Beach Cottage Decor now at Stars

I rearranged my wall space at Stars and put out all the beach cottage decor.

I brought in my shabby white crates to create shelves for the booth.

A couple of shabby blue nightstands tucked in there, and a white wall shelf.

A sweet vintage shabby white child’s chair and a little three legged foot stool.

Shell topped jars, shell filled jars and shell candle jars.  A little round table with a shabby white trug on top.

Distressed turquoise frames with ‘floating’ white fingerling starfish.  Some BIG sugar starfish, painted white and glittered.

A shabby vintage spice rack filled with little jars of shells and sea glass.  Some small mermaid crowns and a sugar starfish mounted atop a shabby white candle holder.

I did some rearranging and stocking of my big booth too.

Lots of stacks of old books, as always.

This giant turquoise cubby shelf is filled with vintage milk glass and Ironstone pieces.

Some additional, and smaller, cubby shelves.

LOVE this vintage chicken tureen!

I’ve added lots of this style of vintage Ironstone with the scalloped edges.

Beautiful hand painted vintage milk glass vase with gold accents and ruffled edge.  Gold glitter Eiffel Tower tags.  Little vintage vanity jars.  Old bottles and upcycled bottles with repro labels.

Vintage metal chair with new gold paint and pretty soft blue and gold Toile covered seat.

Come on by and check it all out.  The construction on the next block continues; BUT, they have not been blocking off the side street parking as much lately.

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing STRIPES!

I’ve been wanting to try painting stripes on furniture for a while now. 

This little TV tray revamp finally gave me the courage to give stripes a try:

The top to this TV tray was beyond repair, so I had Michael build me a new, larger top out of some cedar boards.

There wasn’t room in my booth at Stars to open it up; but here you can see that the new top IS much larger than a typical TV tray.  Michael just had to move the ‘end stops’ out farther to accommodate the larger top.

The thing that has ‘scared me’ about trying stripes thus far is getting them perfectly spaced.  Seems like SOOOOOOOOOO much work!  Measure. Mark.  Tape.  Measure.  Mark.  Tape again.  With THIS project I already had two perfectly spaced lines since we used three pieces of wood.  So from there I was just able to ‘eyeball’ my tape lines.  Not bad for a first attempt, eh?!?

NOW I want to paint stripes on EVERYTHING!!!  This chair was one of my very first make overs; back when it wasn’t really even a ‘thing’.  I found the chair in the dumpster corral at my apartment and dragged it home.  Don’t have a before picture or even an after picture of its first re-do.  I had covered the seat and made a skirt out of some pretty yellow and pink rose material.  And it promptly became the cats favorite napping spot, underneath the skirt!

I’ve re-dome quite a few chairs of late;  getting NEW foam cushions and fabric.  But they haven’t sold very well and I think it’s probably because of the price.  But DANG!  New foam for the seats is EXPENSIVE!  Even at half price it’s spendy.  So I decided for this re-do to NOT pad and cover the seat so I could price it lower and see if it sells better.

And I decided to paint stripes on the seat so it wasn’t so plain.  Again, I just ‘eyeballed it’ when applying my painters tape for the stripes.

I considered also striping the back, but that might be TOO much, so this is it for now.  Do the stripes look too terribly not perfect to you?

Victim number 2 of my painting stripes binge; a little 3 drawer chest from the thrift store.  Little chests like this ALWAYS sell almost instantly; so it will be interesting to see if it goes as quickly with the stripes.

This baby required some SERIOUS sanding before I could paint it.  See all that carving on the top?!?!

I painted the whole thing aqua, then added white stripes; then sanded to distress.  

You can even see a little bit of the yellow which was under the original white.  Again, with this one, I didn’t ‘measure’ my tape lines for the stripes.  I started my first tape line across the center where the knob hole was, then added one more strip of tape above and below.

Stripe victim #3 is a sturdy (Heavy!) oak end table.  Gave it a good sanding, painted aqua, then the white stripes; then sanding to distress.

On this one, I did measure to find my center for my first tape line; then eyeballed it from there.

The distressing really hides any imperfections.  I think I’ll call these my ‘Cabana Collection’. 

They will ALL be going to Stars as soon as I have room for more new stuff.

Time for a do-over!

This shabby Paris style round table made by repurposing a wood bar stool for the base, has made the rounds . . from booth to show and back to our booth again.  Has sat through several special sales, without selling.  Time to take it home for a makeover.

I, personally LOVE the black accents on the aqua furniture; and tables I’ve done the past with this same color combination have sold in a snap.  I’m not sure WHY this one hasn’t sold???  Regardless of the reason, it was time to take it home  and paint it differently.

The recent switch over to mostly white furnishings (with just a few aqua accents) in my space at Stars was the perfect time to bring this table home for it’s much needed make-over.  Not wanting to COMPLETELY re-do the whole thing; I just did a quickie update.  Sanded off the black paint, applied a fresh coat of a lighter aqua paint (leaving the base as is for now; will ‘wait and see’ if I need to re-do that too!)   to the top; and stamped on some white starfish around the edge.

Will be taking it back to Stars for the next booth make-over when I switch back to aqua from the white.

 

Newest pictures from Stars

The aqua dresser, coffee table and both night stands sold over the last week.  Did a ‘quick fix’ with a couple of new chairs.  Will be doing a MAJOR re-vamp of the space soon, now that the show is over and I have plenty of extra furniture to work with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Restocking at Stars Antiques

 

LOVE the coral/turquoise color combination!

 

The fabric that I used to cover this seat was my inspiration for the new color combo.

 

LOTS of benches and little stools.

 

 

 

 

Birdhouse and statuary.

BIG glass cloche (or cake stand cover!)

Medium size cloches and shabby little birds with wire feet.

Thses little birds are selling like hotcakes!  I stocked 8 of them last week and sold out.  Took a dozen more in (the ones I was saving for the spring show!) this week.  Get ’em while you can!

Shabby turquoise train case.

A couple more black pieces.

 

Sweet little nests and eggs.

Primitive eggs and nest grass.

Shabby bunny.

 

LOTS of new signs.  (We can make custom signs too!)

 

 

 

Our space at Stars Antiques ~ photo update

MAJOR re-stock of our ‘signature’ shabby beachy blue.  furniture pieces AND smalls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still have quite a few BIG frames in stock.  Just not room to HANG them!

How perfectly COTTAGE is this sweet vintage yellow formica top drop leaf table?!?

Darling red retro chair.

 

This one of a kind lamp was previously in our space at Camas, then went to the junk show, and NOW it’s at Stars, patiently awaiting a new home to brighten and warm.

 

 

 

A few new things at Stars

A shabby beach end table.

 

All that new shelving took up more space than I was expecting.  Gotta STACK up some of the furniture now!

Shabby beach coffee table.

And again, had to stack.

Little decorative shutters.

Little sea glass wreath hung in a frame.

Jars of shells.

Finials.

 

NEW E-BOOK!! “Frugal Beach Cottage Decor” SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER!

Finally!! I finished another e-book.  I started working on this one a good YEAR ago.  So many ideas . . so little time!!  It’s finally done, and just in time to inspire you for spring decorating.

EIGHTY-EIGHT full color pages and more than a HUNDRED IDEAS for frugal and easy to replicate shabby, beachy, cottagey home decor ideas. 

These are just a few of the pictures from the book to whet your decorating appetite.

LOTS of my ideas can be recreated for under $5.00!

Garage sale season is fast approaching.  Get inspired and start your list of ‘need to find’ items as you browse hundreds of great ideas.

Ideas for mixing and matching and changing it up if you’re so inclined.

This e-book will regularly sell for $19.95.  As a special introductory offer, the first ten copies will be listed in my etsy shop for just $4.95!!

Happy spring decorating everyone!

New things stocked at Stars Antique Mall in Portland

Latest pictures from my space at Stars.

Wee bit of Paris.

Beachy blues.

Shells.

Robin’s eggs.

Little nests with 3 speckled eggs.

Hand formed nest with medium-sized egg.

Nest grass with quail egg and feather.

Assorted birds display.

Vintage shabby urn with nest and egg.

Little glass cloche with bird on top and nest inside.

Vintage black cast iron lamp with sheet music covered shade.

 

Another old lamp with sheet music shade.

Welcome lamp size sheet music shade.

Yep, lots of lamps!

Shabby chic lamp with fringed shade.

Vintage tea stained lamp shade.

Grubby weathered finial. 

(how to make these coming in my next e-book!)

Wire tabletop tree with Easter decor.  And if you already have your own little tree, there’s a bag of just the decorations available.

Easter baskets.

Nests and eggs in little apothecary jars;  framed bird collage; shabby bird on pedestal.

Shabby cottage pedestal candle holders

This is how these came.  They’re OKAY, I suppose, but I felt they needed more OOMPH!  There were two sets of these three.

Gave them some prettier colors for starters:

Then decided the square based ones needed some more ‘weight’, so I added an additional base piece ( a beveled wood plaque)

That smaller black one (an orphan; not part of this set) needed some additional weight too.  It got TWO more pieces on the base and ended up being painted red.

I added some metal candle plates: some painted, some not.  Sanded and distressed them so some of the white showed through, and of course, added candles!

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

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