One of my very favorite ways to remember my travels is through the artful objects collected on my various trips. Learning to see objects as art has made souvenir shopping so much more interesting and now, one of my favorite elements of travel! When I was a bit younger I assumed the best…
I felt equal parts fascination and horror the first time I walked into a goodwill outlet. Although I’d heard about the outlet by word of mouth, I found myself there by accident. It wasn’t until a GPS told to “take us to Goodwill” routed us to the outlet instead of the Goodwill mega-store a…
I believe one of the very best ways to become acquainted with the culture and take home something of artistic – but affordable – value is by visiting local markets and shopping with the individual vendors that come together to create the magic of an open air market. There’s something almost magical about how vendors arriving…
Setting your prices can be one of the hardest parts of having a flea market booth. How you price determines how quickly your inventory will turn over, which impacts how customers experience your booth. If items catch the eye but the pricetag turns them away, the customer might not stay in your booth and…
“Free inventory.” At the mere mention of the phrase, you might think of curbside finds or perhaps a way to rid yourself of bad Christmas gifts. However, over the years that I have maintained a flea market booth, I’ve located a surprising number of consistent sources of free inventory for my flea market booth.…
One easy way to add a bit of a not-too-harsh industrial vibe to your home is with vintage C clamps. Once only used for woodworking and similar construction projects, C clamps can be used to support shelves, add hooks, or secure items where you need them. C-clamps blend well into interior decor. Today’s utilitarian, shiny…
Since moving into the urban equivalent of a tiny house, I’ve learned to be very, very creative with storage. One of the ways I keep my art supplies handy but neatly organized is by using vintage luggage- especially train cases. Train cases make perfect storage for illustration markers, artists paint storage, and place to tuck away…
It’s no secret to anyone who visits my home or business that I love equestrian decor. Even so, I used to be surprised when my birthday rolled around each year and casual friends seemed to always think the perfect gift for me was a picture or painting of a horse. It made logical sense, I…
How to Pack the Perfect Flea Market Caddy for Handling Restocking/Repricing Trips to your Booth After many trips hauling items home from garage sales to my own garage, then watching them clutter my garage while I waited to price, so I could “eventually” take the item to my fleamarket booth, I developed a new…
In 2015 I took the plunge, downsizing my life to adapt to a new adventure. As I began the process of selling my business in early 2014, I began preparing for the life transition the change would bring. 2015 dawned with me living in a 3,000 square foot home with 2 garages, a workshop,…
I’m almost as excited to share this project with my readers as I was to complete this project for myself! Creating this vintage train case turned marker holder has been my goal for a while, but it’s taken some patience to find the perfect train case and marker holder that fit without wasting a lot…
Last Updated: From 2010-2015 Hawk Hill’s stable was inhabited always by a horse or two and I ran a tack store out of a warehouse building on the property that was designed to look like a barn, so it seemed appropriate for both my use of the property and the design of the buildings themselves…
I grew up in the world of craft shows and flea markets and never realized how many trade secrets I knew until I started my own flea market booth in my 30’s. In this post, I’m excited to share some of my secrets with other sellers and vendors. Note that most (but not all) of…
Poking through a small flea market about a 1,000 miles off the beaten path last week, I stumbled across a cache of stationary, pens, and notepads from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Each priced at nearly nothing, I scooped up the whole pile and started making plans. The timing was perfect, I was just a few…
Last Updated: Last fall a friend purchased a fantastic property with an old 19th century stone barn still standing. When I remarked on the old horse collars resting under a thick layer of dust in the old tack room, she immediately gifted me both. I knew right away I’d make wreaths with them, and thanked…
Last Updated: With one natural ingredient, it’s easy to remove years of rust from antiques, artifacts, and tools. A few months after I sold my first horse, I was walking through the pasture and found a shoe he’d lost sometime in the year before. Looking at it, I thought it would be a nice keepsake-…
