It's A Great Start - Can't Ask for More Than That

We’ve now completed our first week with the new stock in the shop, and it’s been a great success.  Hurrah!  It’s always a relief when a new shipment is greeted positively, no matter how many times we do this.  This time I bought sufficient really interesting ‘feature’ items that I can replace each one with something else as I sell them.  It’s just going a little faster than I thought it would, so hopefully I don’t run out of these items.

So far I’ve sold a big vintage typewriter that I planned to make into a window feature (but didn’t have a chance to), the Victorian bird cage lasted less than 24 hours in the window, one of the big, deep red Coke buckets sold from the back of the van before it even made it into the shop let alone the window, and the most industrial looking of the shop scales and weights lasted 48 hours in the window – lucky I still have two sets of nicely semi-industrial looking commercial scales yet to offer.  Plus from elsewhere in the shop we’ve sold lots of Deco glass, French pictures, enamelware, jewellery, ceramics and cutlery.  So a good cross-section of things have gone, and that was only Week One of the new shipment.  There are lots of good things to come, so fingers crossed that this reception keeps up. 

All of my lovely Victorian ceramic jelly moulds have gone, plus the biggest pieces of my copper, so my plans for a nice Downton Abbey-esque window for Week Two have been a bit thwarted.  I've still got those nice scales, though, and more copper to come, and soon I will get out more of the stoneware, so we should still be able to put something nice together.  But in the meantime, while I’m still digging out more stoneware, I think I shall colour-block the window this week.  I have just put out a really fabulous metal ship’s wheel which has nice, distressed sky blue paint over it, and I have heaps of blue Art Deco glass.  So blue shall be the base block, supplemented with red glass and red French enamelware, and also lovely mottled grey French enamelware.  It sounds a bit drab, but in fact the mottled grey enamelware goes with any colour you want to put with it, so it always looks nice however you arrange it.  So anyway, that’s tomorrow morning’s job when the shop opens, and we’ll see how it looks. 

Once I get more of the stoneware out of the boxes I shall decorate the big Welsh dresser with it (before I make a window display of it) and that should look spiffy.  I have sold all of the nice blue enamel plates I had on the dresser that the strange woman from last week was so rude about, so ha! strange, rude woman.  They were much admired, and it took only a week for all of them to sell.  Fortunately, most people are happy to find beautiful things that are so affordable, and aren’t one bit rude about it.

We’ve done a bit of framing of French magazine covers and advertisements this week, because the pictures have been selling steadily so the wall needed supplementing.  I have the best ever black and white 1960s Perrier advertisements, which I’ve been tossing up whether to put on the website or in the shop, but I think I’ll compromise and do both.  The images that appear on the website we offer unframed as well as framed, for those who would rather pay less for postage and/or arrange their own frames.  So once something is framed it doesn’t feature on the website.  But these are really cool images so I think I’ll put them in the shop and offer them framed-only on the website.  We’ll see how that goes, and if goes well I’ll do it again with other pictures.

Thanks to the talented and very patient Julie from www.beingruby.blogspot.com I now have the ability to put pictures in my Blog.  How good is that?  Thank you Julie!  So you get a sneak peak of the Perrier advertisements I'm talking about.  They'll look better when they're framed with black matt, but you can get an idea of how they'll look.  Naturally, I shall regale you with photos as well as text from now on in my Blogs.  With lots of hand-holding even a total techno-numpty like me can get there in the end.

Meanwhile, we have taken to visiting the new bebe, Caleb, every Sunday after we close the shop.  What a little character he is already, at a month old.  He’s chasing balls and other toys, and is very happy to wrestle with your fingers.  And boy can he bite!  Itsy-bitsy kitten teeth are like needles, and this little fella knows how to use them.  All sorts of things are allowable when you’re a tiny baby that are entirely Not Allowed when you grow up and come to my house, so he should make the most of mauling me while he can.  He’s shaping up to being well able to give Calypso a run for her money when he joins us.

This is Caleb at four weeks old.  What a cutie!  He has very beautiful shoulders and lovely rosetting over his body.  And look at those black stripes on his face - they look like they've been drawn on with a texta and you just know that people are going to ask me if I drew them on, don't you?  I can't tell you how often I'm asked if I paint Calypso, because yes I have so little to do with my time and I'm so warped that I paint the cat every day.  In exactly the same pattern because I'm also an utter perfectionist.  Yes, that's an entirely accurate description of me.  Really.