Estate Sale Etiquette

This was used as a night light in one of the guest rooms at the last estate sale. It was passed by everyone, even the people that flipped over all the mattresses. This was the first time I saw people check the mattress which wasn't that bad, but not putting them back in place was just rude. 

I thought I could up-cycle the little frame so it came home with me instead of going into the dumpster. I'm guessing it's a scene of San Francisco. So far I like it as a night light so it may be a while before I switch it up to something else. :)


 

Bleach Printing

 

I did a little running around today looking for a beach ball. I want to make a giant eye ball for Halloween but it's not the season for beach stuff. I got lucky at Michael's and found some at 70% off! It's not as big as I wanted but it was all I could find. 

When I got home I decided I really had to give the bleach printing a try. I have all the parts so there is no excuse. My first attempt didn't go well. That the first picture. So with trial and error this is what I learned. 

1) I used a 50/50 mix of water and bleach. Lined the inside of the shirts with cardboard to keep the bleach from leaking to the other side. 

2) Remove the lace as soon as your done spraying the beach on.

3) Go lightly and don't over spray and soak the garment.

4) Let it sit for 5-10 minutes or until you get the look you want.  The black shirt took the bleach super fast. The denim shirt took a little longer. 

5) I threw everything (including the lace table cloth) in the washing machine and used the quick wash cycle. It was super hot today so I just hung everything up to dry. 

I'm going to keep experimenting on the denim shirt and see how far I can go until it falls apart. :)

Life of a reseller

I'm not the type of person that sleeps in. My body just wakes up early and my mind gets going. This morning was the first time neither happened until 9:30. Yes, that's late for me. Guessing my body is just decompressing.

I'm still process things I've gotten from two estates and things that came back from my camping trip. Things have stacked up on my cyanotype (sun printing/bleaching) table in the garage so that's high on my to do list to get cleared off. 

I also had to update my booth at Cottage Crafts as we're switching to the holiday season. My booths don't focus on the holidays too much but a lot of different customers come in so it's good to have fresh inventory. 

The pictures are some of the things I picked up at the last estate sale. I look for interesting things that will add a little interest to my booth. The bubble vase is French and very heavy. It retails for around $250, which surprised me! The ashtray looking bowl is Murano with real gold swirls. It was cover in so much dust it got passed over by everyone at the estate sale. Didn't help that is was in a very dark dining room with no lights.

The aluminum wine glasses are MCM, no really value other than looking cool. 

Think it would look nice on a vintage wine bar. 

I picked up the small painting just to fill a space in my booth. It was more the frame than the painting. Very old school looking. If I find the right artwork I'll switch it out for something more interesting. Maybe even a small mirror. 

 

Life of a reseller

I dragged these out of a rat infested crawl space with high hopes I would also find a Santa. A Santa would sell better even with damage.

It was very hot and dusty with a whole lot of rat activity everywhere. Blow molds can't handle extreme heat. They become very brittle and will break just looking at them. Knowing I would have to wash and disinfect these I had to pass. Getting them out into the daylight, I knew I wouldn't be able to clean them without them falling apart.  It was also very sad to see all the boxed Christmas village sets in the crawl space heading off to the dump. The boxes looked in good condition (no chewed corners) but again with all the rat poop there was going to be a lot rat pee on everything. Right after this I had to go home to shower and wash not only my clothes but my shoes too!

Life of a reseller - urban legend

Did I manifest this?

People joke about finding a suitcase full of money all the time. Well this past week that's what happened as I was prepping for the estate sale. I'm talking about maybe $20k - 30k! It was a "holy sh*t " moment when I opened up the suitcase. Yes, I turned it all into the estate person in charge. 

This wasn't the only $$$ I found. We had been asked to find the dad's Rolex watch. It didn't turn up so I asked my psychic friend if she knew where it was. She said it was behind some boxes on a counter but it left the house the week before in someone's pocket. We checked the bathroom counter anyways (there was a shoe rack on the counter) and found a  big bag of cash! Large yellow envelope with about $400 in new $2 bills from the 70's. It still had the bank band around it. 

Then during the estate sale I thought the kitchen cabinets had been sorted out but they weren't. So I opened one of the corner cabinets and found where all the sterling silver was stored! Two large candelabras and several smaller pieces. That was another "holy sh*t" moment!

The only down side was I locked the briefcase tonight thinking the numbers showing was the combination, well it wasn't. But it did get me wondering why wasn't it locked and why doesn't the name on the airline label match the dad's name? So I took the suitcase to a psychic friend to get her reading on it. I said finding all this money and valuables in random places made me think (sense) that he did some things under the table. Not saying illegal, but just a little shady. Her take on it was he lived a double life. He was a courier of what we're not sure (probably money) but the suitcase/briefcase was used a lot. The suitcase gave off a happy partying feeling, lots of drinking and laughing. 

Update - The silver coins I found came in at $50k!

Pumpkin Evny

I really really wanted to buy these over sized Martha Stewart pumpkins today! At $60 a pop, I had to walk around the store several times. Doing the math on what I spend on real pumpkins, they would have to last at least a few years. Not sure how well they would handle the bright California sun. Plus getting them up in the attic would be an issue. The check out line at TJ Max was so long, like 30 people, I decided I would pass. Doesn't mean I'll stop thinking about them! :) 

 

Life of a reseller

One of the reason I like helping out at estate sales is seeing the good stuff first. The family does go in and take what they want before the sale. My job is to get rid of the junky stuff that won't sell for the haulers to take away. Then set up the house for the sale. 

I'm always on the look out for artwork, especially for my son's house. Has to be interesting and sort of in theme of Lake Tahoe. While I was clean up the office, this 3D map was buried under a pile of papers. I knew right away that was a keeper. I didn't have good cell service at the house so I just had to guess my son would like it. That was a nice surprise but that wasn't the biggest surprise. Have to wait until the sale is over before posting about the urban legends that are true. 

 

Life of a reseller - booth redo

Today I'm doing yet another major overhaul of my  main booth. I wanted to do it last week but with my back issues, it had to wait. It does take all day as everything gets cleaned and in some cases repriced. Older items get packed away and sent off to other resellers. I also have several smaller booths that my items are used as fillers until rented. Those need to get a little clean up as well. With the holiday season coming up more people come in to rent so my stuff gets moved to the backroom, that also needs to be cleaned up.  Today is the only day I have on my schedule to get it done. I'm working two estate sales so will be busy and really tired for the next few weeks. 

Update: Worked on my main booth all day and got most of it done but still have a little more to do. It's a little to bottom heavy but I didn't have the time to track down another glass shelf. The paintings are the ones I picked up a Last Chance thrift store in Monterey. I think is added a whole new vibe to my booth. The overflow of stuff in the backroom is a hot mess that I will have to deal with next week. Just ran out of time today!

 

Trip Down to Monterey

 My long time dentist in Monterey is retiring after 42 years. I don't know why I'm so surprised that he's been my dentist for that long. It's still sad and a little scary that I will have to find someone I trust as much as I trust him. It's worth making the drive to Monterey to visit his office. Of course it was much easier when I was spending a lot of time at the beach house. 

After my appointment I went to Goodwill in Pacific Grove that isn't very good. I was driving by it and found parking so I stopped in. It's still very sad and I always wondering where all the donations they get in go, because it's not ending up in the store. Then I stopped by Branches (supports the local catholic school) and was shocked on how much they raised their prices. On my way out of Monterey I stopped at Last Chance, which is right next to the dump. Prices there have always been way to high and they really don't have a lot of anything good. The one thing I do look for is art. Original artwork is hard to Google or find on eBay. I some times can score something unique or at least a cool frame. They did have these tiles out in the yard that I really wished I had a project for. It's sold by the pound but even at $1 per pound, I just couldn't bring myself to buy any. :(

Always a good sign

I always like it when my morning coffee does this! I think of it as a good sign. 

I'm a night owl by nature but there are some things that just have to get done in the morning before it gets too hot. To keep myself on track, I set a timer for an hour. It keeps me focused on getting that task done. After each hour I can take a 15 minute break for something fun or eat a snack. There still are boxes of stuff I still need to tag even after four hours. The general house cleaning and laundry took an hour and organizing my crafting dies took another hour. There are some new crafting projects that use dies I think I have in my stash, so I had to round them all up and put them in one place. Yes, I have that many, it took an hour. :) 

There still are big totes of stuff that need to be sorted out before the estate sale I'm helping out with this weekend. I'm guessing I'll be bringing more stuff home to refresh my booth. 

Late at night I work on my crafting ideas, which is a quiet activity. So far the two ideas I found online didn't work out at all! I'll post those later as it's way down on my task list. :)
 

Creative Dilemma

I'm working on Henk's birthday present. I know he would prefer Legos or some other toy but this is what he's going to get. :)  These are the photos I like from our vacation but I'm not sure if I like the captions. Should I keep them? I will clean up the  frames and add some embellishment but can't decide which one to use or should I just send both?

Update:  I did one of the photos. The cement curb was throwing me off in the photo. During my clean up of my craft supplies I found a scrapbooking kit. No idea where I got it but it was in my stash. The little adventure banner helped break it up the line. The rocks are ones we picked up camping and when we went to the lake. Gluing everything down was a challenge as my Gorilla glue was semi dry. Fingers crossed it still works. 

 

Life Of A Reseller - Hand Made Sashiko Bag

This past week I've been processing two car loads of stuff. One was used vases that came from a estate clean out. This required A LOT of cleaning and washing because of all the dirt and dust. Having hurt my back, it was slow moving for a few days. Even with a dishwasher, it took all week to get through most of the boxes and I'm still not done.

The second car load was from my cousin and that got sorted out into what was being donated away (clothes went to the unicorn thrift store) and what could be resold. Overall there wasn't much for me to resell, so most went to the Salvation Army truck behind Cottage Crafts. 

My cousin is a retired home economics teacher and she sews really well. I'm guessing she made this sashiko purse. It's a little too short for me to use as an everyday tote but I'm thinking it would make a cute bag to hold my stitching supplies when I go to a meet up of crafters at the library.