Vintage Bazaar Promo for Manly Vintage from allthewhile on Vimeo.

Y'all need to get your behinds out to the Vintage Bazaar. If the last Vintage Bazaar is any indication, its going to be epic. Lots of cool vintage stuff, beer, pies, music. Its this Sunday from 12-7 at the Congress Theater.

If you sell on etsy, you might notice that you only get a certain number of characters for the title of each item on your shop page. This same character restriction increases to 23 in the search result pages, and if the etsy gods are being nice, will increase to 23 when you end up on the front page. This is a screenshot of one of Morgan's items.

His are the bears on the right. See how it doesn't let him finish the word "black"? This restriction has been lingering in the back of my head, so I decided to tackle it.

How many characters can you have?

18 or 23 depending.

Anything other than 18 characters, including spaces, will not show up on your shop page. Anything more than 23 won't show up in search results or the front page. This *might* not be a big deal to you. Unless. Unless you start to think about the fact that those words are like an advertisement. And you want your item, whatever it is that you have, to stick out, you've got to make the most of those 18 characters. Yes, pictures are SUPER important, but I think maybe the first 18 characters of that description are as well.

I'm going to start using a site like Letter Counter, which tells me the exact number of characters in that title, so I can be sure that potential customers get all the goods up front.

Don't forget that whatever words you have in your title *will end up being searched for. So please feel free to add on after what you've put in those first 18 words. But I'm willing to bet thinking about how to use those first 18 words effectively will be really helpful.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?!!

Frankly, it means that estate sales are awesome, and particularly estate sales run by Antique Kitchen are awesome. If you ever run across an estate sale ad, and you're not sure if you should go, and it says, "Antique Kitchen", go. She has awesome sales and very reasonable prices. I got this entire set for $6. SIX DOLLARS. Eat that Wal-Mart.

Morgan and I had a great time last week at the Vintage Heaven sale at the Heaven gallery. We met some really nice sellers, buyers, and even made a few bucks while we were there. We happened to be the only people selling home decor and home furnishing type stuff, but we still did well nonetheless. We learned from our Vintage Bazaar mistakes, and I think, improved on our booth.

Pro-tip #1 - Price your items with fancy things called, "stickers".
Pro-tip #2 - Don't over clutter your booth.
Pro-tip #3 - Pack a lunch (we learned that one this time and will be following through with the next sale)

Selling is a tiring thing. All day on your feet, loading and unloading, being cheerful. It takes a lot out of you. But I'll tell you what, nothing beats talking and interacting with customers. Whenever you make a sale, and you're able to tell the buyer a little bit about the history of what you're selling, it makes it all worth it.

We will definately be appearing at the next big sale they have, on July 31st and August 1st. Its during the Wicker Park fest, which should draw a huge crowd, and thus, more sales. We're going to try to start collecting clothes for guys as well.

More shots from the sale:

(All pictures shamelessly stolen from The Vintage Heaven Website)

Yeah I love putting "manly" at the beginning of everything on this website. It makes me feel manly. Anyways, I've been futzing with my yard all spring and throughout this summer. The backyard gets hardly any light at all. There are two giant trees that hang over the backyard, and one of them is growing through the floor of our garage and destroying its foundation. Its so bad, in fact, that the stucco and the bottom part of the foundation on the wall facing our house is literally just falling apart.

So I decided we needed some sort of bed of plants. Got some high shade, low water, awesomeness. Hopefully these plants will be able to survive our lack of a green thumb. I bought some two-by-fours screwed them together, stained them reddish, bought some bamboo, and BAM! Our garage doesn't look like its falling down anymore.

Oh and I built and stained a picnic table too. Of course it was from a kit, but I'm still manly because I had to drink beer and use an electric drill to complete the job.

File this under things that I learned today. Dorothy C. Thorpe was a Californian mid-century artist who popularized the glassware with the silver band around the top of the glass. You know, Don Draper Style.

I had been previously been searching for "ombre". Ombre, is technically "From a French term for "shaded," ombre is a color effect where the color gradually changes from light to dark over the item of clothing." These are ombre glasses:

They look awesome, but not exactly what I'm looking for.

Much of what Dorothy Thorpe made seems to be a tad bit hideous, but she surely defined an era!

Search tips:
mad men barware
dorothy thorpe barware
dorothy thorpe silver band
dorothy thorpe silver top

One man's trash as they say.

Before

After

This is a 1960s Westinghouse Blue Flipper Fan. It can "flip" up onto the table in multiple ways. Apparently, this is one of the first fans made with translucent blue blades a was a top of the line table fan when it came out in the 1960s.

Express Railway Safe

Antique Mahogany Bed

BENNETT GAS PUMP from the 1950s

Old Map Vending Machine

Its been a really long haitus, mostly due to work constraints, but I'm determined to have my shop up and running in full swing by the time the Vintage Bazaar roles around at the end of August.

I got a new camera, and have a better lighting situation going on. I kinda feel like I've matured as a buyer now as well. Fun times.

During office hours, I teach American history to 8th graders. I guess maybe that's partly why I'm into the vintage. Anyways, a week ago, I helped to chaperone our 8th graders on a Civil Rights tour of the south. We went to Atlanta, Memphis, Montgomery, and Arkansas. It was an amazing trip for the kids, and pretty awesome for me as well. Along the way I snapped up some photos of some of the cool vintage technology while in various museums.

The above image is probably one of the coolest things I saw. It was in the dining room from a home in Helena, Arkansas. The tour guide dubbed it as "The First Microwave". It used the heat of the radiator to heat up food. Super awesome. A similar radiator can be found here

Highlights include the monitor top fridge (I want one of those puppies so badly), the vintage adding machine (not nearly as gorgeous as the one that Morgan has but look at that table wow), and some street graffiti from Helena, Arkansas. If you ever want to see a dilapidated Mississippi Delta town, head down for some good times to creepy, beat up, Helena.

This is all we need for Father's day.

American pickers.

So much capitalism, so much vintage. I don't know why I love it so much, but I do.