Karla Nathan – Page 28 – Karla's Cottage

Inside the cabinets I just repainted

By Karla Nathan / May 17, 2023

While cleaning and repainting my kitchen cabinets, I did mini redoes on the displays inside.

Three of them have glass doors. The very top shelves were where I kept pretty things rarely used.
That stuff had been up there for…well, a bit.

It all needed a dusting even though it was behind glass. And I came across things I didn’t even remember owning. Those got pulled out and will go to my booth to sell. Because if they hadn’t been touched in a decade, why do I need them?

My pretties got a little bit of a shuffle, a wiping, then a thinning out.

Except for these. Oh, yes, they got a cleaning off, but that’s it, then they went right back on display with no changes.

This is a partial set from my mom’s dishes. When she died, the whole set went to my Sissy, who shared them with Bobbie Sue and I. We each got two place settings.

All of the cabinets still look plenty full, even with the pruning I did. And I have more inventory to haul into Good Juju. Although, rose pattern china doesn’t seem to be a big draw there. I try to balance my foofy pretties with some more rustic items for that venue.

I’m liking that sort of combo in my house too.

See what I mean? This is on my mantel. Since we added the hearth room with the dark floors and stone wall, I’m using a lot more natural type elements and darker colors. I’m still all about the Light and Bright with roses, but I like the cabiney-cottagey feel too.

I repainted my kitchen cabinets

cottage, Kitchen remodel

By Karla Nathan / May 14, 2023

My kitchen cabinets were built by my son, and I love them. They are solid and will last forever. But they needed some TLC and I wanted a new look. The tops are now a brighter white and the bottoms are a mushroomy tone.

I also painted the underneath part as well as the window frame behind the stove to the same bright, white.

It feels so much cleaner and brighter. Notice how often I am using the word, brighter? That is what I was going for, and I am quite pleased that I got my bright results.

While I was at it, I took stuff out of the cabinets, cleaned and rearranged them, washed this curtain and the ones on the window, and soaked every glass knob in soapy vinegar water.

The pottery on top of the cabinets got a trip through the dishwasher while I was painting and was ready to put back up there as I finished up with my paint brush.

The walls of the recessed area around this bank of cabinets are painted a very pale blue. I was tempted to redo them too, in a more sea glass shade.

Since I am still dealing with post concussion syndrome, I decided to just tackle one job at a time. But I did take down everything on the wall, wash it, and slightly rearrange the pictures. And I’m still day dreaming of an ocean blue to slap up there later.

The paint I used was Behr latex satin. Since I have been the only person to paint these cabinets, I knew all of the products that were on them, and didn’t have to sand or prime. I’d previously used latex and a water based top coat, so I knew that my satin coat would adhere nicely. That saved time. And my Grandfairy was helpful too, Sugarwings took off all the hardware for me then put it back on when I was done.

Here is an older photo of the room. See, brighter! Another thing that helped was replacing our light bulbs with daylight LEDs. Although two chandeliers’ worth of brand new bulbs felt like a major renovation cost (dang, light bulbs aren’t cheap!), they made a huge difference.

Daylight bulbs versus soft white changed everything.

I saw cobwebs that I hadn’t noticed, my husband could do his morning crossword without reading glasses, and my cabinets looked dirty. I’m glad I got the new bulbs, even though they made me feel like I needed to repaint the room and started this whole production.

I’m pretty happy with the new BRIGHTER look.

A couple of coincidences

antiques/junking, wallpaper

By Karla Nathan / May 11, 2023

Isn’t this just lovely wallpaper? It is my all time favorite in years of collecting old papers.

Often, I come by the same patterns multiple times, but a few special designs are more rare and I do not see them around as much. This is one I have never come across again, and I save it only for important purposes. This treasure is way too wonderful to be a tag or a random craft. A pattern this beautiful is meant for lining a cabinet, or being in a treasured book for a friend.

At Juju on Friday, a shopper came in and asked if I had any wallpaper. Well, I do sell craft packs in my Boutique, but I haven’t been bringing that to the mall. I had started covering a wall in a different old paper for each season, then selling the pieces I took down after.

This customer was looking for a very specific one, not just something to craft with. She wanted the exact paper from her grandma’s home, and had searched everywhere, including online with Google’s reverse image. When she showed me her photo, I knew I could help!

I have to wonder what the odds are that of all the shops in Kansas City, or even in the Old West Bottoms, and the vast amount of dealers at them all, that we met and she was asking around for my favorite wallpaper of all time? That night, I cut two repeats off for her and she came back the next day to get it, promising me photos of the shadowbox she is making in her grandma’s memory.

Coincidences make me happy, and I used to collect them in a file. It’s been years since I wrote them down, though I am thinking I might start again. My favorite was that a friend was walking down the road, a quite few blocks from our house and saw a bundle of mail in the muddy ditch. He picked it up, saw it was ours and brought it over. Inside was a very big check we had been waiting for. This was the first time he’d decided to go for a walk there, the mail was muddy and not easy to spy. And it was found by someone who knew us.

A very lucky coincidence!

Last week when I went to the Sparks Flea Mkt, I bought a bag of junk jewels and inside I found a brooch with my buddy, Beth’s price tag on it from a previous sale. That gave me a huge smile!

Rich and Sugar’s first flea market

antiques/junking, dogs

By Karla Nathan / May 8, 2023

Last week was my favorite flea market, Sparks and White Cloud. It is a far cry from its heyday of the past, but I still love it. And I always fill my cart multiple times.

As well as refilling my junk jewel stash.

I see future bejeweled Christmas trees hiding in this pile of sparklies!

And for some strange reason, I purchased this entire tub of rubber doll parts.

I was picking through it to find vintage Christmas elf heads and the owner told me that I should buy the whole tub. Uhm, no thanks. Especially at $50. Well, his price kept dropping and my pile of elf heads kept growing.

He said he would throw in the tub, and I always need more clear tubs, who doesn’t? But wait, had he previously expected me to fill my pockets with faces? I had figured he was sending the tub too.

I have no idea what I’ll do with the hundreds of heads in this bucket of weirdness. But another dealer talked me into buying a pile of ugly dolls for only $2. I can possibly copy the John Travolta/Nic Cage FaceOff movie and put new faces on the bodies to create some cuter dolls.

I shall consider it a challenge, not a waste of space and twenty bucks.

For the first time, my husband came along to the flea market. He isn’t into vintage, but hey, he is into me and I just hit 65, so I guess he likes some vintage stuff.

It was Sugar’s birthday and the weather was exactly what you’d want when you describe a perfect spring day in Kansas. So we loaded up Sugar in the truck and the two of them wandered around while I shopped. While Rich took a cart full of purchases to the vehicle for me, I had that sweet dog.

She was so well behaved. I simply laid the leash across my shoulder so I had free hands to shop, and my pup stayed right at my hip the whole time.

We rewarded our birthday girl with a walk down by the Platte River in White Cloud. The only thing missing from making this an ideal adventure was a funnel cake, which I missed out on getting. As I was watching the river flow by, I thought it would be quite the spot for a picnic, and wished I’d picked up a treat to bring along.

Funnel cake or not, I sure enjoyed our outing. I ran into lots of other junker friends there and had conversations with sellers I’d been buying from for years. I didn’t convert Rich into an antique shopper, but he had fun. He was intrigued by the idea of “mantiques” but not enough to look at any. He mostly liked the word.

Sugar got tons of attention and many compliments on her behavior. Yep, a very good day.

A gifted shelf

Good JuJu, jewelry

By Karla Nathan / May 5, 2023

On my last post I was talking about trying get shoppers to notice that my furniture is also for sale at Good Juju. But not this piece!

It was a gift from my neighbor, Lily, who makes the aromatic candles. And it is ideal for my jewelry display!

Or so I hope. Last month I tried to market my sparklies from the new, smaller space and that TANKED. I’m always up for a shuffle or a redo to make the most of my displays, but honestly, it’s just a guessing game for me.

I will let you know how it goes.

I keep trying stuff to see what works

antiques/junking, Good JuJu

By Karla Nathan / May 2, 2023

This month I am trying something different in my Good Juju space. See all of the blue tags?

They border on obnoxious, huh? That is the point, I hope.

My booth is piled floor to ceiling with small things. And they do pretty good most of the time, I think people enjoy the treasure hunt. But I also think that they are so focused on the mountains of minis that they do not see the bigger picture.

That furniture underneath the massive stacks is for sale too! And I am done with my umbrellas, am ready for a new entryway display, so they are also gaudily tagged.

Sadly, I rarely sell furniture. Oh, a piece here and there, but usually small and extra inexpensive. (Not that I have anything high dollar anyway)

People probably don’t even notice the tables, shelves, and dressers. So, I tried to tag them in a way that made it obvious.

It certainly is a scramble when someone does buy a table, since there is a possible avalanche of goods on top of it. But, I am always happy to unload and redo. It’s like a timed design challenge, to reshuffle as fast as I can while shoppers are looking around.

I like my spot to have a different look each month, so I don’t want the same furniture there forever and I am constantly hauling things back and forth from home. Which is inefficient. I’d much rather sell some and find more pieces to fix up and redo.

Well, we will see, huh? This month is my one year anniversary at the venue, I am still trying new things. It’s also my birthday Friday while I’m there. My second Good Juju birthday weekend with post concussion season. (Not a tradition that I want to continue!)

Sweet faces

Good JuJu, redos

By Karla Nathan / April 29, 2023

I am pleased that my fairy dolls are still selling well at Good Juju. I really enjoy making them. I had a feeling it would only be a Christmas Angel type thing, but they have sold consistently each month. Not a lot at once, but 1-3 each time. Which keeps me able to continue making them, which makes me happy.

Friends have been giving me old dolls that need repair and I have been playing dolly doc with glue, lace, and goat hair. Plus a few sparkly bits here and there.

I also make the fairies by scratch with these vintage heads I found, plus a wire and wool roving body.

Or sometimes, I just cut off the hideous costumes they often come in, clean them up and display as is.

I have always been fond of dolls, and even as a kid, I liked to give them makeovers. I consider myself very blessed to be able to play with dollies as an adult.

Because it sucks to just act like a grown up all the time.

A tale of tech troubles and many mushrooms

cottage, family, mushrooms

By Karla Nathan / April 25, 2023

Remember my quest to make two hundred mushrooms? I am on my way. Especially if you count three at a time on one display.

Working on fungi this week has been a wonderful escape from my digital woes. OMG, my email issues have been a nightmare. From hours on the phone, re-explaining, waiting to codes, call backs and answers that never come, to finally being able it get into it, but in a round about, not so easy way.

It gave me great joy to chop right into the lacy skirt of a vintage gown to make sweet, lil schroomies! If I am feeling frustration with some of life’s irritations, a dab of creative time can be just what I need to forget my troubles.

Not only was my email messing with me, we had issues with getting tax forms we needed, and were also dealing with a dead phone and a hard to find replacement, then all of the minor little glitches that can pop up in a new phone once it is set up.

Rich lost his phone deep in the woods. He’d found two pounds of morels, but realized his iPhone wasn’t in the pocket where he’d last seen it.

Oops!

So he trudged back through swamps and deadfalls with no luck. Then drove 45 minutes home to get the iPad so he could track the phone. Then re-trudged through the woods and the swamps and the deadfalls to search again, this time, armed with Find My iPhone.

But once again, Oops.

The ipad didn’t have cellular and wouldn’t work without his phone. He drove the 45 minutes back to our house, retraced his steps, this time while carrying my iPhone and a working app. Success! He found it after a full day of looking, or trying to get to the other side of the swamp to look.

He came home very dirty, washed his clothes right away so I wouldn’t get poison ivy from a laundry basket, which I often do after he has been hiking. And you do remember me saying that we had been trying to replace a dead phone? Yep. He was so diligent about getting his woodsy clothes washed that he forgot to check pockets and also washed the phone he had looked for all day that was in the pocket.

It was too funny to be upset about. We invited some friends over to eat fried morels with us, and I spent some time crafting to forget about all of our technology issues. The day off was certainly needed and helped my frame of mind.

Crowning glories

antiques/junking, jewelry

By Karla Nathan / April 21, 2023

Last week, I made some crowns.

And since I had been painting statues and figures, everyone was treated to a crown for their head.

Even if a head was all they had, no body. And even the wildlife was crowned.

A few were steam punk style, but most were simply on the regal side.

Well, that wasn’t a good idea

antiques/junking, Good JuJu

By Karla Nathan / April 16, 2023

At last month’s Good Juju sale, I tried a new out a new booth for my jewelry.

Well, that didn’t go so well.

I think the space was too tight and hard to shop in for so many pieces of jewelry. That stuff needs to be spread out more.

I have already paid my rent for the 3’ x 3’ corner, so I decided to try something else for May’s shopping event. I have a lot of vintage clothing, but could only bring a couple of pieces at a time into my man booth since a gown can take up so much space.

Rich helped me make over this jewelry spot into a clothes closet. It feels more efficient this way, but what do I know? I’m still figuring this whole thing out.

Since I am a big believer in using the WHOLE piece of real estate, I had Rich add some shelves for me.
He made the clothing rod out of one of his grapevine walking sticks and the rest of the installed bits and pieces are things we had in the garage. So the changeover didn’t cost us anything.

It was sad to see him cut up one of his cool sticks, but he has a few and using it does class up the area. I think I’ll ask him if I can have more of those, then I’ll fix them up and sell them. I think there could be a market for his whittled grapevine walking sticks, I really like them. I might add some leather and crystals to them.

Author name: Karla Nathan