Design by Night

This past weekend was my first trip to the New Jersey shore, specifically Cape May. Unlike most sea shore towns, Cape May has chosen to keep it’s lower capacity but immensely more appealing, unique historic beach houses and inns rather than building concrete monstrosities for the masses. Unfortunately, most inventory of the local shops do not share the same aesthetics so I was extremely delighted when my nose led me to a shop on Carpenters Lane called Good Scents.
Good Scents is an adorable store that carries everything your mind and body might need to spur creativity, calm down after a stressful day or naturally help those sinus issues. I found the overall aesthetics of the store (especially the scents) to be extremely inspiring.

Here a are a few photos I took but they just don’t do the place justice, if you would like to visit the store it is at 327 Carpenters Lane, Cape May NJ and they have an online shop for their products at www.sensia.com. I especially recommend the purchase of…

So as I sit here two days away from April looking out the window at the drab gray skies I'm wondering when spring will come. I love gardening and have been waiting for a beautiful spring day to get out and play in the dirt.

But since that day has not come, I looked for a little help from my friend Megan from Eternal Etchings in Villas, NJ for some alternative spring gardening. Megan is a great artist whose main canvas is the human body. On several occasions she has drawn and tattooed custom work for me, my husband and our friends. This is a tattoo added to a grouping of flowers that start on my foot and wrap around the back of my ankle.

Hopefully this will inspire you to think of alternative ways to garden yourself even in bad weather.

So here is my spring garden compliments of Megan.

Here is the first half of the tattoo that is on my foot and starts rapping around the back of the ankle:

So on one of my weekend outings I found myself at Wish Me Antiques and Collectibles in Parkville Maryland. If you want odd ball knickknacks, historic postcards or quasi antique finds this is the place to go. The carry nice collectible glassware shelved next to button jars and old pretzel containers full of old matchbooks.

But my find of the day was a $5 grab bag of old jewelry goodies. The bag held lots of good finds that would soon be made into bobby pins that I sell on my Etsy site. But by far my favorite "hidden treasure" of the grab bag was a funny yet fabulous paper clip necklace.

I imagine an underpaid overworked bored receptionist somewhere out there carefully rolling pieces of gingham contact paper around each paper clip just so and arranging them in a flourish at the end.

Although the photos show a co-worker of mine displaying the priceless piece, I am currently wearing this wanna-be Tiffany treasure with pride. Perhaps some of you cubicle dwellers out there will be in…

This past Sunday a friend and fellow Etsy-ian, Jill Popowich, went to a large thrift store to do a little shopping. While Jill was trying on $7 ball gowns I happened to look up and see rows and rows of plastic bags full of naked Barbie bodies and limbs.



Well the little goth girl that lives deep down inside was tickled. Furthermore, within the past six months I have become a fan of Dexter, the kinky and quirky Showtime series about a serial killer with homicidal tendencies hidden in an ordinary façade. Although the bagged dolls were slightly disturbing I found it darkly funny and a bit inspiring so I took out my camera and snapped off a few shots of the Dexter styled mutilated and bagged Barbies.

Since then I have been pondering going back to purchase a bag of dolls to add to my eclectic craft supply collection. So I did a little research to see if any fellow Esty crafters have used dolls and found some great finds that I believe even Tim Burton would be proud to call his own and thought…

So after months and months of thinking about it, I have finally decided to pop my Blog cherry and get this thing started. Basically I have started this blog to share with some fellow crafters some of the things that inspire me, such as other crafters work and the quirky cool things I run into in my daily life.

For my first entry I would like to share and awesome "flyer" I found on my recent trip to Portland, Maine. While shopping in a thrift store I came across a super cute flyer for a seamstress and thought it was one of the most clever takes on the typical tear off flyer format that I have ever seen.


So if you happen to live in the Portland area and have a sewing job please check her out at www.boomchick-a-boom.com