Pre-Birdsong 4 Shopping

My Birdsong 4 weekend started off with friends Suzanne & Cheryl (the Colorado girls) arriving June 5 for afternoon shopping at the Mission Road Antique Mall 

 

Shopping at Beth's booth...Beth has BEST treasures!

This booth offers designer & vintage fabric swatches.

I have drawers full of swatches from this booth!

 

After some girlfriend time shopping, eating and sharing hugs & stories, we called it a night.

A good night's sleep was needed, so we would be fully energized for Friday's shopping at the 

Kansas City's West Bottoms vintage shops.  

 

We arrived about 8:45 am to the West Bottom shops.

Our sign for the day...smile.

 Not only were we on a treasure hunt, but we were excited to run into other Birdsong Peeps!

Vintage June brides everywhere

I like this idea of a vintage tart tin for a base!

 Do you miss Disco?

A view looking east in the West Bottoms area.

 

 Yummy French ribbons!

  

Did a lot of this today!

 

Enough for now.

 Our next adventure will be Angie's birthday party and Day 1 of Birdsong 4.

 See you back here soon. 

 

 

 

 

 

Birdsong 2014

I have been fortunate to attend Karla Nathan's Birdsong retreat since it started in 2011.

 

I am sooooo excited Birdsong 4 begins this Friday!

I joined three swaps - Birdsong banner, altered avian/garden tin and an altered bottle.

Two are partnered swaps, so I will not show those photos until after my partners have

received theirs from me. 

The altered bottle swap is not partnered, so I can share my bottle now 

front view

The bird print is a thin decoupaged napkin which allows translucent light through.

This old wooden bird was in sorry shape, so I repainted it.  

I enjoy using real acorns for bird nests.

 

While the bottle is nearly covered, the laces are light and airy allowing light to peek

through the clear glass bottle.

 upper back view 
 

 I am a lucky...blessed girl to spend the next few days with dearest of friends, new friends,

West Bottoms vintage shopping, create art and relish in the

inspiration of Karla's hospitality and art studio!

I'll have lots of photos to share, so stop back by later next week.

Blessings to you ~ Tami

Barn Gypsies Barn Sale and Outdoor Show

Barn Gypsies Barn Sale and Outdoor Show is a monthly event held April - October

on the last weekend of the month in Hamilton, MO.

Julie and I enjoyed our drive to Hamilton.  Barn Gypsies is a country setting with friendly owners & vendors, offering great items at very reasonable prices!  

The barn is brimfull of nicely displayed items while the outside grounds offer a variety of vendors including sandwiches and homemade pies!

We went the Friday of Memorial Day weekend which should have been a packed vendor weekend; however, threats of rain kept some vendors away until Saturday.  While we did not have an abundance of vendors to shop, we did enjoy ourselves and brought home some nice treasures.  

We hope to visit again in June and anticipate more vendors and homemade pie!

As usual, I totally forgot to snap photos of my treasures before I tucked them away.  I brought home a handful of vintage jewelry pieces, vintage trims, six vintage buckles, vintage empherma and a couple of vintage bottles.

Our day in photos...

 

 Julie patiently waiting for me

Photo frame, net frame, bird stand???

If you are near Kansas City, consider taking a day trip to Barn Gypsies - located on the Ford Farm, one mile east of Hamilton, MO, 6896 NE Spring Hill Rd. - Open 9-4 Friday-Saturday-Sunday.  Hopefully the weather will be nice and you'll come home with treasures like we did!

Click on the Barn Gypsies link to like them on Facebook.

" Art-o-mat® - The original art vending machines"

Lee planed a fun pit stop for us last month as we made our way to the annual

Kansas State Button Society convention in Salina, KS.

Lee was intrigued by a website named

Art-o-mat® - The original art vending machines

What is Art-o-mat®?

It is a company that has refurbished retired cigarette vending machines and

converted them to dispense vend art.  

There are about 100 machines in the USA and Canada with 400 or so contributing artists, representing 10 or more countries.  Most are in in museums and art galleries.

Oddly enough, a few stores are housed in unusual places such Boynton Health Services at the University of Minnesota, a Whole Foods Market in Des Moines, IA and The Storm Crow Tavern in Vancouver, Canada.

We were fortunate an Art-o-mat® was on our route to the convention - at the Mulvane Art Museum on the campus of Washburn University in Topeka, KS.

These machines are wonderfully restored and instead on dispensing a nasty pack of cigarettes, you put in your $5.00 token, select your artist, pull hard on the knob, and down drops
your boxed art piece.    

Now instead of once cigarette labels there are artist labels

Lee & Venita reviewing the artist choices

 

Ooh, I want this one!

It dropped...here it comes!

What a fun excursion!

In talking with one of the Mulvane Art Museum curators, we learned Art-o-mat® has followers that seek to visit every machine location and some followers that seek specific artists to collect.

Each piece of art must fit within this box (size of 1930-1940s pack of cigarettes), so it will properly dispense from the machine.  Some artist include a label on their box, while others may scroll their name and a design on their box.  We discovered that although this box label image shows a fish collage art, the inside artwork was a photo collage of a pansy flower.  So, the outside label may only represent the artist work, but not necessarily what is inside the box...sort of like 

grab bags from our childhood.

My final two art pieces were in plain boxes

So, have you visited an Art-o-mat®?  
If so, please share a comment and let us know which location and what artwork you purchased.