q is for quandie

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you might know that I tend to insist that I am not a ‘collector’, which frankly is total crap.  The true story is that I am in denial.

I do have one basic rule about collecting though, which is that I never spend a lot of money on my ‘collectibles’.  OK, no, I don’t always stick to the rule either.  But I have been around the block enough times to know that I will grow tired of my collection at some point and by then no one else will really want it either.  It’s highly unlikely that I will ever get any money back out of it.

Case in point, my chintzware collection.  Vintage chintzware saw a resurgence in the 80’s and 90’s.  I loved it at the time and I purchased it whenever I found it.  But over the past several years I’ve moved away from the flowery-ness of it.  So now I’ve sold most of it.

Even though many of my pieces had been purchased at garage sales, there were a few that I paid top dollar for at shops or online.  I know I didn’t get my money back out of those and that taught me a valuable lesson; collectibles go out of style and lose their value.  Usually right about the same time that you get tired of them, everyone else does too.

Or maybe that’s just me?  What can I say, I am highly influenced by trends.

So when I collect things it’s just because I love them, not because I think they’ll be valuable one day.  Which brings me to my latest collection, vintage suitcases.

I just added a new one.  I recently stopped into La Garage on my lunch hour and purchased this for $23.50.

I loved the camel color leather trim and handle.  Plus the fact that it’s called the “Travel Joy” doesn’t hurt either!

I’ve mentioned La Garage before, it’s a shop just a few blocks away from me (in No St Paul) that buys out estates.  So it’s like an estate sale in a shop.  Their furniture is always priced too high for me to buy it, paint it, and resell it ($269 for a dresser).  But the pieces they have are all in great shape and don’t appear to need repairs or refinishing.  If you like unpainted vintage pieces, La Garage might be a great resource for you.

Although it’s lower than what you might pay in a vintage shop, the $23.50 is a bit on the high end of what I normally pay for a vintage suitcase.  For example, sometimes I get really lucky and find a stash of vintage cases at a garage sale for $2 to $3 each.

In the past several people have asked me where I find all of my vintage suitcases.  In addition to La Garage and garage sales, I’ve also found a few nice ones at occasional sales like this pair that I purchased for $12 each last summer.

Currently I am stacking all of my vintage cases next to the Welsh cupboard in my dining room.  The stack is growing!

So, in case you are keeping track, although I’m not really a collector, besides vintage suitcases I also don’t really collect ironstone …

tiny dressers …

vintage alarm clocks …

vintage cameras …

blue bird china …

oh, and let’s not forget the vintage Christmas ornaments …

Good grief!  Maybe I need a 12-step program after all.

How about you, do you ‘not really’ collect anything?

So, here it is Friday and I got nothin’ to blog about.  Yikes!  Usually I am overflowing with stuff to post about.  But somehow, despite the fact that I had a four day weekend last weekend, I haven’t managed to actually complete a project (aside from my squarely modern chair) and get pictures of it in time for today’s post.  I didn’t want to leave you all hanging on a Friday though, so I thought I’d share some pictures of the hatbox kits that are all ready to be popped in the mail for the two lucky winners, Wendy & Lori.

They will each get a hatbox, instructions for how to dress it up and a selection of reverse images to transfer.

They’ll get the two colors of Fusion paint, plus a jar of Fusion’s Transfer Gel …

While I was picking up the hatboxes at Hobby Lobby I came across these funky mounted deer heads and I couldn’t resist them.  So I threw one in each kit.

Wendy and Lori can paint them however they like.

By the way, if you are considering making a hatbox of your own, they are on sale through tomorrow at Hobby Lobby for 50% off.  It’s a great time to stock up!  If you would like a copy of my instructions, leave me a comment and I will email them to you.

Since hatboxes were on sale, I bought a few extra myself and tried a couple of different looks.

I had seen a black hatbox on pinterest that I really liked, so I painted one in black chalkboard paint.  I added the wording using stencils.  I’m not sure whether or not the transfer method would work on black.  Maybe if you printed something in a pale grey ink?  I may have to experiment with that a little.

If you look closely at the smaller hatbox (which is painted in Fusion’s Cathedral Taupe by the way) you can see that my transfer didn’t work so well towards the bottom.  That was my fault, I scrubbed a little too hard while removing the paper and ended up removing ink as well.  This can happen, especially with a more detailed/delicate graphic, so use caution if you are trying this yourself.  Personally I like a distressed look, so I’m OK with it.

While I had my paint out, I painted up a bunch of tiny boxes for my upcoming party.  I’ll go ahead and finish these through letting the transfers dry and then my guests can practice removing the paper.

I’ve got a lot on my plate this weekend including a trip to the Minnesota History Center with my sister and niece to see their Suburbia exhibit.

We’ll also be celebrating Mr. Q’s birthday!

So I’m just warning you, I may not have anything worthwhile to post next week either.  But stay tuned, I have a couple of great pieces of furniture coming up soon!

Before I get on with today’s post, I want to congratulate Wendy and Lori, the winners of the hatbox kits.  I have sent them both emails and will be sending out their hatbox kits later this week.

Now, let’s talk craigslist.  Usually I am just looking for furniture on craigslist, but lately there have been slim ‘pickins.  The pieces that I like are priced too high, and the pieces at decent prices are just not worthy of a makeover.  So in a moment of desperation last week I decided to troll the ‘antiques’ section.  I usually avoid that category because I find that most people who have ‘antiques’ want big bucks for them.

I was just quickly scrolling through the ads when a photo of this caught my eye.

It’s a little ironstone covered soap dish.  I have been looking for one of these for more than a year now!  I’ve wanted one to store my Miss Mustard Seed brush soap next to my kitchen sink.  You know you clean a lot of paintbrushes when you need to keep your brush soap this handy.  And when I say “looking for”, what I really mean is that I keep an eye out for them when I happen to be in an antique store or vintage shop, and I would snatch it up if I happened to see it at a garage sale (obviously this hasn’t happened).  It also means that I’ve looked at them on Etsy, where they tend to be priced around $50 plus shipping.  In other words, way out of my price range.

This one was $12.  I should point out that it does not have the strainer inside for keeping the soap dry, which can bump up the price.  I saw a really lovely one with a strainer on Etsy for $68.  Yikes!

So clearly I was super excited when I saw it and immediately made arrangements to pick it up.  The seller was located in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood of Minneapolis, one of my favorite garage sale neighborhoods.  For even more fun, he said he had a few other pieces for sale as well.

Mr. Q and I drove out last Friday evening and when all was said and done, I came home with all of this (plus one more item I’m saving for last).

The most expensive piece was the little covered casserole in the back at $36.  But isn’t it sweet?

I couldn’t resist it.  It has such beautiful details on the handles and the shape is unique.  Speaking of beautiful details …

This brown transferware teapot was a super bargain at a mere $5.  But, there was a reason for that, it has a large crack in it.

This poor teapot will never hold water again.  There is a trick to using pieces like this as vases though, just put a smaller watertight container inside.  It’s also suitable for display of course.  And I just happened to already have the matching creamer …

The gentleman who was selling these was very knowledgeable about antique china.  He said that he acquired his first ironstone platter when he was 5 years old!  He had some really lovely antiques in his home as well.  I was seriously coveting some beautiful small oil paintings that he had on the walls, and Mr. Q really enjoyed seeing an amazing antique clock that had all wooden parts except for one brass gear.

As we were getting ready to leave, he showed us a couple of other transferware pieces that he had in his dining room.  While standing there, a piece that he had in his china cabinet totally caught my eye.  Those of you who know me by now won’t be at all surprised when you see what is was!

A teeny tiny soup tureen.  Complete with a teeny tiny ladle.  Good grief, that thing was calling my name.  So based on my ‘it never hurts to ask’ philosophy I asked if he would consider selling it.  Sure enough, he was game!

And it looks right at home on one of my tiny dressers, don’t you think?  The thing is only about 4″ tall.

So, all in all I ended up with some pretty fab finds from that craigslist ad.  How about you?  What’s the most fab thing you’ve ever purchased on craigslist?

Sometimes I find inspiration in the most unexpected places.  This time it struck while watching a movie.  Cuba starring Sean Connery came out in 1979, but it’s set in the late 50’s.

There is a scene in the movie where one of the characters fills a suitcase with money in anticipation of fleeing the country after the fall of the Batista regime.  Ding, ding, ding!  Fabulous black and white vintage suitcase!  My eye went straight for it.

I just love the graphic punch of black and white, as evidenced by my front porch floor.

Or this mid-mod bureau that I painted last summer …

Seeing that black and white suitcase in the movie reminded me that I’ve had a couple of hard sided vintage suitcases lying around for a while.  One of them is Uncle Leon’s suitcase that I picked up at the Nokomis neighborhood garage sales last summer.

The other is a thrift store find.

There are a lot of vintage suitcases that I wouldn’t dream of painting, but I’m not a big fan of these marble-ish finishes.

So I pulled out some chalk paint in black (Cece Caldwell’s Beckley Coal) and white (Annie Sloan’s Old White), some frog tape and some stencils and got to work.

I have no idea what the material is that this particular style of suitcase is made out of (do any of you know?), they certainly aren’t leather or cardboard.  I’m fairly sure the edges are some sort of rubber or plastic maybe.  Despite not knowing what this material is, I still follow my usual m.o. for painting them.  I sand them down a bit to rough up the surface so paint will adhere better, then I wipe them down with TSP substitute to remove surface grime and oils.  I have painted this type of suitcase with milk paint and with Fusion paint, both of which worked great.  This time I used chalk paint.  If you’re going to use tape to make a clean line (like I did on these) I would say stick with either Fusion or chalk paint.  The milk paint is going to be a bit too thin for a crisp line, and your tape is going to pull paint off.  I used the yellow frog tape for these (the one meant for delicate surfaces).  I removed it carefully shortly after painting the second coat of paint and I had no problems with paint lifting off.

The first case I worked on most closely resembles the suitcase in the movie (it was black with a wide white stripe down the middle).  I painted this one black first, then measured off my white stripe, taped it off and painted three coats of white.

I added a subtle extra detail with some stencils.

I changed up the stencil on the reverse side of the suitcase.

I used the wet paper towel method of distressing on the edges, handles and hardware.  Have you tried that with chalk paint?  Rather then using sandpaper and getting a rough effect on those rubber/plastic/whatever they are edges, I used a damp paper towel and just rubbed paint off.  It worked great on these!

The fact that you can wipe the paint right off with a damp paper towel suggests that you really do need a top coat over the chalk paint.  I used clear wax on these, and I have to admit it got a little tricky.  The wax picks up some of the paint, so I had to be very careful not to get black paint onto my white areas.  I used separate rags for waxing the black and white areas.

Just to be clear, I never intend for these suitcase to be functional as suitcases.  They are really just for decor purposes only.  Despite a wax top coat, if you tried to send one of these through the baggage system at your local airport it would come out much worse for the wear. They will get dinged up.

The second case got a little different black and white treatment, and I used my new Jardin de Fleurs stencil on it (by the way, are you keeping track?  This is the 3rd use of the stencil so far).

I really can’t decide which suitcase I like best, can you?

I love that Jardin de Fleurs stencil, but I also think the striped suitcase looks more authentically vintage.

They kind of make a great pair.  Don’t they?

These guys need to find a new home, so if you are local (sorry, no shipping available) and interested in purchasing them just leave a comment and I’ll get back to you with the details.

Each year St. Paul hosts a winter carnival.  I’m pretty sure it was started just to prove that Minnesotans are tough and that we laugh in the face of winter.  The carnival has been taking place since 1886 and is the oldest winter festival in the United States.

Back in the early days they built amazing ice palaces as part of the festivities such as this one from 1888.

Even as late as 1941 the palaces were pretty extravagant.

Unfortunately they no longer make anything like this.  The last time we had a decently sized ice palace was 2004.

It was large, but certainly not as elaborate as some of those earlier models (I’m betting that there are more safety regulations these days!).  Mr. Q and I did go see it that year along with about a bazillion other people.

This year since my sister and my niece are new to Minnesota they decided it would be fun to visit the winter carnival.  So last Saturday we headed into St. Paul to check it out.

To be honest, this year’s ‘mini ice palace’ was looking pretty sad by the time we saw it.  I didn’t even take any photos it was so pathetic.  I did get a couple of photos of some ice sculptures though.

As a special bonus, we got to see a marriage proposal taking place in front of one of the ice sculptures.  It was pretty sweet.

There is a fake legend that goes along with the winter carnival (you can read the full story here).  The legend says that on the last day of the festivities Vulcanus Rex and his Krewe storm the ice palace and force King Boreas to give up his icy hold over his winter capital.  Thus there is a Vulcan Victory Torchlight Parade on the final day.

Back in the day the Vulcan Krewe would kiss the girls along the parade route leaving smears of black grease paint on their face, but that custom has been toned down.  These days they just use a grease paint crayon to leave their mark.  I warned my niece Kris that pretty girls were obvious targets!

Hail the Vulc!

By the way, are you wondering what appropriate attire is for a winter carnival?

Down parkas of course!

Here’s hoping the Vulc’s have done their job properly and booted King Boreas off his throne!  I am ready for a little less winter, how about you?

I’m probably jumping the gun a little thinking about spring, but last weekend it was sunny and close to 40 here in the Twin Cities.  Sunlight was streaming in through my windows.

After our previous stint of sub-zero temps, that felt positively balmy.  Snow was melting, birds were singing and it just smelled like spring outside.   The days are starting to get longer already, I’m no longer coming home from work in the dark.  But then yesterday we got a big pile of snow dumped on us.  I think it was Mother Nature’s way of reminding me that it really is only early February after all.  Drat.

Nonetheless, I am ‘thinking spring!’ and in anticipation of gardening season I ordered a new stencil for myself via Etsy.  I took it for a test run on this vintage picnic basket that I found at the thrift store.

And I love it!  I hope to use it on many more things.

While I was feeling floral, I also picked up some more pretty floral plates to add words to, as well as a Le Jardin themed table runner, both also from the thrift shop.

I also ordered some more vintage floral wallpaper from Hannah’s Treasures via Etsy.

This is in anticipation of an upcoming project that I have in mind using this …

Ta da!  I am so excited!  I’ve been sent some samples of the new Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic paint line to try out!

But before I can get to that project, I have to finish up the desk that I’m currently working on.

And speaking of desks, my February post at Reclaiming Beautiful is up and running today and is all about desks.  Head on over and check it out!