Something I love

This past weekend my family and I went to the Plaza Art Fair in KC. This will be the second year we have gone (last year I was quite pregnant!), and I always enjoy the artwork and just being surrounded by so much creativity.
This year, I came accross an artist who's work astounded and thrilled me. (wow, that sounded less cheesy before I typed it!) I was drawn into her booth by colors and lovely vintage silhouettes, and when I got closer I literally gasped in amazement and excitement!

Lisa Norris is the Artist behind Made By One Girl, and she creates collages of vintage objects out of vintage objects. Her booth was filled with lovely vintage fashion prints made out of vintage sewing pattern pieces. It was stunning, really.
I spoke with her for a few minutes at her booth. She was really lovely. I asked her how she got started with such a unique and cool concept, and she told me after design school she had a ton of vintage patterns and items and joked that she started cutting them up so she wouldn't have to learn to sew. ha! I admire her creativity.

I just kept staring and staring like a creeper, and loving the masterful way she pieced he work together. We went to the Art Fair on a strict window-shopping only policy, but oh, oh how I wanted to snatch up pieces from her collection!

So much fun! By far the coolest thing I saw at the art fair, combining things I love... vintage silhouettes, sewing patterns, fashion prints... all so lovely! I just had to share this with you! You should check out her website and some of her other fantastic work!

**All photos were taken from Made by One Girl's website. I am in no way affiliated with, or compensated to advertise for them, I was just a huge fan, thought this was a magnificent find, and wanted to share with all my friends!

My Favorite Things: Etsy and Handmade Baby

This installment of "My Favorite Things" is all about some sweet baby stuff gifted to us and/or discovered on one of my favorite sites: Etsy.  There's something irresistible about lovely handmade or handpicked vintage gifts. Here are a few I am in love with and think you should know about:

1. One day, shortly after baby boy was born, I found a lovely little package in my mailbox. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string... which made sing a certain song from my favorite musical for the rest of the day. It was from Schatzli a sweet little vintage shop my friend started on Etsy. She has vintage jewelry, fabric, clothes, patterns, and more. She gave Sam that adorable vintage baby boy train shirt. I think the vintage baby clothes in her shop are my fav-- so many cute unique items.

2. This adorable puppy mini-bot came from RemnantsbyRJ. She makes 'robots' out of recycled and rescued objects. One of the things I find most charming about her bots is she writes a story for each of them, so you can know a little bit about their personality and interests when you rescue one. (She also has some pretty cool steampunk jewelry in her shop!)

3. These blocks came from Little Sapling Toys.  They make really amazing organic wood toys, blocks, and teethers. I love the natural and modern look of the toys... and I love that just about everything in the shop can be personalized. I especially think these blocks are cool because they have an uppercase letter on one side and an ASL hand on the opposite side.

4. This last thing was technically not found on etsy... but it's a pattern for Big Butt Baby Pants. This pattern from Made By Rae is designed with extra room in the tush specifically for cloth-diapered babies. You know how their bums are extra big and fluffy, right? Well, here are pants made to fit that. But the pattern is beyond simple to sew-- would be a great first sewing project for someone-- and comes with sizes newborn-2T, customizable options for boys and girls. I played around with the pattern and created a fun pair of cords for Sam that I can't wait to share with you soon!

What about you-- what are some of your favorite vintage and handmade finds? Any I should know about?

Fun Vintage Stuff!

My Husband's Grandfather died last year, leaving several houses filled to the brim with just about every item imaginable. Grandpa Sherwood was a mechanically minded man. He loved to work with his hands and he could fix anything... so he rarely threw anything away. Which honestly made him a bit of a hoarder by today's standards... but what I think is somewhat of an admirable quality that has lost credibility in today's 'disposable' consumerist society. But I digress. My Mother in law and her siblings have spent almost a year sorting through all the many many many belongings in the house trying to figure out what could be kept, what should be sold, and what just needed to be thrown away. She told me one day they sent a trailer with seven typewriters to the dumpster-- seven! But they had kept at least that many typewriters from the house to sell in the auction. Can you imagine a person with 14 typewriters that they didn't have time to get around to fixing???  Apparently it was like that with every mechanical type item you can think of... from large farm equipment to tiny keys and padlocks.
I don't know for sure if Grandpa was a locksmith/keymaker by trade, or if it was just a hobby. But they found literally hundreds of keys and lock in the house. My MIL grabbed a few old ones for me... as she knows of my love for keys and locks. Check these out:

Aren't those lovely? The fun skeleton keys and the lovely old padlocks that we can't open. It's like they have a story or a secret! They make me happy.
Also in the house were the belongings of Grandma Sherwood (who died before I was a part of the family). She was apparently a seamstress and like her husband had a thing for collecting any little odd and end that might ever be of use. My MIL found her sewing/button box and thought I might be interested in some vintage buttons. (She thought right!) But when she brought me the box it had four layers to sort through that looked like this:

Actually, to be honest, I had already weeded through this layer--removing scrap paper, several lids from toothpaste tubes, tons of rusty safety pins, some tiny scraps of fabric trim, and a llama made of pipe cleaners (!?!?!)-- before taking this picture. I was a tad overwhelmed. But when I started digging through the layers, treasures started emerging like these lovelies:

 I added a quarter in there... some of these are amazing just because they are so tiny, or so large.
Like these tiny little glass buttons... I love the bright blue and the gold on the front. SO fun.

 

These giant black ones might be my favs out of the bunch.  They are heavy faceted black glass buttons. How lovely would these be on a wool coat?

 

 These buttons are all shells or stones. Yes, even the big ugly brown one that I thought was plastic at first too... but I picked it up and it was heavy and cool and had a rough rocky back... really cool huh?

 

These are so tiny and sweet I can hardly stand it-- but definitely hand carved. Can you believe that?

 

 Cool carved wooden button.

 

 And even as I was waiting for photos to upload I found I really cool yellow one... and some sweet old metal ones... and a bunch of old buckles and stuff. Really fun stuff. Thank you to my MIL for thinking of me! :)
Have you found, inherited, or been gifted any cool vintage stuff???