Monograms

Lots of fun monograms in the store now!  Some I’ve spelled out into words (each letter sold separately).  There are big ones and small ones.  Vintage ones and handcrafted ones.  Framed ones and plain ones.  Fat ones and skinny ones.  Even paper tag ones!  AND I’m working on LOTS more at home, so there’s more to come!

 

 

 

 

 

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August 1, 2008 ~ Here’s what’s new in the store.

FALL AND HALLOWEEN HAVE ARRIVED AT SOPHIE’S COTTAGE!

And of course, a Halloween tree!  (sorry about the bad photo!)

Some new gift baskets filled with bath/body products:

Ane even some gifts for your four legged friends!

These are the COOLEST things ever!  A doggie water bottle (with a clip even) and a flip down BOWL so they can easily drink!  Perfect for the dog on the go!

Mini alphabet rubber stamps sets make a great gift for the crafter, scrapbooker or cardmaker.  There are a DOZEN different font styles!  Fun to mix and match!

NEW CALENDARS ARE IN!  16 month 2009 calendars.

Gifts for baby:

AWESOME vintage white chest of drawers

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OUR WEBSITE: www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

VISIT OUR ETSY STORE: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5876981

~ primitives ~ trash to treasure ~ shabby chic ~ cottage ~ Paris apartment ~ repurposed home goods ~ repaired ~ restyled home decor ~ reused ~ recycled art ~ handcrafted gifts ~ one of a kind ~ artist originals ~ second hand style ~ junk market style ~ flea market style ~ beautiful junk ~ beach cottage décor ~ unique home décor ~ vintage home décor ~ unique gifts ~ custom made gifts ~ custom made home décor ~ personalized signs ~ Sophie’s Cottage ~ grubby candles ~ how to craft books ~

My ‘Creating Space’ . . .

Aka ‘the craft room’ .  Since the store is now only open one day a week, and it’s too busy on that one day to work on any projects; I had to start hauling all the assorted supplies that I had lugged TO the store over the past 3+ years, back home. 

BUT FIRST, I had to clean up my messy craft room!  Now I don’t have ‘one of those beautifully decorated art studios’ that you see so many others share pictures of in their blog.  I LOVE those pictures and WISH my work space could be that pretty.  (especially since the FORMAL LIVING ROOM is the space that serves as my craft room in this house!)  Alas, it’s all about ‘functionality’.  AND lots of storage space!  And making-do . . . .

This is as good of a picture as I can get of the entire space.  As I said, it’s the formal living room of the house, and right off the front entry.  No one ever uses the front door.  HA!  No one ever comes out here period!  (too far away from civilization for everyone!)  So, the front door is kind of cordoned off by shelves (which you’ll be able to see in a later picture).

I have two tables.  Only managed to keep ONE of them uncluttered long enough to take this picture!  Shelves line both ends of the room, and my computer desk and office supply cabinet are opposite the work tables.  We even utilized the space above the windows for storage! 

I keep a plastic table cloth on my ‘painting table’.  This is the FIRST time in probably FOUR YEARS that it was clean enough to take a picture of it!

This next picture is looking to the right of the room.  Michael built those shelves for me and they cover the entire length of the room.  They are 2′ deep, so I can double stack boxes on them.  And we put up a rod so I could hang curtains to pull shut to ‘hide the mess’ just in case anyone ever comes to visit’.  Or sometimes I just need to hide the mess from myself!

PRESTO!

This is the left side of the room.  These are SIX 6′ tall Dania shelves.  Three, side by side. and then back to back (I have to go around into the front entry way to access the other ones)

I couldn’t get a picture of the shelves on the back side because there isn’t enough room to get back far enough in the entry way.  But you can get an idea from this.  It’s a good way to utilize this otherwise ‘wide open and unusable’ space.

And this is my little ‘office area’.  My computer desk (closed up cuz I am NOT showing THAT mess!), a supply cabinet, and the big white one is for office supplies.

And that’s my little nook of the house that I do my creating in! 

The separate WORKSHOP (which I have to share with Michael) is a whole other world, and will NEVER be tidy enough to take picutres of!

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

 

Got punch????

No, not fruit punch!  Not a punch in the nose either.  And not punch as in you are so tired you are getting silly and ‘punchy’.

COLOR PUNCH!!

You hear the designers on TV shows mention ‘adding a punch of color’ all the time.  Meaning adding something that is dramatic or REALLY catches your eye.

I tend to be quite ‘matchey matchey’ in how I create my store displays.  With as much product as I cram into a small space, I feel like I need a sense of ‘unity’ to each vignette to keep it from feeling ‘too busy’.  I have certain colors that I like to mix together in grouping and tend to not venture far from that.

But after putting out all the Valentine stuff, I was feeling like the red section was just TOO RED.  (dies that make any sense at all???)  Like so much red together made it feel a bit bland.  Like I wanted more CONTRAST. 

I didn’t change up the red section, but I ’sprinkled’ red stuff throughout the store in somewhat unexpected places.  For a ‘punch of color’.

Here on top of a stack of tan suitcases.

And on the table filled with mostly black items that is right next to the stack of suitcases

And right in the middle of a yellow and white display:

THEN, in the beachy blues and green section:

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Unique towel rack

This is a very simple idea that has LOTS of potential applications!  In the store I’ve hung this square wire basket on the end of a big shelf and filled it with reproduction sugar sacks, and hung one of them on the handle to display it.

You could also do something like this in the bathroom.  Fill the basket with washcloths, and hang your hand towel on it.  OR hang it close to the tub and fill with toiletries.  How about in the kitchen?  Spices you use frequently in the basket and hang your hot pads or kitchen towel from the handle.  OR get some ’s’ hooks and hang utensils from the handles!

OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Cottage Harvest Decor

Here is a picture of the white/cream harvest display in the center of the beach cottage section in the store.

You can’t really see it in the picture, but these assorted white gourds have a ’sugared’ looking coating on them.

And the back side of the table.

More cottage beach decor ideas

 

These simple jars of shells were created with blank jars and shells purchased at the craft supply store.  I just glued a shell to the lid (with tacky glue) and tied on some jute and attached a tea stained tag.

Vintage cabinet just needed a little sanding to give it the ‘beach cottage feel’. 

Assorted signs using old painted fence boards.  I just hand sanded a little to remove the loose paint, then stenciled and stamped the letters on with acrylic paints.

Some of those signs worked into a display.

Another jar of shells and a shell candle which consists of a glass cylinder vase with the candle in it, set in the middle of the bell shaped glass container.  The shells are then placed between the two glass pieces.  This is a great way to create candle displays when you want to burn the candle, but not get wax all over your decorative components.

Framed shell saying on the left was created using a matted frame like the one shown on the right.  Tea stain your paper and mat.  Print saying on tea stained paper then tear out.  Glue onto another piece of tea stained paper.  Glue shells to mat.  And you’re done!

Blank frame arrangement on a shelf.  Frames with back and glass missing are easy to find (and very inexpensive!) at garage sales.  These were oak frames I painted assorted shades of aqua then lightly hand sanded to distress.

Shadow bos frame filled with shells.  Glass cylinder vase filled with sand, then shells and a candle.

The two glass bottles were ‘dressed up’ by adding inexpensive beaded bracelets to them.

VISIT OUT WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Going Monochromatic

I have always been drawn to rooms done in a monochromatic color scheme.  Especially WHITE.  They just make you feel soooooooooooooooooooooo peaceful.  But I can only handle so much peacefulness!  I need stimulation and inspiration!

I spent nearly a year living and working in the Rocky Mountins.  Living at 9,100 feet elevation you have 6 weeks of springsummerfall, and the rest of the year is WHITE.  The billows of white snow were enchanting at first.  Growing up in Southern California, and living most of my adult life in the Pacific Northwest, I was not used to seeing snow much.  And it’s VERY DRY in Colorado.  The very dry air makes the snow sparkle like glitter.

After a while though, I found the constant white rather depressing!  It felt like ’sensory depravation’.  I craved color and texture and the smells of the out of doors. . . .

So, after that I never thought I’d want to see white ever again!  But then I saw a picture in a magazine of a room in an Oregon coast cottage that was done in almost all whites.  I tore it our and saved it; hoping to someday replicate the ‘feel’ of that room.  A short while later I found an old white iron child’s bed at an estate sale.  Most of the white paint had chipped and peeled off revealing rust and iron.  It was the perfect ‘anchor piece’ for the white room I wanted to do in the store!

I pulled all the other white furniture pieces I had here and there in the store and began arranging my ‘room’.  Not having enough white things to fill the space made me try other things to see what would go with it. 

My inspiration picture had old floats and fishing net and sea shells and old yellowed maps etc, so I decided to supplement my ‘room’ with ’sandy’ colored items.  And that led to some tan and brown items.

Here’s how it turned out:

I think the key to making a monochromatic color scheme work (to avoid that feeling of sensory depravation!) is to have LAYERS of similar colors and lots of texture. 

The nice thing about a basic white room is that the white goes with anything, and you can add ’seasonal punches of color’.  Yellows in the spring, oranges in the fall, greens or reds in the winter, blues in the summer.

I just might have to try and make room for doing a white room in the store again!

 OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Old suitcases

Even old suitcases that are ‘marked up’ like this one

Can be made into a usable treasure.  I took this one and another one that was marked on and missing a handle and PAINTED THEM BLACK!  The one in the ablove picture was harder to paint because it soaked up the paint like a sponge!  If I could do it over I’d probably SEAL the fabric surface first with something like gesso, before I painted.

The other one with the handle missing, we added legs to.  We adhered two sections of 2×4 to the inside bottom of the suitcase (front to back) Once dry, I drilled my holes for the legs, through the outside of the suitcase into the 2×4’s.  ( the legs were old used ones of course!) 

 OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html

Nesting instincts

Bringing a little more spring into the store and I’m on a ‘nest’ kick right now.  Finding unique ways to display them has been fun.  Some domed pastry stands worked great for these little nests.  You can’t see them too well in the picture, but there is a little felt bird ornie in each nest, and the nests are sitting atop a red pip berry wreath.

Left the one nest with three little blue eggs out on it’s own.  The wood pedestal bowl was originally one that I wanted to paint, but the ’sticky marks’ inside it proved to be more more enduring than all my cleaning products and elbow grease!  Soooooooooooooo…… just cover that part up with a birdsnest!

The little Roman urn type flower pot worked great to just add some moss and an egg to.  The pots are more distressed than they show in the picture.  Would fit in with cottage or primitive style decor.  Might have to make a few more to add to the shabby beach section!

Got several different styles of the pots, and the eggs are Easter egg ornaments that I just repainted!  They are a perfect size; about that of a small hens egg.   They had a silk ribbon hanger on them which was only hot glued on, so it pulled off easily.  I sponge painted them with regular acrylic craft paint using antique white and mink tan colors.  Left a hint of the original color showing on the blue and green ones.

This big glass cake stand is probably my favorite one!  Got it at an estate sale.  Has a small chip in it so it’s not really usable for it’s intended purpose.  But it was just perfect for a nest and egg!  The smaller dome is one I got at a thrift store.  Probably from a cheese tray.  I just paired it up with an inexpensive clear glass plate and added a small nest and eggs.

Now what else can I scrounge up to put a birdsnest in?!?!?!

 OUR WEBSITE:  www.cscrafts.com/aj.html