Brand new to me

Don't you just love it when you find something that is a cast off, and it's something you've been searching for?
That's the case with my (new to me) Antique rubberstamp carousel which I found this weekend at a flea market. I've started accumulating the Inkessential Stampers that I use with Ranger's Distress Inks. No, I don't need one for each color ink, but it is nice to have several in various color families. I will also use this to hold the Tim Holtz Stampers for alcohol inks, which I use frequently.  Here is the before:



And here is the after (along with the view outside of my studio window):



I have a few more cool flea market / antique store finds moving into my studio. I've been having a blast with my cans of spray paint. ;-) Why is it that organization of all this stuff is one of the most difficult part of crafting/artwork? After all, if its not organized, then you cannot find it when you need it! One of the complaints is that organization is so time consuming at times, but it really shouldn't be so.

If you're in the U.S. - I hope you have a great Labor Day holiday! It seems that summer is making an early departure for us in the Midwest part of the country.

Enjoy,

must admit

i must admit, i do my share of antiquing, which includes going to estate sales, flea markets, and of course, antique stores. you've probably already discovered this if you've read through my journaling in the past. i've always noticed a fascination with artists and cigar boxes. my father always kept things in cigar boxes and coffee cans in the basement. usually bits and pieces of things that did not hold my interest as a child, such as nuts, bolts, screws, fishing tackle and the like. about a week ago, at an estate sale in lovely home in milwaukee, i found a couple of wooden cigar boxed filled to the brim with just such stuff and memories of my dad came flooding back. as the boxes weren't in too bad of condition and came with all this "stuff" i picked each one up for $1. one of them is apparently rare. a box of thora cigars "union made" in milwaukee with a date of 1920 on the box. the lithograph of the woman on the inside of the box is striking. i had to do some research on the internet, but found a ton of information about cigar boxes and their altered state over the centuries on the national cigar museum site. apparently, the woman depicted originally was almost nude (as in my version), but over the years her outfit crept up to cover her breasts more and more. 

acquisitions

i thought i'd show you the lovely antique remington portable typewriter i got this weekend. it is from the early 1920's. like i said in my earlier post, my grandfather worked at the remington typewriter factory in illion, new york back around this time. he was a machinist, and made parts for typewriters. he also worked in the remington arms factory there, test firing rifles during world war 1. 

more stuff

marc and i went antiquing today. i got a remington portable typewriter which dates between 1920 & 1924. the really cool thing is that my grandfather worked at the remington typewriter factory in illion, new york at that time. i also got a few more cabinet cards and a really wonderful vintage photo of a little girl holding an umbrella. we picked out two cabinet card photos that show women wearing a beautiful watch on their jackets. i got some antique muffin tins to use in my art and for mixing paints. they were cheaper than buying new muffin tins, so i picked up a few of them. marc got a couple to use in sorting his watch parts. he's been working on his watches lately. taking them apart and cleaning them. i got a date book from 1937 that someone used to log their spending, but it is obvious from the entries that the book wasn't used in 1937, but sometime later - i do believe the entries date from about 1974+ based upon an entry for postage stamps. they spent $2 on postage stamps, which would equate to 10 cents per stamps for a booklet of 20. also the cost of other items listed would equate to that time period. very interesting. the book logs about 5 years of expenses, from $2 of postage to this person's IRS payments. i find these types of things totally fascinating. a glimpse in other people's lives. i will probably end up using the leather bound book in an altered book project.

i made a change to the blog template today. green is a favorite color of mine right now and what the heck - it is summer! let me know what you think.