Needs Improvement

For a while, I’m talking a while, now I’ve been meaning to post about the Antique Station. In the beginning days of our booth I spent time browsing and snapping photos (with the handy iPhone) of booths in the mall with the intention of highlighting this space to share with you, and for inspiration in my own endeavor. In the end I posted these images on Flickr, linked my Flickr account in the sidebar here and called it a day. I’ve failed you in this endeavor until today, today I post about the Station.

Regretfully I honestly say that we by far are the winners of the Ugliest Booth Contest. Of course there’s no such thing as a booth contest, there should be but there isn’t, but in my own mind there is and we LOSE. After all that’s what I do to facilitate improvement on my part. I compare my blog to yours, I compare my booth to yours, I see things I like in mine and in yours, and I improve, that’s my intention anyway. So in this non-contest in which I am the only judge, the winner of the coolest, what I aspire our booth to achieve is - da…dadada….



S/he conjures within me a longing to sit a while, a miniature of how one may desire their living room to appear, if said living room was say in NYC and a closet. In my opinion it’s possible that a person could walk into this booth and walk away with practically everything. They would most definitely need to reupholster those chairs, and it helps that I aim to collect just this style for my own home, but admit it they created a real good retail space in this little 10 x 10 square.

There are many people selling kitchen-wares, same as me which may contribute to slow booth sales of my stock (Scott’s stock lacks nothing, we’re killing it with the Star Wars toys and Baseball cards). But the Station is stocked through with Pyrex and kitschy 50’s thingys!





Though I aim to bring home mid-century furnishings I still lean toward loving the “Shabby Chic” look and I’m not the only one. Ever since I made a small, very small, not even close to a fortune, off of that blue Shabby Chic picture frame I’ve been on the hunt for more.

Shabby Chic can be modern and it can be cool, and I don’t think this booth pulls off either of those adjectives. But if you’re going to buy one of these pretty in pink items you’re probably going to buy a few, and that my friends is a great sales technique.



I’m going to follow that last paragraph up with an, I realize this is for a little girls room, but I don’t have kids and when I do I don’t plan to create a little princess.

Something else that we’ve recently come into way too much of is stuffed animals, and that something is something that does not sell. We’ve not sold one and it’s a little upsetting considering we have two HUGE garbage bags full at home. Cute too, real cute, charming and old, Disney, exactly what you may guess someone is looking for but nope, whatever it is it’s not enough. Others sell these as well, others sell baseball cards too but those sell, and in all of these other booths that sell stuffed animals I see a good set up. Which leads me to wonder what am I doing wrong? Why, oh why must we win the Ugliest Booth Contest?




With all this talk about how ugly our booth is you may be thinking, it can’t be THAT bad, but trust me, it is. And you may wonder, maybe you’d like to see a photo of the booth as of late, but I will leave you to imagine if you can, a booth overflowing with junk, lined with bookshelves, filled with junk. The Star Wars toys neatly fill half the back wall, and Scott is proud and they do look nice. No furniture fills the space, a suitcase full of tee’s sits on the floor beneath our “Shabby Chic” (there it is again) table, yes we have a table but it doesn’t help. The floor is lined with junk (there it is again), hanging from the Baker’s Rack is a dress, sitting in a pot there are many ties, and in a basket some belts. The only item in which I have to be proud is a white bookshelf that presents itself outward to passersby in the aisle, with my goodies and my goodies alone. There is a lot to be desired of this booth, and though I will be critical of myself no matter, I know it's bad when my buddies who work the station confirm it's truth. And so my friends that is what you have to imagine.

What I have to imagine is what it will be.

Gone. Gone. Gone!

Lately my booth at the Antique Station has been the cause of a small percent of my routine anxiety. Contributing to this in a major way is the very first piece of furniture I loaded into the booth, a mid-century style veneer desk purchased from my holy grail of a thrift store. Initially this desk looked like a steal at $25, it still does, but as we hauled in collections that spanned decades the booth filled past capacity and the desk quickly became a space hogging burden.



Considering the Antique Station is conveniently close to Chapman University I've been telling myself for months to be patient, to wait for the school year. My patience started to run its course back in July when I grabbed the red pen and slashed the price, and still I waited.



So last week when I was in New York my buddy from the station who sympathizes with my urgency for the banishment of this desk phoned me up, he had good news - trumpets played and angels sang, and the person next me maybe considered me an escapee from Bellevue. It was a glorious moment!

Lazy Days of Summer

Days spent lounging poolside with good people has made this a most enjoyable summer. But the heat of the day makes me the most lazy of entertainers and invitees have been kept to a minimum. Usually a friend or two will join me poolside on the cuff but just last week with more notice and a gathering just a tad larger the entertainer within was released.

It was only recently when I could stand these fantastic pieces perfect for summer sitting at the Antique Station no longer that I brought them back to the house for their shot on Etsy and a possible party highlight.

And so the first opportunity I had to whip it all out I did and it couldn't have been more exciting. Forget the fact that I had wonderful friends on their way, I had vintage goodies to dress up the place.

These cups with carrier feed the longing to keep everything in it's place. They're a beautiful presentation in use and just sitting around the home waiting for their day in the sun.

In truth entertaining poolside is a heck of a lot easier than a dinner party but when you're so busy having fun in the sun it's hard to get to the store for even the simplest of treats.

But then again it's so nice to have friends to be lazy beside. Really, I must do this again. Maybe next time I'll have new goodies to pull out!

If you see anything here you like check out SellingVintage on Etsy, most of it's there and if it's not it will be soon. Or you can just ask me to put a rush on it! Summertime...

What a Week, and it's only Wednesday!

There's a rule - bad things come in threes. I only hope that applies to good things - threes, fours, fives, but I'll take the two thus far!

After a month of selling nothing on Etsy the tides have turned and this week I sold one item 5 minutes after I posted it, and the crystal ashtray that I absolutely love, hate to see go and conflictingly am so excited about.

And the winners are:

Boudoir

The morning ritual of pulling the chair away from my vanity and saddling up in front of the mirror surrounded by pretty things while I leisurely beautify myself conjures up a feeling of connectivity with past generations of women. For those couple of minutes that I sit at that table before the rush of the day ahead I feel like a lady. I spritz on perfume, powder my face, work at my hair, and rummage through four generations of jewelry.

My personal vanity once belonged to my Nana on my mother's side of the family. Back when Nana owned this piece of furniture it acted as a sewing machine, today it's covered with a large scarf to soften up the boring wood below and crowded with womanly goodies and remembrances on top.

Claudia over The Paris Apartment is collecting photos of vanities from women around the world for a new book that she is working on. If you aren't already a visitor of this blog take a minute to check it out, and if you have a vanity take pictures of it to contribute. You can get in touch with her here: theparisapartment@gmail.com

Collecting

Hundreds of Star Wars toys from Scott's collection packed for the Antique Station

The habit of collecting is a hobby I never fully understood since I never thought of myself as a collector. But when you break it down I'm willing to bet that everyone is or was a collector of something at some point. Two obvious types of collectors are those like myself who don't fancy themselves collectors and those like my now live-in-boyfriend Scott who border on hoarding.

Although I do feel like a complete fake calling myself by the term collector, it's been quite the epiphany realizing the collector of my childhood. Isn't it safe to say that all children are collectors? I collected Barbie Dolls and Cabbage Patch Kids, granted they were my toys and I did play with them, unlike Scott who has hundreds of unopened Star Wars toys and boxes of unopened baseball cards, I had more than three and in one bloggers opinion that constitutes a collection. The difference - his are pristine and mine, well... they were sold in a yard sale years ago.

Vintage Mag Ads - Oh My!

Sorry I've been MIA this week my darling readers, really there is just no good excuse. But I'm coming back at you with this fantastic collection of magazine ads ranging from the early 1900's to the 1970's. They're inspirational, they're fun, and... they're for sale! Most anyway.



Wrangler 1978



Foster Grant 1967 featuring Woody Allen



Carlye 1952

Liliann 1954



Peck and Peck 1952



Ship 'n Shore 1952



Monte Sano and Pruzan 1949



Himelhoch's 1949



Acme Gloves 1949



Revillon 1925



GD Corsets 1902


Aren't those little gems fun. I can't tell you how much in love with magazines I am - always have been. It's such a shame what has happened to that industry due to this "recession" that we are in, all of these fantastic magazines have gone under. I can only dream that when things pick up again we'll see a swarm of new and wonderful titles hit the shelves.

Oh la la - vintage dresses!

Traditionally I have two rules when shopping for a vintage dress, these rules also apply when shopping in general:

1. Do I like it?
2. Does it fit?

Pretty simple. But now that I'm Selling Vintage I'm finding myself considering and making myself crazy over clothes that fall under "other".

Things that go through my head:

It's cute but has shoulder pads (a loud shriek ensues).
Doesn't fit.
Would someone like it anyway?
Is it worth anything?

The frustration over having these questions and the inability to promptly locate the item on my Iphone gets to be too much - I toss it all back and leave. That's what happened today anyway.

Below are a few photos I took before jumping ship, I would love to hear what you think.


Cindy Mancini spilled red wine on her mother's white suede dress, could this be it - died to cover it up!



Paired with a belt and pretty tan flats this vintage dress could be the closest thing we have to a winner.



A little electric blue number could add a lot of fun to any closet but this one isn't worth it's $7 price tag.



Those are separate sleeves with what I assume looks like a necklace on, and the dress... velvet. Need I say more?

Promptly upon arriving home I jumped online to see what I could find out about some of these dresses, and promptly I was side-tracked by the dance dresses at Posh Girl Vintage. The images in the collage of photos above are taken from their website - merely a handful of the goodies available.

I have one last question for you - bring back the 50's mom with me?

Rose Bowl Flea Market

No matter how hard I try you just can't get me out of bed early enough. It's said by most people that you need to hit the yard sales early, hence why I don't hit them all to often, and the same goes for the flea markets - they even have a special VIP-extra-expensive entrance fee for the early birds. I'm of the school of thought (and I may be the only person who belongs to this school) that it's good to hit up flea markets later in the day, because the later you go the more likely vendors will be to haggle with you on the price, after all they don't want to load it back up and take it home.

Today I packed up and headed to Pasadena's Rose Bowl Flea Market on the early side of noon. The $8 entrance fee allowed access to an overwhelming number of dealers slinging goods, most of it too expensive for me to resell, however a little searching did result in a couple decent deals.

If it weren't for a girl holding this condiment tray flat in her hand and contemplating it's purchase far too long for my patience I may have past right by my favorite find of the day.

For more information on this condiment tray check it out at http://sellingvintage.Etsy.com.


I actually paced around this lamp while waiting to pounce on the above condiment set, and finally decided to haggle the women down from $25 - she took it because "what the hell I don't want to pack it back up".

Also bought a couple of aprons which I have yet to photograph. I'm really excited to see if these will sell at the Antique Station.

Here are some items I passed on up:


Here is an incomplete lot of dishes designed by two different California pottery companies that I'm quite sad I didn't go back for - only $25!

I own one of these cups - it was kind of fun to see the set.

Ooohh... Ahhh...

Old books are just way too cool.

Now that I own Milk Glass it's catches my attention but I saw no deals to be had.

These brown chairs, all four of them, are "one of the first prototypes" and valued by their owner at $1200!!

80's stickers - sweet.

I just love this suitcase for the stickers.

And there you have it, a Sunday after noon.

Barter

Time is a commodity I have a lot more of than money these days, a theme that resides with much of the country, and with time has come the opportunity to put more effort toward discovering new interests. Obviously I have focused some of my time on scouring thrift stores and yard sales, and writing about my discoveries on this blog.

Unfortunately or maybe fortunately for me my interest in design doesn't mean I'm good at creating design, and as mentioned previously my friend Tony and I entered into a barter agreement - he designed the logo you see here and I've been ever so periodically on the hunt for vintage tee's. The enjoyment I find weeding through thrift store bric-brac does not relay over to thrift store clothing but a deal is a deal. Hitting up the racks attempt number one left me empty handed but once again thrift store Mecca paid off, here are the finds, some better than others.

This here is the shirt Tony likes - HALLELUJAH, I found one!

This shirt is cool but looking like it was purchased from a department store within the last couple years isn't all THAT cool. I contemplated it but unsure what I was looking for gave it a go.

This would be great if it wasn't made by the Gap - same issue as above.

Love this shirt. It's not Tony but I think it might be our friend Chris.

What girl doesn't love herself a fire-fighter, really, just wear it.