Saturday, May 17, 2008

RECYCLING LADY HEAD VASES

I don't like to waste anything--just ask my family. I've always lived by the adage that a
penny saved is a penny earned. You kind of learn that when trying to live on one income
with 2 kids and a mortgage. So....having this love for lady head vases (which by the way
can be VERY expensive) and not always having the money to buy the nice ones led me to
an idea of recycling the less-than-desirable models.

In my search for ladies I was always coming across ones that were broken, chipped, had
paint loss, etc. After all, they are 45+ years old and fragile to start with, so it makes sense
that a lot of them wouldn't survive without some sort of damage.

The problem is, collectors want them perfect, or as near to perfect as possible. I felt
terrible even entertaining the idea of throwing the damaged ones away so I started
experimenting with painting them. I was able to find the damaged ladies pretty cheap
so I let my imagination take over and had some fun with it. I took before and after pics
so you can see the difference.

It has been great fun and rewarding too, as I have sold most of these to collectors that
wanted a "one of a kind" lady for their collection. The first lady was a request by a good
friend of mine since she had a lady with some damage that was given to her by a friend
and she wanted to display her without the damage. I repainted her into a Christmas lady
and she was one of my favorites.

I haven't had much time to paint any ladies for about 8 months now, but I plan to start
again so that I can sell some at Christmas time. What's that old saying... one man's trash
is another man's treasure....

BEFORE

AFTER

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AFTER

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AFTER

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. I am seriously impressed. I just scrolled up and down the page like five times. Very cool

Unknown said...

These are seriously lovely. I've never heard of or seen these vases before, but I am very impressed with the transformation you have created.

Laura ~Peach~ said...

WOW you have BIG talent! they are absolutely beautiful when you get ahold of them and re do them...the second and last one are my favorites... I can't wait to see what you do next!
Hugs Laura

Karen Deborah said...

very good work. I used to be into vintage Barbie's. I quit as it was just a phase, and an expensive hobby. I can appreciate your work on the re dos though, very good!

Niki said...

They look great! I'm really starting to like these. May keep an eye open when I'm trawling through antique and flea markets.
blessings,
Niki

Grandma Tillie's Bakery said...

Thanks everyone for the nice compliments! I have many more I have done and will probably do another post with pictures of those. I have only ever seen one other headvase here in Alaska and that is in my sister in law's cabinet.

Kris

Anonymous said...

Kris,
What beautiful work you do ~ they look just lovely!

Blessings,

Sharon

OneCowgirl said...

very cool transformations...you are very talented