Posts about etsy

The story of the cards

January 10th, 2012

Last summer I ignored, for several days, a sketchy poster board sign hung on a boarded-up building a block away: “yard sale inside, knock on door.” Every yard-sale-loving cell in my body answered the call with a quite certain “yeah right, and DIE.” Until the day that… I went inside. Very end of the week, sign had been up for days and days with no reports of murder in my small, happy neighborhood. Door was hanging wide open, normal-looking people were loading things out of the building onto a truck.

So I wandered up. Was greeted at the door by a very enthusiastic old man who told me the story of this former pharmacy – closed down many many years ago, but the building was boarded up rather than being sold. Now the family was finally clearing things out to make the sale. The inside was like a fossil record of the 80s and beyond. There were some other normal-looking yard sale patrons paging through books. The guy shooed me inside and begged me to take things. He said he’d give me a deal.

Over an hour later I emerged victorious. And really really, dirty. Like, I went home and showered kind of dirty. Feeling a little guilty and like I had just committed some kind of yard sale robbery, but also sure that my grandpa would be proud of the price I paid for my haul, and positively giddy about my treasures.

For part of a sweltering hot Friday afternoon, I sat on a grimy chair in this grimy room and pawed through grimy boxes full of pristine greeting cards that were older than me by decades. They were amazing. I drooled. I fawned. I sorted out two boxes of the ones I wanted. What for? I didn’t know. I was completely consumed with the wanties. They were going to go in the trash the next day. There were hundreds and hundreds, most in multiples. They were almost entirely packaged neatly in flat, brown paper envelopes, reorder tickets sticking out of the tops. No bends, no creases, no fading, no de-glittering or de-flocking. The vellum was beautiful and crisp. They were all stock that had never been put out for sale.

I emerged into the sunlight with two big boxes of greeting cards. And then again with a box of lovely antique cameras, plus a couple of 70s Kodak gems (most have been gifted – I kept one). And then a box full of half-empty, ratty scrapbooks, which I devoured to learn a little of the family and the past of my town. On top of that last box was a super-ratty quilt, which lives on to enjoy outings onto the grass to listen to music and be sweated / bubbled / hummused on by happy, dancing children.

All told, I had paid the guy a sum so small that I can’t admit it here, even after fighting him and rounding up to something above “really fancy Starbucks coffee drink.”

So the cards. What in the hell do I do with hundreds and hundreds of beautiful vintage greeting cards? Aside from use and gift, I came up with two solutions. Some I will sell on Etsy. They have been in plastic totes for half a year because I felt a little guilty doing that. However, practicality wins and the first batch will be up shortly. Beyond that, I am scanning all of them and making them available for download here. They are all uploaded in their original size, for graphic taking and crafting in whatever way you are able. There are many, many more to be added to that set, so check back often.

The people who owned the pharmacy were German. They had a nice collection of cameras, mostly German as well. They were good photographers. The man – the pharmacist – had two doctor brothers, both lived in Florida. They took a lot of photos of snow. They sent Christmas cards. They baked cookies from stained, handwritten recipes. They rode horses on Kingwood street. The women had excellent taste in clothes, but, alas, were not my size.

Enjoy.

Listening: Nick Drake pandora (probably for the rest of “winter”)

Ten days

December 15th, 2011


I wrote a WV Etsy gift guide, in case you are in need of any last-minute gift ideas :)

(While you shop there, Hazel is currently pretending to shop in Target [kitchen] for her baby [stuffed dog]. She is buying treats. There are even automatic doors.)

Vintage in the shop

November 19th, 2011

There is a pile of new vintage housewares and craft supplies up in my shop! Here’s a sample of the deliciousness – click through to view the rest…

Finally – vintage goodies!

September 6th, 2011

I finally got around to photographing some vintage goodies over the weekend, and spent part of this rainy day (eating soup and listening to Iron & Wine and) listing them in my shop. Have a peek! Many more fun and colorful housewares to come, as well as clothing and a goldmine of pristine 1950s and 1960s greeting cards.

(Just a few – click through to my shop to see the rest!)

Tiny Etsy Adventures

July 16th, 2011


Simpler, much less time-consuming packaging…

…and selling a little bit of new supplies, rather than just the occasional destash from my own goodies. I have no idea how this will go or what it will include, but I do know that Etsy is my first stop if I’m looking for a particular something that I can’t find locally.

Also, I spent over three hours the other night tidying up my shop and doing general business housekeeping. THAT was more refreshing than the new packaging, the supplies, the vintage… ahhh.

A secret: I’ve been hoarding

July 6th, 2011

At various points in my growing-up years Old Stuff and Other People’s Stuff oscillated between fascinating, boring, detestable, and desirable.

I loved my grandpa’s treasures that were yardsailed just for me (still do).

I hated “just five more minutes” in an antique store.

I loved Ma Ruth-ish primary colored Pyrex bowls but desired none for myself for a very long time, because they didn’t come in black.

I hated anything crocheted that was supposed to cover your body and keep you warm (because of the drafty little hundreds of holes between the doubles and triples.)

I loved, but never understood, Hoosier cabinets.

I never understood, and still don’t, rusty old farm implements as decoration (sorry, Mama. Yours look good but I could never work it.)

Growing up I always recovered from illness under handmade quilts. Sometime in my teen years I began to wonder how I could ever function as a green-bean-serving adult if I didn’t use the same green bean bowl as my grandparents, but I was pretty sure I’d be better off in life if I never made use of a holey-crocheted item. In Canada I met Ella, an Illinois farm girl who is just like me. Together we coveted Fiestaware in retired colors and 1950s appliances.

At 28 I’m a blue #401 away from having thrifted my own set of Ma’s pyrex bowls, which have (tomorrow!) survived 59 years of marriage and muffins. I drag my own whining child through goodwill, promising “one more aisle, sweet pea.” I would love a Hoosier cabinet but still ponder what I’d do with the sifter – use it for hiding candy (my mom) or phone books (Ella’s mom), or remove the sifter and make the most of the space? I am learning to identify depression glass and things from various glasshouses, especially WV. The long hook that was once used to reach top-shelf-things in my great grandfather’s store now hangs the side of my skinny wooden cupboard instead of my mom’s, where it lived for my entire life. I nap (sometimes, when I remember what a nap is) under blankets that other people made, that other people slept and rocked babies and cried and got sick and got well under. I cook and serve in bowls with infinite batches of pancakes stored away in their memories.

This post-teenage shift in perspective and appreciation has come with a problem: if I find some Jadite plates in goodwill for a quarter each I can’t just leave them there, but I also don’t want them because I don’t collect Jadite, but what if someone just buys them to smash up for mosaic pieces not knowing what they have ohmygod. What if someone buys this amazing afghan for their dog’s bed? Quick, text photo to friends to see if anyone else wants to give it a home because I certainly don’t need another one.

I can’t dump everything on my friends, have no desire to rent a storage unit, and hope to always keep my own selective collections modest. So… the hideous-to-me gold eagle Pyrex? The Jadite? The amazing juice glasses when I already have amazing juice glasses? The pulse-racing western shirts that don’t fit anyone I know? The irresistible colors and the 1940s sewing notions that I WILL NEVER USE and no, I DON’T, in fact, fondue, but god this mod blue-flowered fondue pot is amazing… I’ve been buying it for 19 cents here, a quarter or a couple bucks there. I’ve been hoarding it all in tubs and this past weekend I unpacked it all, took stock, researched and priced and made a spreadsheet, and this coming weekend I will photograph.

Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll begin listing it all in my shop. To delight someone else, and send it all off to people who will love these things for their history. Because really, I think muffins are better whipped up in a well-loved bowl. I think naps are better under a blanket that you didn’t just walk into Target and buy. I believe this wholeheartedly, even though I didn’t always.

(Dear Ikea, please do not take offense – I still love you.)

(Dear Paisley, it’s not that I don’t think you’re deserving of a lovely vintage afghan for pawing-spinning-nesting.)

Etsy friends,

April 13th, 2011

Thanks for the blog shoutouts! [1, 2]

New year’s resolution catch-up!

June 29th, 2010

All of this brings me to the current week: a grocery bag of stuff to ebay (mostly camera equipment), two to goodwill, *altoids tins repurposed into Etsy shipping material, three old phone chargers finally went to the reStore after being moved from place to place in this house since November, and I sorted out a pile of my stuff at my parents’ house to go to goodwill.

*Remember when I washed out all of those altoids tins during a snow-in? I have been experimenting with packaging and shipping since then. Shipping out Etsy orders has always been the bane of my existence. I’m very fickle about how it looks, I don’t want to be wasteful, but I also don’t want to spend more time making recycled mailing materials (as in my cereal box mailer obsession, which lasted most of the winter… as in sewn bubble mailers, which were amazing and I should make more because they didn’t take that long) than I do making product to sell. I finally put my foot down and made myself come up with a packaging and shipping method that looks cute, involves a bit of upcycling, and will hopefully lend itself nicely to reuse or recycling on the other end. Have you ever heard the statistic about how many estimated bubble mailers went into landfills during the first five years of ebay? I can’t bring myself to bulk order a giant box of bubble mailers, and I don’t want to jack up my shipping prices to compensate for nicely recycled & recyclable ones. So until I can figure something else out: a plain brown paper envelope with contents wrapped in a neatly cut to fit sheet of bubble wrap. As long as my dad keeps me in altoids tins, this works perfectly. In the meantime, I am still on the lookout for a giant paper punch that’s the size & shape of the top of an altoids tin, because I’m not totally overjoyed about how they look

Listening: Billy Bragg & Wilco
(I am) Reading: Last Child in the Woods and The Midwife
(Hazel is) Reading: The Family Book
Working on: some custom stuff; some destash sorting; in the mood to sew some more Oliver + S skirts today. Alice also needs some new clothes. hmm.

New project: as if I need another one of those

May 24th, 2010

Ever found yourself standing over your trash can holding something you’re about to toss and think to yourself, “surely SOMEONE can make something out of this”?

Put it here ——————> Trash it Forward. New blog, brainchild of the Etsy forums. A little more reliable than craigslist or freecycle because things are offered up with crafters in mind, a little more fun than the landfill, and a good way to get rid of things if you’re from a small place with no established upcycling programs. It also keeps us from angering people who sell bottle caps and Altoids tins and stuff like that on Etsy by listing our trash for pennies because we really just want to give it all away.

We make trash, you pay postage for us to mail it to you, you make stuff out of it. Good, right?

How and why and when and where to go

April 27th, 2010


Week 13 – bag of stuff to Goodwill.


Hazel’s first collection. She almost always brings a little something home from a walk, after carrying it around the whole time and refusing to drop it to catch herself when she falls. How long will I keep these rocks and other bits of nature?

Aaaaanddddd… the April Spotted Box! A lot of people seem to think doing these sample boxes has become a waste of time / product / money, but this one has been featured in Mothering magazine a couple of times recently, so I was excited to take a gamble and try it again. Besides, sending in enough samples to get a full-sized box for yourself is totally worth it. My box contained stuff from:

Moonlodge Medicines
Small Wonders Wipes
Mama Marsh’s Creations
For Crying Out Loud
Polkadot Pickle
Monkey Butt Designs
Knot for Ewe
Happy Booty Boutique
Amy’s Blankies
FOE Your Diaper
Carver Creations
Sugar Chills
Cat and Ace Creations
Mama’s Bug A Boo
Southern Belle Charms
Wee Ones
Creative Cupcake
Frost Fish Cove Soaps
Joyful Rose
Lil’ Outlaws
Jenna E. Krueger
Custom Candy Creations

So many good creations! In addition to lots of generous gift certificates and discount codes, I got candy, stationery, accessories, body products, cloth diapering stuff (diaper stuff, cloth wipes and solution, diaper pail powder, etc.), craft supplies, a full sized bag of herbal infusion, nursing accessories, soaps, cleaning supplies… the whole box looks and smells overwhelmingly delicious!

I might do another one towards the end of summer, depending on when we move. It looks like the end is in sight, and we’ll be moving at the end of June or in September. We’ll know in… June. Eek! We’ll live with Mikey’s mom until next summer. Sound familiar? We’ve gone around and around and over and under and through it and temporary cohabitation seems like the only solution that will keep Hazel in full-time Mommycare and Mikey in full-time school mode. Those are the two most important things to us for the time being – not (gasp) living in a place of our own or avoiding more debt or any of that silly stuff. Hazel at home. Mikey working on his degree. Must. Finish. Phd. Must. Finish.

We really hope it happens in September and not June, because summer in Morgantown is fun. And summer up here on this mountain will be beautiful and shaded and relaxing. And we’re close to Pittsburgh, where Mikey just started recording a new record. And we’re close to university libraries. And it wouldn’t mean moving twice in seven months.

But… yesterday I packed a box. Just in case it’s June. Now I’m going to go see if the Budget Rentals giftcard that you can get for Coke points can be used on a moving truck and not just car rentals. Edit: you can’t, and two free magazine subscriptions is enough (for now!). I will use my points for ordering prints of photos :)

Listening: Belle & Sebastian
(I am) Reading: Jesus Land, which I’m having to take slow since it’s gut-wrenching
(Hazel is) Reading: Strega Nona
Working on: everything but preparation for a week in Toronto is at a halt