Karma?

Is it because I sold my niece into white slavery?  Or perhaps because I toyed with the idea of trying to trick my 90 year old father into making more lazy susans for me to sell?

Whatever the reason I seem to be experiencing some negative karma.

Or perhaps Car-ma.

I took the trusty Fit to Honda for it’s checkup where it passed with flying colors!

Until a few weeks later whe it dumped all it’s oil out.

While it was being driven…..

Turns out the shop had failed to properly reinstall the plug.

So, that fixed I went on my merry way.

Then last week I had a show.

An outdoor show here in sunny southern California!  Where the weather has been in the 80s and 90s.

It rained.  Hard.  All day.My friend Nicki who had lured poor, innocent, me into participating in this waterworld charming market assured me that they had never had rain before so naturally, she felt the inclement weather was my fault.  Surprisingly this made me like her more as it seemed like something I would say.

And finally, just before a big show this weekend, the faithful Fit fritzed.  Again.  I was driving when suddenly the DANGER WILL ROBINSON!! lights went on and it ceased to move forward.  On a freeway.  On Thanksgiving.

The cause is still unknown and she sits in the shop as I type.

On the flip side though I must be doing something right because I’m terribly lucky.

The first car failure happened after a show and this last one happened before I was on the road to the show.

And I’m supremely lucky to be surrounded by such good people.  Cars were offered and borrowed, rides were given.  Karla came and cut coasters out.  The awesome Suzanne showed up (post rain storm- she’s not a fool) and helped pack up all my damp supplies.  And people bought things despite the deluge.

And, all this not-running-around gave me time to work on a new Mod Podge Rocks project.  I wanted to come up with a semi-permanent wreath using blown up version of some terrific vintage Christmas cards.

The tutorial hasn’t posted yet but I’ll keep you up to date.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

Unique LA is next for me!

OK, lets not do that again

I’ve been itching to work on some furniture for months now but lacked:

• A-the furniture
• B- a venue in which to sell it.

Both of my problems were solved when

• A  my very good friend Aimee brought me this

• B – Thanks to my friend Nicki I was accepted into the Little French Market where I can sell both furniture and my coasters but I don’t have to rent a truck to get it there.

Aimee’s table was in good shape structurally but the finish was pretty well shot.

And I had a vision!

Text!

OK, I agree – as unique visions go me using text is not up there with sliced bread, the wheel and fire on the new idea front.…..but I like it!

So first up – a good cleaning, sanding and priming.

For the text I wanted to use my Cameo rather than the blender pen of the past (see!  Radically new!).  So I painted the apron of the table black and then distressed it a bit and taped off a straight line to keep my text even.

And then the trouble began.

Me and the Cameo just don’t get along.  For some reason it won’t actually connect with my computer so I have to do all these work-arounds.  And –when I do get it going it never quite does what I thought I’d told it to do.

I realize you could blame me for that but I prefer to blame the inanimate, non-sentient piece of equipment.   Thanks for your input though.

So, after numerous tries, fails and tries agains I got it to print out my quote:

Except that font wasn’t a great choice.  All those tiny, thin connecting lines don’t quite connect and I had to….. Pick. Out. Each.   Delicate.  Letter.  One.  At. A. Time.

But, once they were on I gave the whole thing a quick top coat of Antique White, peeled away the vinyl letters, did a little distressing and waxing and BOOM!

Another texty table from Cheltenham Road

Aaand I just noticed two things.

I forgot to put the little metal feet back on it – easy fix.

And I missed the period at the end of the quote so now, rather than looking like a quote from Emerson it looks like I’m informing someone named Emerson of the news about friends and houses.

Sigh…..

I see a sharpie in my future.

If any of you are local please come visit me and my chatty furniture at the Little French Market

Saturday & Sunday November 17th and 18th

19130 Ventura Blvd, Tarzana, CA

8AM -3PM

Let the Holidays Begin!

Thank you all for being so positive and supportive of Maggie’s guest post! It’s such a nice, warm little crowd we’ve created here.

And have I mentioned how pleased I am that she got more comments than anything I’ve posted all year?

I didn’t?

Well, I am really, really pleased.

Suuuuper pleased.

Just, beyond pleased.

Tragically, Maggie will not be able to return.  Something about being kidnapped and sold into white slavery – I’m unclear on the details.

Anyhoo……

I’ve been doing a bit of a scramble to both get ready for the holidays and come up with new ideas for coasters – just to mix things up a bit.

It occurred to me that I was ignoring the more scientifically inclined folks out there and I became very intrigued with the possibilities in the Periodic Table of the Elements.  So I came up with these Cheers! Coasters

I also thought that I should make some coasters to go along with the postcard tray design that I came up with a while ago.I’m kinda proud of the scalloped stamp-like edge!

And it’s slowly dawning on me that my holiday schedule is going to be a bit…intense.  It is as follows:

November 4^th  Patchwork Culver City

 

Saturday Nov 10^th The Venice Meet

 Nov 17^th & 18^th 

Little French Market (with my friend Nicki)

November 25th

Patchwork Festival Santa Ana

 Dec 1 & 2

Unique LA Holiday Show

Dec8 & 9^th

Renegade Holiday Market

Dec 10^th

Check myself in to the local sanitarium

Happy Holidays!

It Runs in the Family – Desk Makeover Tutorial From My Niece!

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

I’m on a brief vacation to Ohio visiting the family.

In the meantime I thought I’d share a great letter I got from my niece which also serves as a terrific step by step furniture makeover tutorial!

You may recall Maggie is the one who, with no previous experience in upholstery took this chair and made this chairThereby proving that she is a show-off just like my dad wonderfully gifted, generous and talented!

So I’m not sure why she thought she needed advice from me but…….

Dearest Uncle,

I am extremely happy to report on the completion of a project I asked you about almost a year ago.

As you may recall, I had taken it into my head last September to paint my desk.  I swiftly contacted you and, after receiving excellent advice, delighted in the endorphin rush that comes from deciding to do a project… and promptly filed it at the back of my to-do list.

Well, procrastination can only take you so far, especially when the item you are procrastinating about is the one piece of furniture you use on a daily basis – stupid utility value.  So I embarked on the adventure!

Step One: convince husband to help move heavy piece of furniture to the garage (grudging success) – and bang it on every available door jam you encounter (epic fail.)

Step Two: discover that Mom (Phebe) had a piece of furniture she’d like to paint and pencil in several dates to have a “painting party.”

Step Two Point Five: Actually settle on the date and have it arrive.  Set up the garage.

Step Three: settle on color – I went with an Antique White since my newly reupholstered chair has an off-white background and I wanted them to somewhat match.  Mom chose with a Bright White for a charming little sewing machine table which she’s not going to use for sewing at all.  Ever.

Step Four: sanding.  I had a couple of thoughts at this stage… primarily: “Thanks for bringing your electric sander over, Mom!”   and “Why didn’t I buy face masks until I was three quarters finished with this stage? Step Five:  cleaning using TSP

Step Six:  prime everything -followed nearly immediately by realizing that we didn’t have enough primer.  

Step Seven: fine-grit sanding of first layer of primer and re-application of primer.

Step Eight: watch an episode of “The Tudors” so we don’t go out and try to put the first layer of paint on before the primer coats dry.

Step Nine: put first layer of actual paint on.  Curse occasionally due to drips.

Step Ten: More “Tudors” – same purpose.

Step Eleven: put second layer of paint on.  Acknowledge that it’ll be at least a week before I can do anything else.  Ugh!  This waiting thing sucks.

Now I’ll take a mini break from the steps because what happens next was not at all in the plan… but it was pretty inevitable.  I realized that I’d chosen “Antique White” for the purposes of matching my chair… but that my dang office was painted Bright White and my “new” desk wasn’t gonna look great against that wall color. So I decided to find a color I could use for an accent wall, settled on “mis-mixed” leftover at the paint store and ended up with lovely salmon-y color  that was definitely within the realm of matching my chair

Step Twelve: convince husband to help carry desk back inside… AND BASH IT AGAINST EVERY %$*&@ DOOR FRAME WE ENCOUNTERED!!!! (there were a few painting touch-ups needed)

Step Thirteen: hand-paint accent design on the front.  This was a Pinterest idea I saw and loved so I chose a bright green and practiced some tree branches on a large sheet of paper Step Fourteen: realize that I’m really happy with the way my desk came out… but that I have absolutely no way of sitting at it (the piece never had a chair and I’ve been improvising with leftover/extra furniture for years – not my best interior design moment, that’s for sure.)

Dash to the awesome Habitat for Humanity ReStore, find a sturdy little chair of the appropriate dimensions with just a bit of carpentry flare (is that a thing?  it is now…) to match my desk pop  out its seat and painted it and reupholstered it in a nice bright green.  Put them all together and whaddya got?  A sewing desk I’m not ashamed to show off!   The only remaining problem: how to get the primer out of my dog’s tail fur… (she was a little overzealous in her attempts to help me out in the garage…)

Thanks for the great advice Uncle David!  Everything worked out wonderfully!

Love,

-Mags

PS: Mom reminded me to tell you a bit about my 2-drawer index file cabinets that were a minor part of this painting initiative – they just happened to be the exact width of the bags Mom and I store our DMC Embroidery Floss in so I grabbed three from the pile of stuff they were getting rid of at work, painted the drawers and frames in alternating colors (green & white) and stacked them on top of my filing cabinet with a small swatches of the upholstery fabric slid into the label slot – they came out pretty cute, too!