Under the Influence: A Girl With Particular Shoes

So, Little Red Riding Hood said to the Blackbird Girls: "What big nerds you are!" And the Blackbird Girls shrugged in agreement....

We at Blackbird World Headquarters are unapologetic bookworms. One of us also happens to collect fairy tales, so when it was time to brainstorm our first photo shoot for the new website, turning to the magical world of literature was an easy step. While we could have run straight for Cinderella or Belle, we instead looked to the nameless, but fearless, heroine of a slightly more obscure story called The Enchanted Pig--or as we like to call it, The Girl in the Iron Shoes.

It isn't exactly a tale of boy meets girl. In this particular story, girl marries based on a prophetic book that she wasn't supposed to read. By night, the princess and her husband are able to...umm...live the married life. By day, he is a bona fide, mud-rolling pig. She happens to prefer the night-time version of her mate, and in an ill-timed attempt to break his porcine curse, the princess is punished with an impossible quest: to search the world for him, on foot, until she has worn through three pairs of iron shoes.

As the story goes: "On and on she wandered over nine seas and across nine continents; through forests with trees whose stems were as thick as beer- barrels; stumbling and knocking herself against the fallen branches, then picking herself up and going on; the boughs of the trees hit her face, and the shrubs tore her hands, but on she went, and never looked back." In addition to the traditional obstacles of a long journey on foot, the girl must visit four dangerous places to seek guidance. The first is the house of the Moon....

And what better outfit for this occasion than a cream 1960s mod mini and cape, paired with groovy 1960s cream Renauld sunglasses and a chunky silver pendant? The combat boots, of course, are her "iron shoes."

Next, she must hike to the house of the Sun. For this look, we put a 1960s gold sweater vest over a printed Carol Craig dress and added a copper turban, 1970s Dior sunglasses, and a groovy handmade copper statement necklace.

The third milestone of her quest is visiting the house of the Wind in a fluttery silk dress, 1970s green-framed Foster Grant sunglasses, faux pearl bracelet, and rhinestone earrings.

From there, she must walk across the vast Milky Way. We chose a sparkly sequined top with just the right amount of slouch, paired with cropped seersucker trousers, 1980s aviator sunglasses, a 1960s MGI studded purse suspended from her belt, a 1950s multi-strand necklace, and a shimmery rhinestone bangle.

At last, our intrepid heroine reaches the end of her quest at a weathered little house in a lush forest.  Here, she will prove to her husband that she is no longer the girl that he married, but a better (stronger) version of herself. For the "Honey, I'm home--and we need to talk" reunion, we dressed our model in a 1970s floral chiffon maxi dress under a metallic silver vest, and added black and coral sunglasses and screwback earrings.

The story has a happy ending, in which the pig's enchantment is broken, revealing him to be a prince from another kingdom. He weeps when his bride relates the tale of her harrowing journey, and they kiss. Soon afterward, they travel together to her father's castle, and he asks them to rule in his place. As the story concludes: "And they ruled as only kings rule who have suffered many things."

And although our well-traveled heroine can now prop up her feet and indulge in a well-deserved rest, we're sure that she will continue to be the Queen of Cool, and look incredibly fierce while doing so--in more comfortable footwear, of course.

Our photos look great on our shiny new website with some vintage celestial illustrations, including a couple of our favorite artists: Don Blanding and Dorothy Lathrop. We're keeping the Etsy shop open, but our favorite finds will end up at www.blackbirdgirlsvintage.com. Check us out!

We have news!  The Blackbird Girls are writing a book! But we desperately need YOUR help! We've been saving our pennies for a while now so we could do a trip like this, and then write a book about American Vintage junk and travel destinations. We were afraid it would be years and years before we had the opportunity to do this trip the way it needs to be done, but surprise! -- the opportunity (a month when we both can get away for an extended period of time) has presented itself this summer. 

We decided to try a Kickstarter project to make our dream a reality. We need to raise some funds to help us self-publish the book. This is where we need all you lovely people -- check out our Kickstarter page using the link below (we made a funny video, so it's worth checking out). If you can help us, thank you from the bottom of our hearts! You can pledge as low as $10 and up from there, and there are some awesome rewards for you if you do. And please SHARE this blog post with everybody you know -- we only have 30 days to reach our goal, and it's an all-or-nothing deal. The more people hear about it, the more chance we have of reaching our dream! We LOVE you guys!

Vera Vault -- The Grid Edition

The amount of scarves I can accumulate in a year is both exciting and kind of scary.  I have been stashing scarves as I find them in a bag at our shop -- keeping them separate from the rest of my collection to photograph.  Let's just say the number of scarves in the collection total has drastically increased!  I will be doing a count over Christmas, as soon as I finish photographing the rest in the bag, and you know, after maybe the other Blackbird stuffs a little Vera something-something in my stocking?  <wink>

So enjoy this round-up of some of my Veras (my dear sweet loves!), all with a grid or grid-like design.

Bonus -- It's time for the Christmas windows!

So I know I've been a real slacker when it comes to the blog, especially with the window posts.  We've still been doing the windows at Collector's Antique Mall in Asheboro, North Carolina -- we just haven't been sharing them with you.  So for that, I apologize, offer as a gift to you our newest window, just in time for Christmas.

If you've read our blog before, you know that the Christmas window is not necessarily our favorite one to do.  We have more parameters and limitations with it than we do with a normal window design (the tree goes here, it must be rich and full, blah blah blah).  But we really enjoyed this one.  It came together quickly, there was tons of silver tree junk in storage at the store, and we could use our trusty black and white tiled "floor".  And there's always lots and lots of glassware at the store to use. 

We suspended plastic glittery snowflake ornaments in silver and white from the ceiling, and filled the wall with black, silver, and white framed mirrors.  We wanted it to SPARKLE! and SHINE!  And it does. The effect doesn't translate all that well in photographs, but standing outside at night looking in, it really twinkles.  So pretty.

Balls and tinsel and picks galore!

The tree is so full of stuff, I was afraid it would fall over.  We found a gajillion silver picks and we used them ALL.  We also had tons of that cheap silver tinsel garland (can you see it?  it's kind of buried in the tree), and we debated about using it -- will it look like cheap silver tinsel garland?  But it's kitschy, and I LOVE KITSCH, so we went with it.  And I swear, it made that tree looks expensive.  Who'd have thunk??

We didn't go overboard adding presents under the tree.  Just some carefully curated items, mostly chosen for their colors and designs.

We loved this doll for her white hair and patterned dress.  And the dominoes are freakin' cool!

So we've done a Christmas kitchen, a traditional living room, our Hipster Cabin Christmas last year -- but we'd never done a table and chairs.  We found this great white iron and glass mid century patio table and mixed it with two traditional black chairs.  We were selective with our red accents, and mixed crystal, painted wood, milk glass, and steel for the other pieces.  We think it looks pretty awesome.

We've wanted to use this checked bedspread for a while now.  It was perfect here.

Crystal Christmas tree and Santa says "Hi!"

This has deer heads for handles!  Perfect!

We finished the whole window with angel hair tinsel -- another kitschy classic.  But it's so sparkly, and delicate!  We put it EVERYWHERE.

And the piece de resistance is my disco fringe silver tinsel wreath I made.  Did you see it?

You can make one too!  I started with a Styrofoam wreath base, and used silver bead garland and angel hair tinsel from the dollar store.  I used my handy glue gun to glue random lengths of the bead garland to the top, and I did two layers.

Then I took hanks of angel hair tinsel and wrapped it around the form, hot gluing the ends in the back.  I kept adding it until it was full, then I went back over it and teased out some loose ends for that fringe-y effect.  It was very messy, but you know, whenever I make anything, I make a huge mess.

Messy, but sooo sparkly!

And here it is installed!  Merry Christmas y'all!!

Junk Love: We're Back!

So, we took a full month off from the blog in order to take care of a few outstanding projects, spend time with family, and, of course, have the annual Blackbird Christmas Extravaganza. Now, as the new year is getting under way, and we're getting back to our regular jobs, we've been thinking a lot about that standard cliche: New Year's Resolutions.

We don't make resolutions the way that other people do. We tend to exist just on the edge of a shadow, another cliche called Murphy's Law. Thankfully, and I did just knock on wood, we haven't ever had to deal with a major catastrophe--you know, like having a hurricane flood your house, and as soon as you get the water pumped out, a meteor falls on it and it bursts into flames. We are truly grateful for the lives that we lead, and the people that care about us. But sometimes I would swear that we live in a Buster Keaton movie. If I were to go outside to trim a branch from my pecan tree, the tree would probably fall over, leaving me holding the branch and the saw.

Because of this, there are a lot of things that we avoid doing, just based on the pessimistic (but actually realistic) assumption that at least one of us will end up bleeding or crying at the end. This is why we tread carefully around New Year's Resolutions. We don't want to tempt Murphy any more than we already do. I usually do monthly resolutions--a different one for each month of the year. This not only makes it easier to stick it out, because it's only four weeks, but at the end of the year, it makes me feel like I did so much. For example, I might say that next month, I will take my lunch to work and cook supper at home three days a week instead of going out. On that ninth peanut butter sandwich in my office, when I'm craving fettuccine, I only have to pep talk myself into a few more sandwiches, knowing that the month is nearly over and I can have a new goal to work on. (On a side note, I actually did this a couple of years ago, and ended up with four hundred extra dollars in the bank when I was done.) Last year, however, I made only four resolutions for the year, and I failed at ALL of them. One was to paint my house, and believe it or not, every single time I had a day off that I planned to devote to this project, it rained. Every. Single. One. For a YEAR.

So here I am, feeling like a failure, afraid to try because I don't want to disappoint myself again, but also knowing that there are a lot of things that we, the Blackbird Girls, simply must put our heads to during 2014. And so, I propose the following resolutions:

Resolution #1: Efficiency. Figure out a way to streamline our business, from photography to shipping.

Resolution #2: Organization. It shouldn't take more than five minutes to find an item that needs to be shipped. Okay, maybe ten minutes. This is still an improvement from our current situation, where we instantly lay our hands on one item, and then spend an hour looking for the other one.

Resolution #3: Look for a better location for our business. With the trends of real estate in our area, I can't allow myself to say "Find a better location," because you can't snap your fingers and make it so. But, the best way to achieve Resolutions 1 and 2 is to expand our business into a larger space.

Resolution #4: Build a tunnel from North Carolina to California, because that is where most of our customers are. Or, build a teleporter. Or, one of those suction-tube thingies that banks have in the drive through lanes, so that when someone on the west coast needs that maxi dress right this instant, we can oblige. We might also need a few robots, just because.

Resolution #5: Take a vacation. A real one, not just a weekend.

Now, of these four items, I can almost guarantee that by the end of the year, number five will have been taken care of. As for the rest, who knows? We have tried the first three items in the past, and actually accomplished them all, but then it...fell apart for reasons that I won't bore you with. Our response was to circle the wagons and lick our wounds, which is great, except that we never came back out again. So, I guess that I could really combine the three into one big resolution: get back on the horse (and there's a cliche for you...). This is the year of the Blackbird, because I said so. Now...does anybody have a robot or a teleporter that we could borrow? Pretty please?

Junk Love Monday: Make Your Collection Work For You

Last week, we established the fact that the Blackbird girls are junk addicts. We buy, and then we buy, and then we buy some more. You would think that we would be absolutely out of room by now, right? It is no secret within our circle that our living space is packed with junk. Most first-time guests expect to see a monstrous pile of antiques and tchotchkes, from floor to ceiling, with a pulse that vibrates beneath their feet. What they find instead is a very extensive, but carefully curated, smorgasbord of things. We decorate with our junk. It is everywhere (and I do mean everywhere--every nook and cranny in this house is considered to be real estate for the current or future display of something). Yes, we share a house that could only be classified as tiny, a 1947 cottage that seems to be shrinking by the day. But, we are experts at maximizing the potential of a space, no matter how small. We do have rules to follow. (Last week, we introduced you to the rule known as #3, or the Rule of Three, about the minimum requirements to make something an official collection.) This week, we give you two more rules.

Rule #10: Use your home as a gallery for the things you love to look at. Our strategy for artwork (or anything we can hang on a nail, really): if it's a vertical flat surface, it's available. It doesn't matter if it's three inches from the ceiling, or hanging all the way to the floor, or on the back (and front!) of a door. We hang things across the tops of doorways, on the wall beside the refrigerator, in the laundry nook, above and below light switches, and someday soon, we will probably be hammering tiny nails in a row down the exposed side of our built-in bookcase. We literally have a section of wall that is covered with artwork from the ceiling down to the baseboard with vintage artwork.

www.Lushlee.com

Rule #10, part B: use your displays to mask the defects in the "gallery." Some people use accessories to enhance the architecture of their home, which is absolutely fabulous if you have noteworthy architecture. Those of us living in homes with...flaws...can use our accessories to cover up the blemishes. If you are in physical pain at the thought of a room with more artwork than drywall, imagine how it would feel knowing that the drywall is cracked and uneven, and the painters were possibly sleepwalking when they applied your favorite, but now-discontinued, color (the one that ALL of your furniture matches, so if you repainted the walls, you'd have to reupholster everything). It is far more satisfying to cover that up (and much cheaper than having someone come in and re-drywall and paint every room in your house, which would really mean having to move to a hotel while this is done, because you have to sleep somewhere). Do you have a pesky support column somewhere, which can't be removed because it's holding up your house? Cover that thing up. Artwork, masks, a collection of tools--it doesn't matter what you hang on it. Just make it look like it was put there specifically to display something you love, and nobody will ever leave your house thinking about that ugly column again.

But what if it can't hang? This brings me to Rule #9 in our personal guidebook to happiness: Make your collection work for you. It is a beautiful concept, really. First, you get dual usage out of some of your things. Second, when you are thinking about purchasing something, the moment when you realize that you can use it to display, store, or enhance something else in your collection will bring you that most precious realization: I HAVE TO BUY THIS! You have no choice now, which eases the pain of opening your wallet and handing over the money. You have to do it, because it was meant to be! It is guilt-free efficiency. Example: She buys a box of vintage billiard balls. What do we do with spherical things, which, because our house is also not level, tend to roll all over the place? Why, I simply MUST buy that red bowl to hold them! And now that I have that red bowl? I can buy that similar aqua bowl to hold my bocce balls. It doesn't get better than bowls of balls, people! When she buys an antique optic glass punchbowl, what do we do? Fill it with her vintage typewriter tins. When I buy vintage chess pieces? Then she simply MUST buy that vase to hold them. Then, we can use that vase of chess pieces as a bookend. A teak salad bowl will hold candy at Halloween, or turned upside down, can act as a riser for a piece of pottery. A midcentury creamer becomes a pencil cup.

However, sometimes we have to find a place to store things that aren't a part of our display. Whether it is something as mundane as scotch tape, or a collectible that is being rotated out for a while, it has to go somewhere, and that is the moment you will discover that the drawer in the kitchen is already full. This is when you can really make your collection work for you--as storage units. While we may wiggle things into overstuffed closets and under furniture, nothing serves us better in the way of storage than two of our collections: suitcases and ice buckets.

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The suitcase craze comes and goes among vintage-lovers, but our relationship with our luggage is solid. Every suitcase, trunk, and vanity case that we own is performing double duty as a storage site for something. I have a round blue suitcase that holds sweaters in the off season. We have a plaid suitcase that stores back issues of magazines. Vintage tweed suitcases filled with unsightly and rarely-used, but highly sentimental, VHS tapes are stacked on a piece of furniture to serve as risers for one of our displays. Depending on the time of year, other suitcases throughout the house may hold extra blankets, board games, Christmas decorations, our heaviest winter coats, and an impossible-to-display collection of vintage cheese boards that will have their grand debut at a cheese party someday. To keep everything straight? Just tie paper luggage tags to the handles of the suitcases, with the contents written on the tag. Unless you have incredibly nosy guests, people will just think they are name tags. You can buy them, or make your own, or use the tags that came with the suitcase when you bought it. We get great storage, and the suitcases look great with our decor.

The ice bucket collection has become a resting place for smaller items: spare batteries, tape, business cards, and the super important Pizza Delivery Fund. Have you ever put something in a "safe place," and then spent six months looking for it? If you designate the ice bucket collection as a series of safe places, it cuts the search time considerably (and you don't end up emptying, and then re-filling, every drawer and cabinet in your house). Yes, I might forget which ice bucket holds the AA batteries, but trust me, it only takes two seconds to lift the lid, gaze inside, and move on. No digging required. Plus,  ice buckets are cool.

moodindigonewyork.com

Junk Love Monday: For the Love of Junk

We are the ladies of Blackbird Antiques, lovers of all things vintage and fabulous. (This is a polite way of saying that we are addicted to buying old junk.) It would be fair to say that we love everything we buy. This love may vary from the innocent "I want to save you from someone else's garbage can, so I will take you home with me" type, to the soul-searing Lord of the Rings-style "my precious!" kind of attachment, the "I will cut you if you take that" kind of lust. As roommates and business partners, we cultivate 50+ separate collections between us, and this doesn't really factor in that magical unicorn known as the crossover collection, which will be discussed in a future post.

Why do we buy? People have different reasons, which we have observed out of  anthropological curiosity over the last decade of working in the antiques business. Sometimes, the need to buy comes from the good day/week/year that you are already having. You feel on top of the world, and cheerfully reinforce that with a slight junk-buying buzz. This is what gives you the opportunity to blissfully browse and purchase, without remorse, something that is interesting, pretty, or complimentary to what you already own. A pair of embroidered pillowcases, perhaps, or a nice, but functional, pottery dish.

Then there are the times when life is not going so well, when the baggage that you carry becomes a mountain that you have to climb up every day to make sure that it really is daylight somewhere (dramatic, huh?). A voice, just a whisper at first, starts to nag at you--buy something and you'll feel better. You try to resist, then you pretend to try to resist (don't be ashamed, we've all been there), and finally, like the true junk addict that you are, you say "well, maybe I'll just look around for a minute." This becomes "well, I'll just get this one" and moments later, you feel the buzz. It's a much tamer version of an illicit affair. You satisfy a craving, make yourself feel better, and then at the end you've still got a fabulous pair of smiling tomato salt and pepper shakers, which you will work hard to convince yourself and everyone else that you are actually going to use, because you really did need some shakers.

A collector buys with the intent to continue curating. We can now subdivide this into the casual collectors and the true collectors. The difference? A casual collector buys occasionally, but never seeks out. These people leave it all up to fate, and there is nothing wrong with that. It is a low-stress, low-maintenance way to accumulate things that you love, and collections made in this way are fabulous, regardless of the effort or expense it took to get there. What we call a "true collector" is a more aggressive sort. Regardless of personality, true collectors all have a Type A individual lurking in the back of the brain, one who will relentlessly pursue ownership of an item based on what is almost a primitive urge. These are the collectors who are always, always, on the hunt for that perfect example, the missing link that will elevate their collection to the ideal state. Wouldn't you love to have the World's Most Extensive, or even better, The Definitive collection of something? People would write books about you and your things! Museums would woo you! You might be on television!

And sometimes, every now and then, we have no idea why we buy. The stars align, an opportunity presents itself, and it happens to be on sale. Something unexpected catches our eye and calls our name. This is how new collections are born. We have a rule in the antiques business: three makes a collection. If you own three things connected by a common thread, then you are a collector, whether you want to be or not. Three slide rulers? Yep. Three or more rotary telephones? Sure. Three green glass vases, all of different shapes, sizes, and makers? Sorry, but you are officially a collector of green glass. Don't worry! Collections can be general or specific. Sometimes, they are both. We Blackbird girls are currently cultivating a collection of tiny tins. We don't care what the tins are for, which makes our collection general. The one unifying criterion is that they are smaller than 2 inches, which makes the collection quite specific. We have also added an addendum to the rule: if you buy one, with the intent to buy more, it's a collection anyway. Some things are harder to find than others. You could throw a rock in an antique store (not a good idea, because you might get arrested) and hit a dozen Coca Cola items, but what if you fall in LOVE with a single Eskimo figurine? In our part of the country, you don't find Eskimo-themed items very often. But if it whispers sweet nothings in your ear and you want nothing more than to take it home and build a shrine in its honor, then you are now a collector of vintage Eskimos. It may be five years before you find a second one, and another five before you find that third, but you can call it a collection in progress from the moment he winks back at you from your bookshelf.

For us, a vacation means stopping at as many thrift and antique stores as we can in a day's time. We have a "free love" kind of relationship with the junk we find. Approximately half of the items we buy for resale end up charming their way into the house instead. Our house will probably collapse under the weight of it all someday, or we'll have to buy houses next door to each other (we can't separate some of these collections!), but our junk brings us joy, and we wouldn't have it any other way.