelopes and waiting for an idea to strike that wasn't a duplication of what was already out there. Back in April the talented Jennifer Perkins of Naughty Secretary Club did a great post on her blog about re-using old eyeglasses and creating pendants. Taking inspiration from that I decided to mesh the two and came up with these:

I have to say I'm loving the look of eye glass glass even when left plain and I think the distinct shapes of the glass play well with the graphic design of the papers. I also love when a project exposes me to great new products. Tulip® Soft Fabric Paint is rocking my world right now. Who knew it would work so well covering paper! (okay - I know paper is technically a fiber and its fiber paint, but cut me some slack) I had the pink, yellow and blue paint as samples from a demonstration from my work at JoAnn Fabrics a while back and never used them until now. I will definitely be looking for other projects to try the paint.

I have a huge stack of these security envelopes so look for more jewelry and other uses of them soon!

Trash to treasure: Jewelry displays

Like most professional crafters, my display set-up for Lark Studio is ever changing. For a while I have struggled with a way to display jewelry. Most commercial jewelry displays are pretty generic and I didn't want to copy the creative displays I have seen. Back in March I stumbled across two spice cabinets in very good condition. The cabinets were from the early 1970's and were only $7 for the both. They each had 2 inch shelves which I thought would be perfect to hold folded earring/jewelry cards and a wood door which screamed for screw hooks for necklaces.  During the spring I also stumbled upon a great deal on some Anna Maria Horner fabric at Quilting Adventures. Two of her Drawing Room prints were right in line with the brand colors for Lark Studio and I decided to give that look a go for my 2009 display.  With that decided the original dark brown wood tones of the cabinets didn't really fit in and just like in other aspects of my life I decided to lighten them up.

A few cans of primer and white spray paint later we have this:

(you can see more photos in my Flickr stream)

The front has a simple padded inlay of scrap foam core board covered with 1/2 inch batting and then one of the fabric prints. The back is the same fabric print glued to a piece of white poster board and stapled into the cabinet frame with my new heavy duty staple gun. And bonus - the fabric on the back are scraps sewn together with the seams covered by shelves and bars on the back! I used 1/2 inch white cup hooks screwed into the wood frame of the front door making sure they cleared the shelves inside so the door could close properly. The rest of the cabinet is just the original cabinet painted white. I even reused all of the original hardware. I didn't completely cover the spice cabinet info on the front cover. I kind of like the fact that there is still some of its former life showing through. If I find that its distracting from the jewelry I'll go in and cover it with some plain white paper.

I'm diggin' the whole creative reuse in my display pieces and have another trash to treasure piece I'm working on to display my clocks. Are any of your display pieces (for business or home) trash to treasure?

Thrifting Thursday: Hoops, hoops and more hoops

The Bins is getting to be a dangerous place. What's The Bins you ask? My name for the Goodwill Warehouse Outlet on Midlothian Turnpike here in Richmond. It's the last stop for all the items that didn't sell in any of the area Goodwill stores. It all comes to the center and is placed in bins. You purchase items by the pound at a steal: $.59 per pound for housewares and $1.99 per pound for clothing with price breaks after 20 pounds. It never ceases to amaze me what people donate to Goodwill and what society is willing to let go into our trash stream.

I went to The Bins this week with Craig to just hang out and spend some time. I walked out with this:

  

111 embroidery hoops. For $3.57. With tax. Yep...let that sink in for a minute.

I have a problem, I know. But literally - these were headed for the trash and I couldn't let that happen. They are all in perfectly good, if not new condition. Once I found about five hoops, I started looking for them all over the warehouse. I then realized I needed a cart and I'm sure I looked a site walking to get one with about 10 embroidery hoops on each arm! Finding them quickly became a communal affair - other shoppers were finding them for me and adding them in my cart! So, for all you crafters - if you embroider, want to learn, or use hoops for wall art and want some reclaimed hoops for a good price - hit me up in the comments. I'm off to scope out Jenny Hart's cool embroidery site - Sublime Stitching. Embroidery world here I come!

Goodwill of Central Virginia Richmond Warehouse Outlet
Address: 6301 Midlothian Turnpike, Richmond, VA 23225
NEW Hours: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 8:00 AM - 6:00 PM
Phone: (804) 521-4921

Back down (crafty) memory lane...

...I stumbled on this rubbermaid bin...it kinda made me laugh...it took me way back...back down crafty memory lane...

Okay, Minnie I am not. 

While cleaning up for the crafty yardsale that didn't happen, I came across a bin in the attic labled "miscellaneous". I'm pretty good with remembering all the stuff we have, but I couldn't recall what could possibly be in this bin. It was stored with my crafty stuff so the possibilities were endless...

The bin turned out to be a crafty, mini time capsule. It was full of unfinished projects and project ideas from years gone by. It's been funny to see what was hot back then - ideas that were popping up left and right on NEW sites like Craftster.org and such. Yep - some of these ideas are from as far back as 2004. 

I've decided to clear out the box by completing the projects. So far its been a fun break from production crafting - kinda like visiting a good, old girlfriend! First out of the box were some old vinyl albums and a beat-up clock. The idea was to manipulate the vinyl into record album bowls, to possibly try my hand at cutting the vinyl for cuffs or jewelry, or to make record album clocks. Well, last week I went a little clock crazy. I thrifted a few more clocks to reuse the quartz mechanisms and finally put a few of these together. I forgot how much fun making stuff from junk was!

Next out of the bin - cassette tapes!

Deals and steals

Hello blogosphere! Long time no hear from, eh? I'm busy clearing out the studio, attic and any other space I can find around the house this week in preparation for a yard sale next weekend. Crafty maven Kelly McCants (Modern June and Oilcloth Addict) and I are having a huge sale to clear out the excess. We will be selling fabrics, tons of display items (baskets, risers, hat stands, etc.), jewelry findings, finished crafts and more! Come on out for some deals and a few steals and bring a friend or two!

Saturday June 20th

8:00 am - 12:00 noon

1308 Claremont Ave., 23227

(Northside)

Thrifting Thursday: P-touch Label Maker

I have really been trying to get my crafting space super organized this year. I am a chronic labeler (Group says "Welcome Dawn"). I would smack a label on my DH if he stood still long enough. I semi-invested in a nice label maker a few months ago for the house. Before that I'd been taking my list of labels to work and using the uber-nice P-Touch 8000 label maker there.

Well, a few weeks ago at a yard sale, what do I find?

Yep, a P-touch 8000...hidden under some random household items, for only $10 and it works perfectly. The P-touch normally retails in the range of $500.00. Now I'm conflicted...which one do I keep and which one goes to DH for ebay? Decisions, decisions, decisions...

Thrifting Thursday: Summer Handbag

Last Saturday was a washout for us.  Tropical Storm Ernesto rolled through all day on Friday and into Saturday morning, so no yard sales were to be found.  We still did our "thrifting" thing though, hitting up our favorite Salvation Army store.  I didn't score any great finds, but I did come home and finish a project that I had gotten early this summer.

I found this handbag on clearance at a local Junior League thrift store.

I love these types of finds...almost perfect except for one thing.  It never ceases to amaze me what people will get rid of.  The bag looked as though it had never been carried.  The interior was impeccably clean, it had a good zipper, no dirt or obvious wear on the outside.  The only thing wrong was a busted handle.  Of course, I could fix that.  All the parts were still on the bag, and I'm a die-hard fan of Crafter's Pick The Ultimate craft glue.  And, I had the perfect color silk flower sitting in my stash to coordinate with the interior of the bag.

So for under $2.00 and about 1 hour total time I have a nice end of summer bag.  I love thrifting!