a red, white and blue trend

Estate sale-ing: a guide to how I have fun on a Saturday. (Part 1)

I find estate sales by checking out the local estate sale ads online that are published on Thursday afternoon. I'm signed up with a national website that automatically e-mails you about sales within a certain mileage radius of your zip code; it's really handy! (Here's the website, if you're interested in finding sales near you: EstateSales.net... just click on your state, and go from there.) You can find pretty much anything for sale at an estate sale: cars, golf carts, sports equipment, furniture, household items, tools, clothes, shoes, appliances, plants... you name it, and you can probably find it at a sale somewhere, eventually.

photo borrowed from Apartment Therapy website 

I usually scan the ads looking for terms that resonate with me, like: 30 years in one house, multiple generations, years of accumulation, vintage clothing, costume jewelry, books, sewing and craft items, things like that. I also look for any Southwest-type or unusual home decor items, although lately my focus has been more on clothing and jewelry. I tend to look more closely at the listings that include photos-- the estate sale companies can't take photos of everything, but it generally does help me to get an idea of whether the sale includes the kind of stuff I like to look at. After that, I look at where they are in the Valley and their hours of operation to figure out which ones sound like my best bet(s), since I can't go to all of them. Finally, I plan out a route for the day using Google maps. Unfortunately most sales start on Friday or even Thursday-- since I work during the week I can't go sale-ing till Saturday, so I never get first pick of the stuff. But as a bit of a consolation, most estate sale companies designate Saturday as half-price day! The particular 'thing' I saw in a photo might not be there any more, but what is still there is cheaper. 

Last weekend, I found two sales I wanted check out, plus one of my co-workers had a sale of his own that included mid-century and vintage stuff. So, I headed out to central Phoenix, then to Glendale (a northwest suburb), then even farther northwest out to Sun City, which is one of the original 'master-planned' retirement communities in the Valley (it launched in 1960). 

The Glendale sale didn't look that good at first glance, but I took my time digging through piles of stuff and sorting through the closets (you gotta have patience at these sales), and came up with some really nice deals! Here's some pictures:

heavy cotton (?) jacket with a bandana-type pattern printed on it.
This would look really cute with a blue or white t-shirt underneath.
My price? a whole $1.50!! (half-price, down from $3)

Even though it's hot here in AZ, inside the building where I work can be cold enough for a light jacket or a sweater. I dug this jacket out of the (very packed) walk-in hall closet at the house. 

I looked through the sewing and craft items in a back room, then hit the mother-lode of accessories: underneath a pile of stretched-out sweaters and sweatshirts (things get really out of place and messy during an estate sale), I found a box of scarves... really nice scarves. After doing the math, I figure I paid just over 50 cents apiece for these-- check them out!

I think this is a men's silk pocket square.

This beauty is vintage hand-rolled silk, with a wonderfully bright colored pattern: dogs of various breeds, leashes, and chain-link borders.

a close-up of the label: Glentex brand, all silk, hand rolled.
I'm thinking it might be from the 1950s, from the look of the pattern? 
I need to research the label a bit to see if I can learn more.

There's even a collie! (not a Sheltie, but it's pretty close!)

It's got a couple holes toward one edge, but I don't mind. I may not ever even use it, as it's too small to do much of anything with, and it's kind of fragile...  but I had to rescue it from the pile of stuff, because I just love the print! 

I kept digging through the pile to see what else I could come up with. These two are both long oblong scarves that will be easier to wear. I looked primarily for colors and patterns I could pair with a solid-colored tee-shirt or sweater. After I got home, I looked at them all closer, and here's what I found: 

score!! Oscar de la Renta!! 

another score: Jones New York! this one still had the
store tag on; it had never even been worn!!

Another pretty one with a vivid red, white and blue pattern. 

another score- it's a Vera!

Vera Neumann is a textile designer who, with her husband, started out screenprinting linen placemats in their dining room in New York City. During WWII, the shortage of linen led her to look for alternative materials. After the war, she found surplus parachute silk and started designing scarves... Her 'signature scarves' are what she's best known for today. Find out more about her: here (Wikipedia), here (vintage clothing site), and here (includes a guide to help you date your Vera Neumann scarf).

cute red and white polka dot scarf by Echo.

I thought this one might be  a bit more contemporary, but it turns out that the Echo Scarf Company started back in the 1920's. (see their company history here: Echo Design 'Our History'.) The older company logo was in cursive, so my guess is that this one is from the 1970s forward- again, I'll have to do more research to date it any closer than that. 

I picked these scarves out first and foremost because I liked them (well, except for the Vera- I saw that logo while I was there), but I think I got some great deals, here, in terms of vintage accessories. Since I already had a few vintage scarves at home, now it seems I have a bit of a collection happening here! 

I got a few more things during my estate sale-ing Saturday-- since this post got kind of long (due to my scarf history internet research), I'll show those pictures in another post. 

NSD 2012 (2nd installment)

After the 2-hour sewing fiasco from Friday night's scrapping, I wanted something a bit simpler to work on- something I could complete and feel good about getting done. haha!! So, I decided to start a project I've been wanting to work on for a while: documenting some of my most 'prize possessions.'  They have memories associated with them that I wanted to record, so I finally decided to put some of those memories down on paper. (fyi, these layouts are 8 inches square, so they went a bit quicker!)

This first layout features my set of vintage aluminum measuring spoons. They hang inside the kitchen spice cabinet, and are one of my favorite 'kitchen' collectibles- not because they're worth anything in a monetary sense, but because they were my Grandma's. They always hung inside the door of her spice cabinet, and now they do the same in mine. Every time I open the cabinet door, the clanking of the spoons against the wood makes me think of time spent in Gram's kitchen, whether it was doing homework, helping mix up a batch of cookies or caramel corn, or, when I was really little, keeping myself busy with the egg-beater and some soap flakes in the kitchen sink. :)

I used some of my newest paper on this layout- a couple weeks ago I went to the Vendor Faire at the local Creating Keepsakes convention, and found a vendor selling products from my favorite paper company, October Afternoon! (They have the most wonderful, vintage-looking patterns of paper in a great variety of luscious colors, along with embellishments, stickers, and other items that match...) The paper line on this page is from the 'Farmhouse' collection, which is full of faded calicoes, ticking stripes, and vintage patterns like wooden rulers and ledger pages: perfect for photos of my vintage favorites! I added a few other touches, such as the punched butterflies and baker's twine, to add to the 'homespun' feel of the layout.

This layout (I really apologize for the crappy colors in this photo; it was late at night when I took it) is a no-photo layout that I made, pretty much, just to use these cute little chipboard dresses. They started out as glossy dark brown (ick!), but that wouldn't work for my project, so I ripped off the brown layer and replaced it with some of my vintage-floral patterned paper (much better!!).

It's just a little layout documenting how fresh clothes smell when they're dried on the clothesline outside. I do hang a shirt out to dry on the patio now and then, but I can't really do it with the entire load of laundry so much here in AZ; depending on the weather, the clothes could collect dust before they're even dry! 

And, one more  'heirloom possession' layout that I completed- this one with a photograph of Grandma's Springerle rolling pin. Springerle is a German anise-flavored cookie / biscuit that has raised designs, either from being pressed into a mold, or rolled with one of these special rolling pins. (According to Wikipedia, they're most often seen at Christmastime.) I don't ever recall Grandma making these, though, to be honest... (Mom, do you remember every having springerle cookies??) I do remember, however, that the rolling pin always hung above the window at the kitchen sink; I think Grandpa made the hanging brackets for it. Now, this rolling pin hangs above the window in our kitchen (I think I've hung this above the window in every place I've ever live, actually). Again, seeing this every day reminds me of time spent in Grandma's kitchen, and the papers I chose for the design go along with that-- . the paper and colors I picked remind me of her kitchen; it was always a sunny place, with a flowered oilcloth tablecloth on the table... I'm definitely glad I finally made this layout!! 


I do have a number of other heirloom possessions (both mine and Tom's) around the house that I'd like to also document with the same type of layouts; now I just need to take the photographs! So, this took me through late Saturday night at the Scrapbook Cottage; I finally got to the point where I was just 'shuffling papers around' without much intention-- that's when I knew it was time to go to bed! (where I watched a couple episodes of Mad Men on my laptop, and finally turned off the light around 3:30 am- lol!!)


I'll be back again with one more NSD scrapping installment; I did a couple more layouts on Sunday that are a total change of pace from this vintage type page.

I should be asleep right now...

...because I haven't gotten more than 5 hours of sleep the last couple nights-- this weekend I stayed at the Phoenix Scrapbook Cottage, and who can sleep when there's scrapping to be done and Diet Mt. Dew to drink?? (you think one thing had anything to do with the other? haha!!) Anyway, I didn't take many pictures, and most of the ones that I did take turned out crappy, so they will be re-taken tomorrow afternoon. But, here's a little of what I worked on:

 this is an addition to the Christmas week spread in my Project Life album... I wanted a way to save a few of the Christmas cards we got, so added them in a couple different ways- above I've used a 6x12 page protector; below I added a couple cards into the album just by punching holes right in the cards.

 I also added in an 8x8 page protector, and made a collage-style page with snips and pieces from all the cards we received. I've seen Ali Edwards do something similar before, and really liked it.

 (please excuse the slippers I'm wearing in the photo above- but you gotta be comfortable when you're crafting all day and all night, right?!?)

and as a refresher, above is the spread before adding in the extra page protectors. I really like this approach; it's a good way to add in more 'things' without feeling like I have to stretch the week into two entire 12x12 2-page spreads. It's probably just a psychological thing, because I know there's more than just the 2 12x12 pages of stuff there, but they're smaller-- so it works, in my brain.

This is a horrible photo, but it's a still photo from the movie Mona Lisa Smile. I was watching it on my laptop during a break from scrapping. The movie is decent (free-spirited Californian takes on the conservative mid-century view of 'the woman's place in society' at 1953 Wellesley College), but I absolutely LOVE the clothes in this movie. Every outfit-- I want to have the entire wardrobe in my closet! I really like her shirt-dress and sweater combo here, and I believe she's wearing a squash blossom silver and turquoise belt here, as well. I started noticing small things about people's outfits, like the fact that all the earrings are clip-ons, and the fact that Julia Roberts' character wore this super-cool silver and turquoise jewelry throughout the entire movie. Love it, love it, love it!! (I also found another piece of silver and turquoise jewelry to add to my own collection, at another local estate sale- I'll take a photo of that tomorrow, too!)