Moonshine Vintage Silverware Assemblage Necklace

Oh how I struggled with this. Originally I made the moonshine silverware knife handle to be a liquor bottle tag or charm. 

And like so many things I create, I got so far with the idea and then set the unfinished focal piece aside, waiting for it to reveal what it was really meant to be.

It didn't want to be in some dark bar, it wanted to be seen in the sunshine and under the moon & stars.

Moonshine $115.00

Happy moonshine Monday to you~

Road Trip Series Assemblage Necklaces #3

Road Trip

3rd in the series

Flat Tyre 

found object, vintage toy car, rosary style, mille flore, skull, turquoise, glass, ceramic, shell & copper assemblage necklace by Anvil Designs / Barn Swallow Studio

May only your jewelry get a flat tire ~

Road Trip Series Assemblage Necklaces #1

I'm on a "roll" making these little vintage toy car necklaces. 

Not only are they fun, nostalgic & colorful, but wear one to Home Depot or a car show and expect to get stopped every ten feet! 

Men and kids love these! Occasionally the hot rod or truckin' mama will stop me for ooohs and awwws but it's mostly men. 

The kiddles, they point and always have an "out of the mouths of babes" comment.

1st in the series

  Counting Blue Cars  

Assemblage necklace using a vintage diecast "Midget Toy" car (as found) as the focal piece. 
Also features beads of Turquoise, Mother of Pearl, Pearl, Agate, Crystal & Glass. 
Handmade findings and a vintage rosary sections and medallion.
Total length 24 1/2" - Chain 20" and Car dangle 4 1/2"

sold

Clasp Detail

Full View

Rolling down the highway~

A Few New Fall / Halloween / Thanksgiving Items

Available now in the Anvil Designs shop~

Halloween Set

~

Harvest ~ Thanksgiving Set

Fall is upon us, happy harvest!

Inspiring Client Follow Up Post

As a follow up to this post Inspiring Client~ 
I wanted to share a couple of shots of all four pieces I did for my most awesome client JR. The original post shows the first piece a created for him as a memorial to his beloved Grandmother who had recently passed away. Her name, Rosemary :)

I was in such a hurry to get them off to him I didn't realize I hadn't taken the best shots possible and I was working with a brand new camera to boot. So apologies for the photo quality!

Happy gardening~

The name "rosemary" derives from the Latin for "dew" (ros) and "sea" (marinus), or "dew of the sea".

Carpe Diem or Etched Bullet Shells~

When the cat’s away the mice will play. So the saying goes.

JD is in Wyoming building a custom garage for his friend who moved there last month. He’ll be gone about 5 weeks. I have wanted to try some new techniques and designs but never seem to have the time…

Carpe Diem! This week I seized a day or two and tried etching some brass bullet shells. I have wanted to do this for so long. Since I was trying it out for the first time and was uncertain of how they may come out I have to say I kind of scribbled on them, threw them in the solution and crossed my fingers.

Surprise to me! They didn't come out too bad for a first batch! 

~Hot off the press ~ Focal beads~

~These will be earrings when finished~

Birthday gift for a friend ~ Happy Birthday Kika!

~Inspired by The Secret Life of Bees~

Happy creating~

Building Horse Jumps - Part 2

Click for part 1

The next jump we built was a Straight Plank and was the easiest one of all. The materials used for the plank were 1" plywood and 1 x 4 lumber and staples. The plywood was cut into two sections at 4' 6" for a total of 9' long and 12" tall. As mentioned in the previous post, the customer already had standards and 10' poles so everything we built is 10'.

Straight Plank

I need to make a correction here, the ends are all 6" NOT the 3 1/2" I previously stated. A mars / venus thing...

The plywood is stapled between the two 1 x 4 boards and a 6" section of 1 x 4 is stapled into the middle on the ends for durability and stability.

I had to put a smile on JD's face because I said this was fun and his face did not express that in this shot. He was saying "hey bartender put the camera down and get me a beer!" He looked like he was about to howl at the moon.

I decided to add a hat because hey, it's PicMonkey!

Here's a preview of the Wall and Roll Top for my next post~

Happy trails~

Using Every Little Scrap~

I love to use every piece I can when working with the vintage silverware. Sometimes you make a mistake when stamping or bending and end up with odd pieces. I have been or will be turning these odd pieces into beads, buttons, guitar picks, toggles and anything else I can think of so nothing goes to waste.

To that end here are 2 new listings of items I have made using every little scrap~

I Pick You (sold)

This pick was hand cut from a 1930's spoon bowl I flattened. It is silver-plate over brass & it does show some wear from it's previous life as a spoon. I have filed the edges so smooth it's like butter. I drilled a small hole off center so it could be used as a charm if you don't want to use it to play.

 It's truly one of a kind ( OOAK ) if you like food and music and want a pick with an 80 + year old vibe rather than some mass produced blank from overseas, look no further. This is a no waste, upcycled product.

I Pick You had only been listed for a few days with 2 views when it sold!
I consider that real success! I already had another one I was working on and decided to show a before and after. 

Next time I'll have to do some progress shots as well~

Music Is Life

This pick was hand cut from a 1916 era spoon bowl I flattened. Holmes and Edwards Silver Inlaid Pat 04 ~ Jamestown Pattern circa 1916. I tried purposely to leave as much of the original patina on this one as possible. The back side has a lot, the front lost a lot! The soul of this pick is almost 100 years old~

I almost always listen to music when I'm creating whether it's my art or cooking. Stevie Ray Vaughan is one of my favorites to cook with and create by.

Here is a rare video of SRV

 

Faerie Folks are in Old Oaks~

I was researching poems, rhymes, songs and sayings for rosemary for a client and as we are prone to do while following links on the interweb I stumbled across some fun rhymes that had nothing to do with rosemary but were so good I had to use them~

Fairy garden markers have always been popular in my shop and now I have added a new one.

Faerie Folks Garden Marker on Etsy

It is said this old rhyme originated in the New Forest, southern England and goes “Turn your cloaks, for fairy folks are in old oaks!”  it was thought by turning your cloak or coat inside out you could ward off the chances of a faerie encounter~ (I don't think I'd want to avoid that...)

The oaks are considered the very symbol of longevity and fertility, generation and life. It was common to carry an acorn in your pocket for luck~

Rock & roll gardeners this one's for you! Available now~

Faeries Wear Boots

Here's another in the shop now:

Fairy Garden Marker on Etsy

And a few others we've done that are in new homes~

Magic~

Inspiring Client~

I have this client who just flat out inspires me. He causes me to challenge myself which I love!

He sent a request earlier in the week and my sticking to being on a break this week (see post below) I let it ride until I found the desire to go for it.

He has commissioned 4 custom pieces, below is the first, made yesterday. I'm looking forward to creating the next 3. Thank you JR!

Taking a Break

I have become a “goal setter” since I quit my day job. I even post in those pesky “what are you goals this month” threads in the Etsy forums. I feel like I’m throwing it out to the universe and I don’t want to let the universe down of course! Really, it’s more of a personal shaming especially when those equally pesky month end “how’d you do with your goals this month” threads come back to haunt me.

In May I set some pretty big goals for myself. It was my birth month so I figured the universe might reward me with some gifts! I met or exceeded all but 2 of my goals and even got some done that were going to go on the June list. I’m not going to bore you with the met goals; instead, may I introduce the un-met:

1. Get 75 items listed in the Anvil Designs shop. 
2. Curate a treasury that makes it to the front page. This is on my list every month…

On May 31^st I had 58 items. I’m not complaining I sold about the same amount of items in May as I did in Feb., March & April combined. I still ended the month with 10 more listings than the prior month so I’m carrying this one over. I might make it; I have 63 items listed as of this writing.

I have an obsession regarding curating a treasury that makes it to the front page. What can I say? I think it may be a whole post one of these days. At any rate I cant complain about this one either as I hardly made any treasuries in May due to working on realistic goals.

All that said back to the title of this post. I decided to give myself a bit of a break this week as far as the shop is concerned. My only goal is to do only things I feel like doing during my normal working hours. Yesterday I felt like working in my garden and spent about 3 hours doing so until it got too hot. But oddly when I had to take cover from the sun I went to my work bench and pounded out these 2 garden markers. Isn't it nice when nature inspires even when we are taking a break? 

Brand new design inspired by my morning yard work.

Not a new design but a new font for this design.

Now I'm off to collect seeds from my lettuce plants I let go to seed! 

Happy gardening~

The Junk Hose Birdhouse~

I’m literally hell on wheels on my Garden Tractor which is a fancy name for a riding mower.

At least any hose I have had longer than 6 months thinks so anyway… needless to say I have a few, or more, mowed hoses in my junk pile. Obviously, to me they aren't junk just because they are now more suitable as a soaker hose or sprinkler. 

I cannot say how many times JD has tried to haul them off to the dump and I have pulled them right back out kicking and holler’n!

Then I saw this birdhouse on Pinterest. A game changer it was! 

Photo credit unknown - Birdhouse believed to be on the grounds of http://www.mcmenamins.com/Gardens

You see, we needed to donate a handcrafted item to an event for a charity auction and soon. I told JD we are making a birdhouse out of one of those old hoses for the auction. I got the deer in headlights look. Never fear, PJ was here and soon we were building it! The best part to this junk collector is we didn’t spend a dime. It was all time and material found in my junk pile or lying around. Here is the one we made. 

Now JD still wasn't convinced even with my and PJ's oohing and ahhing. We decided it needed to be put on a post to better "show" at the event. It even had a built in perch!

The junk hose birdhouse sold for $150 at the silent auction and JD had a small serving of crow and an ice cold one to wash it down :)

May all your junk be treasure!

Anvil

My Etsy History Part 1

I opened my first Etsy shop, Cowgirl Junk in the summer of 2006.

I’ll be honest, I was mad about changes going on at Ebay where I had been selling for 10 years. I thought, don’t keep all your eggs in one basket girl! Cowgirl Junk was mostly vintage items with a little handmade jewelry. Being a DIY kinda gal I made my own banner for that shop. I had a lot of compliments on it and people asking me how I made it, could I make one for them etc. I gifted some and took a few special orders. It just kept growing! I began listing some and as I felt so many people didn’t have a nice banner or the skills to make one I listed PIF banners and just asked that the person purchasing Pay It Forward to someone else, in some way.

One day I looked at my shop and didn’t like how fragmented it looked. Vintage, banners and my handmade, it was a mess. So I opened a second shop, Bohemian Flea Market! I sent my banners and handmade items there and listed some destash that I felt didn’t work in the CJ shop.

The banners were taking off! 
I enjoyed the creativity of it and not having to go to the post office was a plus as well. Soon the Boho shop was a mess and another new shop was born, Banners Avatars.

I digress for a moment, how awesome is that name? I no longer make banners but how many people who do would love to buy that shop & name from me? We should be able to sell shops we no longer want I think. Of course there would have to be some disclosure, maybe mark the existing feedback with “former owner” or something…

To be continued in part 2 tomorrow.

                         

The above is what happens when you make banners!