antiques/junking – Page 7 – Karla's Cottage

Holiday Decor is My Fave!

antiques/junking, Good JuJu, Hand painted, Hearts, holiday decor, jewelry

By Karla Nathan / January 28, 2023

Lately, I have been leaving jewelry making supplies out on one studio table. That way, when I feel the whim, I can quickly make a piece without dragging out boxes. The room is a wreck anyway from using a chunk of it as storage, so I have kind of given up on keeping my poor studio tidy.

My most recent creations have been Valentine themed. Either with hearts, or just an air of dress up and romance.

The last few months at Good Juju have been absolutely delightful for me. I simply adore decorating for Christmas, Valentine’s, and Halloween. I tend to be into flowery and over the top, romantic, even gaudy stuff that isn’t exactly what the crowd there loves on a regular basis. The venue leans toward rustic or primitive and my corner screams “fussy” to a lot of the shoppers.

I do throw in lots of neutrals and even natural woods and browns, but they end up buried under my foofiness. And holidays were a good reason to have the exception.

I guess I still have Easter to look forward to…. But after that, it will be a long stretch til fall when I have an excuse to make things my way. Till then, I’ll try to reign myself in a little and focus more on neutrals.

Bejeweled Hearts

antiques/junking, Hearts, jewelry

By Karla Nathan / January 18, 2023

As much as I loved the jeweled trees at Xmas, I might be loving the hearts just even more!

My only worry is that I will delete my decades of flea market scrounged sparklies and I will have to stop!

So far, all is going okay. I typically mix in some newer pieces that I have aged too, using a selection of really old, very antique, merely vintage and slightly new all together.

Running out of frames has been an issue also, but those are more easily replaced. Goodwill and estate sales have come in handy for that, although sometimes I have to add a bit of paint or distressing.
Good jewels aren’t as easy to find. Luckily, I’ve spent many, many, many years looking out for special pieces!

Hmm, I could possibly be seeing jeweled flower baskets coming this spring.

Hearts

antiques/junking, Good JuJu, Hearts, jewelry, paintings, Valentine's Day

By Karla Nathan / January 6, 2023

I'll be having lots of hearts and wings in my booth at Good JuJu. This canvas has plaster texture in a heart shape with the roses painted inside. I have a few more, not sure if I got pictures. All are unique.

And remember the jewelry trees I did for Xmas?

I loved doing that so much, I could not stop!

So, I turned my shape from a tree to a heart.

This one is a combo of the textured canvas with a button collage. And in front you can see some of my wings. They are made from a 1800s ledger and I swear, that book was one of my best ever purchases. I have sold rolled up pages from it, used it to line shelves, decopauged it onto table tops, backed collages with it, and now have made wings and hearts.

And there is still some left!

I almost didn't buy it because it was not cheap. But man, that handwriting! Wow, so pretty. I am glad I went against my cheapskate instincts and bought it anyway.

I also beat out my cheap side and decided to keep these wings that my son helped form instead of selling them.

Since my booth is chocked full of wings and hearts I doubt if one set will be missed. Heck, I’d be thrilled to have even half of the ones there sell out.

And I sure do love making them.

Two bonus shopping dates for Good Juju

antiques/junking, Good JuJu

By Karla Nathan / November 25, 2022

This season, we have TWO bonus shopping dates at Juju in the West Bottoms.

One is for Small Business Saturday (this weekend).

The next is a little party with drinks and prizes on the night before our regular First Friday and Saturday event in December.

I’m not sure if I’ll need to do a whole turn around of my booth between them, but I will be restocking.

Which is what I have done since the November sale.

Rich took a consulting job in Ohio and took the truck with him, so I had him bring in enough bigger pieces of furniture to last me a while before he left.

So, I did a little bit of rearranging, then added boxes and tubs of more items.

Included were lots and lots and lots of trees.

Bleached trees…

dyed trees…

trees in cups…

trees hidden inside bottles…

trees on bottles…

Trees with deer…

On candlesticks…

On boxes…

And even more. I have bags of trees too, so you can pop your own onto what ever display you’d like.

Oh, did I forget to mention the old school, jewelry trees on velvet?

At Marilyn’s Beauty Filled House

antiques/junking, friends

By Karla Nathan / November 15, 2022

Recently, I met a new friend.

She invited some of us over to her home for lunch and to see her collections.

And oh my, what collections she has!

Her home left me speechless. Which is good, because I am still having glitches with my blog hosting site. So I will just stop talking and show you photos of her lovelies.

Enjoy!

It’s back!

antiques/junking, holiday decor, Web/Tech

By Karla Nathan / November 9, 2022

WOO HOO!!!!

A PHOTO LOADED!

It has been a very, very long time since I could work on a blog post. For the last couple weeks, I have been checking in daily, trying to add a picture and getting a wide variety of nothings, error messages and even a splash of gobbilty gook.

It feels good to have the hosting site up and running again.

Over the last 16 years, my blog has become a part of my life. Not just a habit, or a business tool, much more than that.

I rarely look back through it, unless I amending to see a specific project, or figure out a date about when we went somewhere, or redid a room.

But when I do, I tend to get sucked down the rabbit hole, and find all sorts of tidbits about my life that I’d forgotten. I see things I do not ever remember seeing, let alone creating.

Sweet faces of babies that are now teens, and such fun things we did together.

Writing in my blog has been worth it for the family memories alone. But seeing my creations, friends, vacations, pups, and decor over the years can be a nice surprise.

When I began writing this journal, I had zilch of an inkling that I’d still be doing it this long, or that it would be more than just a business tool.

At this point, I don’t know how many people even read blogs, I no longer read my stats (which certainly aren’t in the thousands a day any longer). And it has become harder to respond to comments, because of some odd change that the hosting site made. But I still love reading the messages.

And I like knowing there is someone out there who cares.

So thank you to those of you who are still with me and have checked back during this outage.
I am quite pleased to have it back again!

A new career in junking for a surprise helper

antiques/junking, Good JuJu

By Karla Nathan / October 5, 2022

This week is First Fridays at the West Bottoms and Good Juju will be open for business.

I’m afraid I will be missing it!

But my stuff won’t. It is all set up for action, I took care of that before I flew off on my multi legged adventure.

First leg is North Carolina to see my grown up, baby boy.

Second is South Carolina to participate in Jenn Hayslip’s fabulous Bridgerton event.

And the third leg (because it’s spooky season and time for three legged monster type critters, and this is a monster of a trip) I’ll be jetting down to Siesta Key to be with my sissies for part of the annual Sister Trip. They have two weeks, which I just couldn’t do, but I managed to squeeze in a few days at the end of my journey.

When I get back to Kansas, it will be time to pack up my Halloween leftovers and start setting up the November show. Which I look forward to being a part of, it’s always such a fun time there.

Who is watching the store while I am away? Well, I’ll have my buds, Beth and Angie there for most of the time, but Beth has some obligations. While she is out, I have an all star replacement lined up.

Rich!

Yep, my husband is being extra supportive and covering my shift for me. He might be a bit overwhelmed and in over his head, but he is willing to go for it.

If you are around, please check on him for me.

He will be feeling like a fish out of water. But I have faith in his skills. If he could run dozens of golf courses in his past life, I’m sure he can sell some beat up, old junk and crappy crafts.

I will miss being there myself, but it will be in good hands.

More mini makeovers

antiques/junking, redos

By Karla Nathan / October 2, 2022

My garage sale days have provided soooo many redos lately. These mini pumpkins and gourds got a coat of glitter and paint.

They started out gray. And free. I’ll take free, ugly gourds any day. The jewelry stand was $1 and also on the ugly side.
Or just tacky?

Ta dah! A quick makeover, because paint is just plain magic, isn’t it?

I thought of adding a layer of decopauged lace onto the torso, but then worried that it could snag any jewelry hung on the piece. So, I’ll leave it as is and am happy with the look.

My year of embracing orange and a redo-rescue

antiques/junking, cottage, holiday decor, redos

By Karla Nathan / September 25, 2022

For the first autumn of my adult life, I’ve been drawn to fall colors. It kind of coincides with my attraction to the mix of warm woods that I’ve now blended in my house along with the existing whites and creams.

For decades if was just the whites. But I sure am enjoying the wood textures we have added. Also the dark leather chairs by the stone hearth.

Did it start with this dining table? Maybe. I’ve added quite a few touches of wood around our house since.

The hutch is painted white, but has a natural top. This has been my new, go to move. There are a few pieces with this paint on the bottom, wood stain on the top look in the last few years.

But orange? That is brand new for me. And I like the pops of brightness that color brings to the season.

For a while now, I have loved red accents on a white background at Christmas. Having a neutral background means that I can switch things up lot lot with just a few changes of color splashed around the room.

This over blown monstrosity was at a garage sale for one dollar, and typically, I’d have walked right by it. Or paused to wonder how the basket would look spray painted white (probably very nice, filled with roses).

It is actually a very nice shape and looked good with a pot of mums as is.

Instead, I decided to accept the orange and see what I could do with it.

It had a lot of big, velvet pumpkins inside, two I added to the urns in the top pic. The rest I set aside along with about 50% of the crazy, over the top amount amount of leaves and berries and bows.

The abundance was pared down to a more reasonable amount in the basket, and I still have a lifetime supply of leaf and berry picks to use for something else.

So that makes three more palatable arrangements and a leftover bag of supplies for $1, plus the 50 cents each I paid for the urns at the same garage sale.

Plus, plenty of stems leftover to fill this caldron (also from a garage sale).

All filled with my new enjoyment of autumn tones. I won’t be changing over my entire decor to pumpkin colors, but I am liking the hints and peeks of them I have scattered around.

Halloween Jewels

antiques/junking, Good JuJu, jewelry

By Karla Nathan / September 13, 2022

For Halloween, I went all out on the theming for my booth at Good Juju. Including some necklaces I made.

Lots of them!

Most are just kinda themed for the spooky season, but would be fine all year, but some are full on ghostly or witchy.

See what I mean? Very nice as a moody piece to wear with a black dress in October, but still pretty for the rest of the calendar.

A nice accent to wear for for Halloween.

For this season, I planned to have enough of this type of merchandise for the September and October sales weekends.

Oh, and if you need the perfect dress to wear with this jewelry, I have that too.

I’d never have had the audacity to paint blood splatters onto a Victorian silk dress in such beautiful condition myself. But I was thrilled to see that someone else did and I snapped it up to add some atmosphere to my space. It’s pretty cool, I kinda want to wear it to the annual zombie walk here in Lawrence.