This photo has absolutely nothing to do with my post, but I just had to put my cute fat cat "Fat Boy Magoo" on the web. Isn't he darling? His honest, true, given name is Magoo, but as often happens with people and animals, they adopt certain, shall I say, less than desireable nicknames. Fat Boy was a rather normal sized barn kitty who we adopted, along with his smaller sister Spazzi about 5 years ago. Goodness, can it be that long already?
Anyway, I digress (as usual). I have come to a sort-of decision about the shop. I am thinking of trying out a new format to get some more exposure and have my weekend life less encumbered by shop-issues. Right now I'm supposed to be open on Saturdays for about 4 hours. This raises a few problems, most of which are that there are lots of fun things to do on Saturday afternoons in the nice weather, and I'd rather not be stuck at home waiting for people to come to the shop. So, my idea is this. I will load up my car maybe 1-2 Saturdays a month and head for a HUGE fleamarket about 1.25 hours from here. I would get tons of exposure, the rent is cheap ($20/day) and can set my own hours that day. If the weather is absolutely breathtaking and I decide I want to spend the day at the beach instead, I can! If I have a wedding to attend or am invited to a party, I can go! But, if I end up doing well at the flea market, it would become a great avenue to get my name out there and make some sales. Buying stuff to resell is fun! Making things to sell is great! But the key to both is SELLING of the items!
AND my additional idea for the shop is this: An Annual Boutique Sale. Once a year I will host a HUGE party and invite everyone I know to come browse all the goodies for sale. I absolutely LOVE planning and throwing events like this (similar to my annual Victorian Tea Party). It's such fun and so rewarding!
Well, that's the plan....stay tuned to see my progress! :)
Here is a little canvas I created a bit ago. I added the finishing touches today, and posted it on Ebay. It's a little hard to see in the picture but I used different shades of green; sage and moss along with burnt sienna and some copper embossing powders to add some interest. I stamped a wide band of pretty script through the width of the canvas with the embossing powder and added some ink, papers, and pretty sequins to finish it off. 
I had the itch this weekend to change things up in our little house. I see so many great ideas in magazines, but I wanted to try to make one little spot, one tiny corner, completely original. I found the metal tray above the cabinets in the kitchen and the absolutely darling little "Bloom" painting is from the very talented Jeny Penny on Etsy jenypenny.etsy.com! It's my first purchase there, although I drool over things all the time. I have a wishlist about 1.5 miles long and two of the items are more of Jeny Penny's...I like buying things in odd numbers, usually 3's or 5's. 
