My friend Karen and I have been planning to do a booth at our local fleatique. It's a bit flea market and a bit antique market. I think I have said this before on the blog, but one of the things about living in Western PA is that the population is older AND they have lived in the same home most of their lives. If you are into funky sixties and seventies vintage, this is a great place to scour the thrift stores and estate sales.
Karen and I have a gardening business together called Fern Hollow Gardening and Design. This was originally created to get us out of the house when our kids were really little. We would garden for a couple people for only about 4 or 6 hours a week. It was so nice to get out of the house for grown up time and make a little extra money. Now it has changed into this new endeavor- Fern Hollow Vintage! Tomorrow is our first time with a booth at the Fleatique.
We have been busy setting up our booth the last couple of days. I can't believe how much cool stuff we have gathered over the last few months!
Karen has a great knack for seeing things. She is really a better shopper than me- especially since I just head over to the linens section right away!!! She found most of the items in the pictures above. We spent the morning spray painting and sprucing up some of our "treasures" the other day. Here are a few of our favorites…
Did anybody's Grandma have one of these Cosco stool/ step ladder in their kitchen? Mine did! Karen found this one of course. They are so fun for a make over- just spray paint and make simple fabric covers. We use ours all the time- just make sure that you make covers that can be removed and washed!
This chair above was in a corner of Karen's basement (she lives in a farm house that was once her grandparents). We removed the seat, cleaned the wood with Old English and then just stapled fabric to the seat bottom. The side table had an ugly , chipped finish on it so we sanded it down a little and then spray painted it red. I love how bright and fun it turned out!
I have been collecting embroidery hoops for quite a while from the thrift stores. I imagined doing a big display on my sewing room wall of fabrics that I love. For some reason, it was really hard for me to choose which fabrics to cut into and begin that project. The other day I just took out my stack of vintage fabric pieces and starting hooping away! If these below don't sell, I will finally have my wall display!
Here are a few more items that we are excited about…
I left the price tags on in all the pictures on purpose- just to give you an idea of what we are charging. Karen and I are both hoping that people "get" this style at the fleatique. I really love the thought of using old pieces and making them fresh and new again. Yeah for thrifting and boo for shopping at Crate & Barrel! That statement is a bit ironic since I once worked at Crate & Barrel and loved it! We are all a bit of a dichotomy, aren't we? Excuse me while I go make some organic bread in my brand new KitchenAid mixer, wear my vintage apron and listen to Billie Holiday on my Ipod.
This last picture is for Karen who kept trying to hide this awesome frog cheese tray back behind stuff in our display. I wanted it front and center! Now tomorrow, she will probably get her way but since this is MY blog, he is now getting the credit he deserves…