Frugal Picture Update

Budget, budget, budget seems to be my mantra for this year.  Keeping that in mind, when I was feeling like changing out the artwork in a frame that I have hanging in our Master Bathroom W.C., my options were to print something out from what I have saved on my computer or use an image from a two-year-old Cavallini calendar I’ve held onto.

I chose to go with the calendar.  I still have about five images left in this calendar.  I’ve used it before on several projects, one of which was shadowboxes I did here that are hanging over our bed.

I just used the existing image to cut the calendar page to fit.  I even left the old image in and put the new image over it.  This way I don’t have to worry about putting it somewhere {because I’ll never remember if/when I go to look for it}.

New image, new look! It satisfied my urge for something new and didn’t cost me anything.

Linking up with:

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday at Coastal Charm

Inspire Me Tuesday at A Stroll Thru Life

Swing Into Spring at DIY by Design

Treasure Hunt Thurs. at From My Front Porch To Yours

Be Inspired at Common Ground

 

The Artist Behind The Etsy ~ The French Marketplace

Being a part of the Etsy community, not only as a seller but as a customer, I have come across many talented individuals.  With this new series, I hope to introduce you to some of these creative people, finding out where they find their creativity, and a little bit more about them.

Today I’d like to introduce you to Kathleen of The French Marketplace.  You may know Kathleen from her blog, Musings From A French Cottage.  Kathleen just started her Etsy shop this year, but has filled it with lots of French goodies!

Thank you so much Kathy, for inviting me to post today.  I am honored to be a part of The Artist Behind the Etsy series!

 

Hi everyone!  My name is Kathleen.  I am mom to four and wife to my amazingly wonderful husband.  We have a yellow lab named Jack and we love to camp, work in the yard, go to the beach, and play baseball.

 

 

 

 

  I am the happy owner of an Etsy shop called The French Marketplace and I write a blog called Musings From a French Cottage.  I have this certain affinity for all things rusty, crusty, and old.  Cool stuff by the roadside just makes me happy.  There is so much potential in that pile of goodness!

Fifteen years ago, my husband and I married and moved into our new house.  When my husband's parents came to visit, my father in law carried in with him an old sewing machine cabinet that he had found at a yard sale.  It still had the machine inside.  He said that when he saw it, he thought I would love it, so he bought it.  He was right, I did love it and so began my love affair with yard sales and flea markets.  I never knew until then what treasures await and what amazing things I could do with these things.  My next find was an old cabinet that I painted to go in our living room.  I then began hoarding collecting furniture, frames, lamps, and old mirrors.  I was having such fun painting furniture and making our house a home.  I was painting lamps and frames, finding new uses for old objects and having a wonderful time doing it.

 

 

 

 

  Suddenly, our home began to overflow with all of my creations and it was then that I joined my sister in law in her booth at a flea market to sell these items.  From there, I became a vendor at On A Whim in Luckets, VA with my mom.  By that time, we had 3 little ones with the youngest being just under a year old and I had to slow down.  By the time I was pregnant with our fourth, I decided to put everything on hold for awhile.  My family was my priority and everything else could wait.  I continued to be creative during nap time but on a much smaller scale.  I enjoyed sewing and I made pretty dresses and baby blankets for our little ones.  I started creating gift tags and cards that I would give to friends and family for birthdays and weddings and baby showers.  Fast forward five years...when friends started commenting and asking me to make things for them too, I decided to open up an Etsy shop.  The French Marketplace was born!

 

Etsy is perfect for me because I am able to feed my creative side and share it with others - all during nap time!

 

 

 

 

 

I love to make pretty things.  Found objects, paper, rubber stamps, furniture, paint...these are my tools.  Old typography, the color blue, a rustic ruffled tote...these things inspire me.  Inspiration abounds in an old pile of pallets, a lonely chair, or layers of tattered grain sacks all stacked one on top of the other, pretty stripes peeking out.  This triggers the urge to create, to run to my studio and jot down ideas, make lists.  I am especially inspired by French Decor as well as the idea behind French Decor.  Everything has value and can be used again - sometimes even for a different purpose than originally intended and I like that.  Treasured objects are passed down and used for years and everything tells a story.  Creating lovely things in the French Country Farmhouse style is what my shop is all about.  You will discover items ranging from the occasional painted piece of furniture to weathered baskets and paper goods, tags, and stationary.  Pillows, dishes, and pretty laundry bags are on the horizon as well.

 

 

 

 



 

 

Creativity brings such satisfaction because of the happiness it brings to others.  When I am able to make something and someone says that it was just the thing that they were looking for, that encourages me to keep doing what I'm doing!

 

Thanks so much Kathy, for inviting me to be a participant on your beautiful blog.  It's such an honor to be included among fellow Etsy artists!

 

Have a great week everyone!

xo and God Bless,

Kathleen

Thank you, Kathleen!  You can visit Kathleen’s Etsy shop here and her blog here.

 

Comment Kickback

It seems there is some kind of glitch with Blogger and comments coming through to email.  Have you been getting this email?

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

***********@yahoo.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the server for the recipient domain yahoo.com by mta6.am0.yahoodns.net. [98.136.216.25].
The error that the other server returned was:
554 5.7.9 Message not accepted for policy reasons.  See http://postmaster.yahoo.com/errors/postmaster-28.html

It seems when I leave a comment I get the above message in my email {mine goes into my Spam folder for some reason}.  Some comments don’t come through to my email at all and I am guessing some of you are going through the same thing.

There are comments when I go to my Blogger dashboard.  They are just not coming through into my email.  Since I haven’t changed anything, and bloggy friends have emailed me about having the same issue, it stands to reason that it is a Blogger issue.  One that, hopefully, they will have resolved soon.

Just wanted to let you know you are not alone with this issue!  In the meantime, if you ever have any questions for me on one of my posts {or just want to say “Hi!”} feel free to just shoot me an email directly ~ kpassarette(at)yahoo(dot)com. 

Shopping Find ~ Johnson Bros. Dishes

I went in to my booth the Monday after Easter to mark down the prices on some pieces.  The end of the month is my last day there.  I did take the time to walk around a little bit before I left that day.  I found these four Johnson Brothers Friendly Village dishes.

They are not very big and have a bowl shape to them.  Edited: They are not soup bowls, they are smaller, about the size of a saucer only bowl shaped. For $20.00 I figured I would bring them home and add to this collection that I seem to find every so often here and there.

Now here’s a question for you.  What are they for?  My first thought was individual side dishes for vegetables.  If you know, I’d really like to find out their actual function.

Linking up with:

Nifty Thrifty Tuesday at Coastal Charm

Bottlecap Ladybugs

My granddaughter and I had a little bit of crafting time last week, while I was babysitting.  She is 3 1/2 now and when I watch her we seem to go from watching television, to dressing up in my high heels and jewelry, to making a secret hiding place in the hall closet {with plump pillows and a flashlight, of course}.  This particular rainy, windy day she came into my craft/sewing room with me and saw some bottle caps I had been saving.

Since we had bought a variety package of googly eyes just the week before, I thought we might try making ladybugs.  I grabbed some red, black, and white craft paint; six bottle caps; the googly eyes; and a couple of paint brushes.  We painted the bottle caps red first.

Once they dried, we added our black dots.  My granddaughter told me that they have white dots, too, so we added a few of them.

Once the dots dried, I hot glued on the googly eyes.

When she came over again, we made a trip to the craft store to get some magnets and added them to the back. 

This was a good, quick craft project to do with a little one.  It was just long enough to keep her attention and actually complete a project!

Hydrangeas From Aldi’s

I bought these lovely hydrangeas from Aldi’s recently.

They had a special at $5.99 each.  I bought three.  One is definitely going in the urn by our front door {where it will get some shade}.  I’m not sure if I will use another in the garage door urn or plant the remaining two within the garden bed out front.  If you remember, I shared an inspiration picture of a hydrangea in a window box that I liked in this post.

Our first Spring here, I put in three pink hydrangeas on the front side of our condo, where there were some lonely hostas.  They filled in this area quite nicely and are doing very well. 

Spring ~ 2013

I’m hoping these new ones will do just as well. I’d like to give this area a nice filled in look with some perennials and annuals this year.  Especially after removing an overgrown evergreen and replacing it with a small Japanese Maple.

September ~ 2013

September ~ 2013

At any rate, I still have time to decide on what I’m doing because it is not warm enough here yet.  So for now, I will be enjoying these hydrangeas in the house!

The Artist Behind The Etsy ~ Tattered Chick

Being a part of the Etsy community, not only as a seller but as a customer, I have come across many talented individuals.  With this new series, I hope to introduce you to some of these creative people, finding out where they find their creativity, and a little bit more about them.

This morning I’d like to introduce you to my friend, Marsha of Tatteredchick Flea.  I met Marsha not long after starting my blog and always admired her creations.  She is very talented with a wide range of creative interests.  I am lucky enough to be the recipient of quite a few of her creations.  Marsha also has a blog called Tattered Chick.

Thank you, Kathy, for inviting me to participate in The Artist Behind Etsy!

Hello!  I'm Marsha, formerly known as Sassy Marsha, and now Tattered Chick!  You can find me over at my blog Tatteredchick.net where I chat about my junking adventures, Sunday drives, craft hour with Marsha or whatever pops into my head!

I opened up my Etsy shop back in 2009. At that time I was creating miniature porcelain dolls and when Etsy created a miniature section I thought it would be a great place to sell my dolls. At that time my shop was called Sassy Mini Dolls.

When I burnt out on creating dolls I turned back to what I've always loved to do, junking, going to estate sales, flea events and I started exploring other art forms such as assemblage, altered art and mixed media. 

Consequently my shop name changed to the Tatteredchick Flea and now I sell some of my flea finds, my eclectic creations from jewelry . . . . .

to altered dolls

 

to repurposed finds . . .

 

 



One man's junk is definitely another's treasure (much to my husband's dismay as I bring in old doors and windows, suitcases, rusty rakes etc into the house and incorporate them into our home decor).

I oftentimes will bring something home that I have absolutely no clue what I am going to do with it but if it calls to me I know that eventually I will be inspired to create something with it!

Inspiration comes to me from a variety of places, one of them being my vivid imagination.  I recently thought that I should have taken machine shop in high school instead of home ec (although I do do a lot of sewing) as that would come in more handy these days!  A screwdriver, hammer and soldering I can handle . . if I only knew how to weld!!!

As a thank you to Kathy and for her readers I am offering a discount at my Etsy Shop.  15% off.  Coupon code is JUNKISTA

 

Thank you, Marsha!  You can visit Marsha’s Etsy shop here and her blog here.