We’re back – and with a new home!

Sorry it took so long, but we are finally back.  We did great at Luckett’s this year, and after a bit of downtime, we are preparing to move into a new home – our 3rd!!  Our space will be in Evolution Home, a vintage, antique, and consignment home furnishings store located at 6239 Shields Ave in Alexandria (on Route 1 south of Old Town Alexandria).  Evolution Home is the new home of the former Potomac West Antiques in Del Ray.

View from Route 1 during renovation

Starting to fix up the front entrance.

We selected a rectangular booth near the back of the building because it was open, yet had lots of wall space.

The owners gave us a choice of 4 paint colors, and we picked blue and taupe.

View from the entrance – that’s our blue wall at the back.

A few days later, the check-out counter is being installed.

Dealers are starting to paint and stock their booths.

Here is what we selected for the Grand Opening. Everything looks great against the painted walls.

Ironstone displayed on a dark bookcase, topped by a vintage ibex.

Our Americana and British selections.

Birds atop an art deco coffee table, and a vintage tortoise shell inspired vinyl loveseat that everyone falls in love with.

We are very excited to be part of the Evolution Home start-up.  Please join us at the Grand Opening this Saturday, August 10, from 10 am – 6 pm.  Thanks for keeping up with us – we hope to be posting more often from now on!

We’re ready

We are finally ready for Luckett’s.  Yesterday, we brought over one truckload-

and an SUV-

It helped to setup a day early this year, so that we could relax on Friday.  But, of course, there is no relaxing before Luckett’s!!  We have a few more items we will be bringing on Saturday.

Janice has been working very hard the last few days on this gray sideboard-

this great red hutch-

a beautiful mirror adorned with a gilded pineapple-

and this stool redone with upholstery webbing-

Karen has also been busy finishing up these cane back chairs with toile cushions-

and an ikat covered storage bench and Union Jack picnic basket-

Tomorrow we will be in the “Field of Gold” at Luckett’s Spring Market – same spot as last year.  Please visit us there, and pray to the rain gods for no rain during the weekend.

More on Luckett’s

With less than a week to go, here’s another update of some of the goodies we have collected for the Luckett’s Spring Market this weekend May 18th and 19th.

We have a lot more that isn’t pictured and some pieces still being worked on.

If you live in the Washington, DC area, please visit us this weekend.  We’ll be located in the Field of Gold, 10am to 5pm both days.  Admission is $7, but, worth it as there are going be over 170 vendors including Miss Mustard Seed and our friend Christen of Blue Egg Brown Nest.  Sunday promises to be extra awesome with a Hometalk meet up with Funky Junk Interiors.  Luckett’s is located at 42350 Lucketts Road  Leesburg, VA.

Projects- Luckett’s Spring Market and a sunroom

For those of you who have been followers, you know that this blog started as a way for us to share our journey to last years Luckett’s Spring Market with family and friends.

One year and two dealer spaces later, it’s hard to believe that we are coming upon our second Spring Market in two weeks.  It’s definitely much easier this time around.  Here’s a preview of some of the pieces currently being worked on.

This great little settee was given to us by my wonderfully generous friend Danielle.  She also gave us the dining table that was brought to the Chartreuse Spring Market show.  Our plans are to re-upholster it prior to Luckett’s.  I am in the process of removing remnants of the prior upholstery and  staples…thousands of staples.

This sideboard was found at our Habitat for Humanity Restore.  It has the nice detail of a brass rail on top.  Plans are to paint it and remove or replace the large wheels it rolls around on.

At an estate sale last year we bought several old, chippy shutters in various sizes.  Some had a great bluish-green finish and others were black like the one below.  We’ve sold several of them so far.   I decided to experiment with one using various paint colors.  We believe the cut out is supposed to be a tree, but, it also looks like a sailboat.  So, for this project, I’m going with sailboat.

I used three different blues and greens in the hope that when it was sanded all the colors would come through.  It worked.  In addition to the blues and green, the black and some of the wood came through.  It stands 55″ high and 17″ wide.

I’m still working on this mid-century Federal Style, Bull’s Eye convex mirror.  This vintage mirror has a lightweight resin frame and is stamped “made in the USA”.

Found this vintage firkin at an estate sale last week.  It’s been painted with CeCe Caldwell Vintage white-

We have a lot more Spring Market projects in the works.

Besides getting ready for Luckett’s, I have been busy overseeing a sunroom / three season room add-on to the house.

Along the back of our house, we have a 12′ wide x 20′ foot long deck. The deck was great but usable only a few weeks out of the year as Washington, DC summers, in addition to being dreadfully hot, have thousands of ferocious, blood sucking, mosquitoes.

Here is a picture of the deck, from inside the house, going out the sliding glass door-

The first thing that had to go was the hot tub-

Stay tuned for more Luckett’s pieces as well as the new room preview.

Have a great weekend.

The Ugly Side of Estate Sales

The vintage and antique dealer business is usually very friendly.  We see a lot of the same people over and over at estate sales, flea markets, and antique malls.  Over time, we get to know the kind of things each of us “goes” for, how much we tend to spend, etc.  We point out things that might interest another vendor, and try to help each other out.  But every once in a while, like last Thursday, the business gets ugly.

We waited outside a local estate sale last week, talking to our friends about the items we were interested in (most estate sales post pictures online at www.EstateSales.net).  We all agreed that an old wooden card catalog looked great, and would probably be easy to resell.  I was one of the first people in the door, saw the file cabinet, and immediately removed the price tag.  In estate sale “etiquette”, removing the price tag means you get to buy it.  Just as I removed the tag, a woman ran up to me screaming that the file cabinet had been promised to her the night before by the people who ran the sale.  She tried to grab the tag from me, but I wouldn’t give it to her, assuming that they would not still have a price tag on it if it was promised to someone.  Finally, the sellers appeared and told me they would sell it to me.  Naively, I thought I had won the battle…

As we stood in line to check out a while later, one of the women running the sale asked for the price tag for the file cabinet.  I figured she was holding it for me up front.  When we got to the head of the line, I asked her to add the file cabinet to my order.  “But it has already been sold!” she said.  Turns out the woman I argued with had told the sellers that she and I came to an agreement and I said she could have the file cabinet.  She even got them to find me and get the tag from me!  Right under our noses, she paid for it, loaded it in her van, and drove off! Had I just lost the war?

Needless to say, we were very upset.  Once we explained the situation, the women running the event were very upset and apologetic.  And over the next couple of days we found out that “this woman” has done this to many other people.  So the lessons learned were:
– Keep a close eye on items you plan to purchase – sit on them if you have to
– Make sure the person actually ringing up the sale knows what items are yours
– Remove drawers or other parts from the item to make it “imcomplete” and carry them around with you

But all was not lost – we still managed to win and pick up quite a few treasures for our shops (and for show at Luckett’s Spring Market coming up May 18th and 19th).

A church birdhouse-

That is a smaller companion to our larger church birdhouse-

Two colorful enamel crocks, an antique toaster, and cast iron boot remover-

A beautifully distressed wooden tray and a rug beater-

A big old tobacco basket-

A HUGE oar (already hanging at Glory Days in Newburgh, MD) –

And this beautiful long church pew (wouldn’t it look great with a striped grainsack cushion?)-

So check out these cool treasures, and many more at our booths at Eclectic Nature in Del Ray, VA, and Glory Days in Newburg, MD – as well as Luckett’s Market – hope to see you there!

Chartreuse Spring Market

We’ve been busy the last couple of weeks getting ready for Chartruese Spring Market this weekend.

Today we filled up the big red truck and headed up to Frederick, Md to set up the tent and unload a bunch of stuff.  We’re excited because after some very cold temperatures, it’s suppose to be a great weekend with lots of sunshine and warmer temps.   Here’s a preview of some of our goodies.

Here’s a couple of shots of other vendors getting set up.  Look at those window, wow!-

We’re located about half way down this row-

Have a great weekend!

Glory Days – Opening

We finally finished moving into Glory Days, the new antique mall in Newburg, MD where we are renting a new space.

It took us a couple of trips to stock, stylize, and retag our new space, but it looked very inviting when we finished.

A lighted display case is included, and we stocked it full of enamelware, a silver platter, glassware, and lots of other kitchenalia, garden ware, and the “man-tiques” (vintage tools and bbq items).

This beautiful blue & cream German canister/spice/cruet set is from a recent estate sale.

We finally have room to display our Admiral dresser and the 2 matching Lieutenant nightstands.  We thought they would do well here, since the shop is on the way to many Maryland and Virginia oceanside towns, and just a few minutes from the western shore of the Potomac.

This library bookcase holds lots of pillows, including a pair of running rabbits and a brown dog.

Janice made sure everything looked perfect before the shop opened.

And this cute chick pulling a cart and egg will surely be gone before Easter!

This past weekend was the “soft” opening of Glory Days.  Greg & I went down on Saturday to see how the first day of business went.  IT – WAS – AMAZING – the parking lot was full, and they were even parking on the side of the highway…

lots of people were shopping…

 

and to our delight, there were lots of empty spots in our booth only 4 hours after the opening.

  One of the 3 globes had already sold, and the bird cage and hooked rug sold later…

The dog pillow and chick pulling the cart with egg are gone…

  And the collection of floral enamelware and a silver tray sold – the entire top shelf of our display unit!

Of course, I had to promise Greg lunch to get him to go to an antique mall with me.  There are a couple crab/seafood restaurants nearby that looked interesting.  We ended up at Capt’ Billy’s Crab House, right on the Potomac River just north of the Nice Memorial Bridge.  It was too early for crab season (mid April this year), but our cod and halibut lunches were excellent.  We will be sure to visit again during crab season.

We will return to Newburg soon to restock, along with keeping our room at Eclectic Nature current.  In the meantime, we are getting ready for Chartreuse Market Days the weekend of April 6-7.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

St. Patrick’s Day is my father’s favorite holiday – probably because he is half Irish. Every year I get a card from him that includes a stick figure couple doing the Irish jig.

He does stick figures on all cards, but the St. Patrick’s day ones are my favorite.  I have been saving the cards for a few years now, and my sister suggested incorporating them into a gift for him this year.  Using a 4-part frame, I positioned copies of the stick figures into the 2 center panels, and added greetings to the outer panels.

Hope you enjoy your St. Patrick’s Day as much as my father did upon receiving his gift this year…  May the luck of the Irish be with you.

Newburg, Move in day

Today we had a busy day moving into our second location in Newburg, MD.

A few weeks ago we showed you this-

Well, today it looks like this-

The owners, Linda and Bob Green, did an incredible job making this location look awesome.

Here’s a little teaser on our space.

Our space empty, front-

back-

Some miscellaneous goodies-

An Ironstone covered dish with a shell handle, set of 6 vintage knives, shaker with silver lid-

Antique German canister set-

A recently completed set of bedside tables-

Newburg will be opening March 23, with the Grand opening Easter weekend.  We’ll show more pictures as we finish moving in.

Collections

Occasionally, when I am in need of some decorating inspiration, I go old school and look at my decorating books. Recently, I pulled out my copy of Country Living Collection Style.    As a lover of vintage and antique items,  anything Country Living does is a feast for my eyes.  (All photos from Collection Style unless otherwise noted).

As collectors, we love to surround ourselves with the things we love.  We are passionate, maybe obsessive, otherwise, why would we accumulate so many of one type of thing.  This got me thinking, when does a collection of stuff become excessive or worst yet a hoarding situation?

Does a tasteful display of a thousand of the same type of item, like the potato mashers above, make it appear less of a hoarding situation?  I mean who needs 1,000 potato mashers?    When a collection is intentionally arranged and displayed properly not only will it highlight the items, it makes a personal visual statement.  As with the mashers above, there are a lot of them, however, the neutral tone and the way they are lined up doesn’t overload the eye.  I think it would be different if they were all crowded, standing on a table top or thrown in a basket.

How about a collection of colorful antique wooden spinning tops from Lost Found Art ?  Lots of color, but, the uniform shape and spacing of the tops make this arrangement visually appealing.

The simplicity of some collections can have a minimalist look.  This collection of clear glass cake stands, while numerous, is not overwhelming.  Like the crystal chandelier, I bet they reflect light, making the room sparkle-

The symmetrical and simple layout of the Ironstone platters and gates below gives this collection a clean look –

This collection of curly metal sconces and artwork hanging on a wall could be a visual disaster.  However, the way they are arranged, the neutral color scheme (candles are even white), and because they are all a similar design keeps it from looking too busy.

More hanging metal.  From Country Living online, here is a collection of rug beaters hung in a stairwell.  It’s like 3-d wallpaper-

This is quite an amazing collection of metal picnic baskets.  If you’d like to start your own collection of metal picnic baskets, we have one, just like the middle bottom, for sale at Semper Stylish-

I love this collection of wicker baskets topped with a fishing creel-

I found a lot of similarities between the collections shown in the book with my own home – like this room with framed American flags and signal flags. Notice the collection of file boxes in the upper right hand corner.

Here is a picture of my bookcase.  In addition to the flags, this bookcase also displays my collection of Depression Era cobalt blue Sportsman series glassware (one of the first things I ever collected)-

A couple of Ironstone collections-

My collection of Ironstone-

Some simpler collections include-

Polished stone balls on a mantel, and my collection of croquet balls in a basket-

A jar of red tomato shaped pin cushions, and my antique pickling jar displaying various nautical items-

Pretty, decorative soaps and paste containers-

My collections of soaps-

Vintage flash bulbs in a martini glass for sale at Semper Stylish.  It’s like they were made for each other-

My collection of vintage yardsticks and rulers displayed in a clear glass vase-

Karen’s collection of Milk glass-

How about a collection of whisk brooms?  For $1450 you can own one of the three whisk broom collections below from East Market Street Antiques on V&M–

Here is my collection of whisk brooms in a glass hurricane jar.  Most of them were “gift with purchase” at estate sales-

How cute is this from The Polished Pebble?  Whisk brooms as a valence in a laundry room window-

Your collections don’t have to be large, expensive or fancy to make a statement.  Arranged together in such a way as to create visual interest, they will personalize your home.  Hopefully this inspires you to look at new ways to showcase your treasures.