Thursday Thoughts: Holiday Shopping & Shipping

Where did October and early November go? Wow. Amazing how the time between the start of Fall and the holiday season gets faster every year!

We're working our little camera to death trying to get all our holiday merchandise up. It's time to shop for hostess gifts, a special something for that special someone, and heirlooms your little ones will treasure from here to eternity.

Let's see what we have...for the special hostess in your life, a lovely seasonal brooch may be just the thing. We have a lovely gold, textured, leaf brooch from Trifari that would be perfect year 'round.

or this lovely, autumn Weiss brooch! The colors are exquisite, and the size is perfect for just about anything from a blouse to a scarf:


Give the gift of an heirloom this year! We have nice vintage pieces looking for a good home where they can participate in the celebration of life and family for years to come. We're particularly fond of this sterling silver crucifix and chain:


Or update the dinner table or living room with these stately, yet charming, silverplate Gorham candlestick holders:


Whatever you do, don't forget about that special someone in your life! Celebrate their importance to you and their appreciation of the finer things with one of our Coro pieces. This lovely leaf necklace exudes elegance with a little flair:


The epitomy of last but not least, these Coro rosebud earrings! The background on which the rosebuds are painted reminds me of a wedding cake's icing - delicious!


But wait, you say, what about shipping?! We'll be updating our policies, tweeting, and posting notices here on the blog as well as Facebook about when the last day to purchase via regular USPS for delivery by Christmas will be.

We highly recommend USPS Express to guarantee arrival; it's the only method USPS guarantees within a specified timeframe. With the USPS location closings, we think Express may be the only way to go after the first week of December!

We are also looking into Christmas wrap, gift certificates, and all the rest. If there's anything you want us to offer that we don't - JUST ASK :-) We'd love that.

What's Working Wednesday: Twitter Lists

As I understand it, Twitter Lists aren't available to all, yet. Somehow, we made it into the small, select group of Twitter accounts that can create public or private lists.

We made one for vintage jewelry that include the members of the Vintage Jewelry Sellers on Etsy team. You can find the list here https://twitter.com/vaguerecollectn/vintagejewelry

Vintage Jewelry Sellers on Etsy has a bunch of locations - Check out our website, our blog, and our Etsy page. You can also find us on Facebook, Flickr, and Twibes.

You can always search Etsy for VJSE; we all include that in our tags for easy vintage searching!

Tuesday Travels: Camera Update

Beginning to recover from the trip to Bolivia. My new Panasonic camera arrived late last week, and her name is Iris. Get it? :D

I immediately began to use her to get new pieces up in the store. Check 'em out:




We really thinking the paper cut outs are precious and the cross the perfect gift! We have a few more paper cut outs to post in the coming days, but we think you'll agree these are precious and Iris did a good job with the photographs. It was, after all, her first day on the job.

Heading back upstate for more goodies this weekend. Look out for Thursday Treasures and Friday Finds.

What's Working Wednesday: Etsy Promotion!

We'll be participating in Etsy's FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING weekend that spans Black Friday to Cyber Monday. That means, shop our Etsy shop that weekend, and all orders over 50 USD will receive free shipping worldwide.

Simply include FREE WORLDWIDE SHIPPING in the Notes to Seller section, and we'll refund all shipping charges via PayPal.

Tuesday's Treasures

Aww, what the heck! We need a pick me up, and here it is - we love this ornate Sterling Silver cross pendant and chain.


Isn't she lovely? Perfect for the Christian in your life. Merry Christmas.

Tuesday Travels: Bolivia

We made our first trip to South America a few weeks ago. And by we, I mean I. After meeting a high school friend in Southeast Asia and having the time of my life, I decided to do it again. Only this time I met her in Bolivia!

It was an amazing trip, but, unfortunately for me, my camera bag was stolen. That means we haven't gotten anything new listed in awhile. We have a lot to get listed, we just need to hunker down and get it photographed, described, and listed. Of course, to do that we need cameras...

Sunday night I ordered a new camera - the Panasonic DMC-ZR1A


I've read a lot of good things about this camera, and I hope it lives up to the hype. After the loss I took from the theft, it's going to have to last me awhile.

She should arrive tomorrow or the next day. Soon after I'll start getting new listings up and writing more here. Oh, and, if you're interested, I've started a travel blog for all my travels. The photography highlighted on that blog is available for sale via RedBubble.

In the meantime, enjoy her onscreen beauty and let me know if you think of any good names for her!

Tuesday Travels: Upstate New York

My mother and I have always had a fond spot for vintage items, preservation, and reunification. We have long loved the hunt for "buried treasures" in different types of stores. But two years ago this past August, my mother's aunt passed away. And we realized that even between the two of us, we simply couldn't ingest all that Aunt Kate had in her home.

So, we embarked upon our first series of sales on eBay under the name Mom and Misha. You can still find us there. While we don't have an eBay store; we do have a few auctions going at almost all times. The more we sold on eBay, though, the more we realized we wanted a full-time store of the really precious items, which is how A Vague reCollection came to be.

This past weekend, we went back up to my mom's aunt's. We have lots of 'new' vintage items to list, and we'll be doing so in the coming weeks! We have lots of jewelry and some Christmas decorations to list before the holidays; and we will be listing Lenox figurines and Fiestaware after the holidays most likely. Oh, and do we have anything you could need in terms of vintage buttons and seashells! All coming soon...

We'll try to get some pictures up tonight to whet your appetite!

Thursday Thoughts: CRAFTGAWKER.COM

YAY! We're so excited...and we just can't hide it! I'm about to lose control, and I think I like it!

Wow...lots of singing going on around here this week. First Huey Lewis & the News and now The Pointer Sisters. But, really, we ARE so excited! It's not our first submission to Craftgawker

Our little Danish appetizer forks were on the front page for a little while...now I'm sure they're buried somewhere on the site, but for awhile they had a shining moment!

Mini Brooch (as promised)

Here it is! Here's the mini mosaic brooch we promised! It's listed, now. We're working on our Friday Finds post. Isn't it precious? Yeah, we thought so.

Monday Musings: Workin for a livin, livin and workin

Sing it with me folks:

Workin for a livin (workin)

Workin for a livin (workin)

Workin for a livin, livin and workin

Im taking what they giving cause Im working for a livin.

Yeah...Huey knew what he was talking about! If you have checked out A Vague reCollection recently, you know we've been working. Okay, so we haven't been working on the blog as much, but, man, have we got some great stuff listed, now!

Check this out, a petoskey pendant and earring set from Bijou Terner:

When I was a child, we would go to my grandparents' on Lake Michigan and look for petoskey stones. I guess that's why this set is so special to us: reminds us of summers on the lake with our family. We hope you love it, too.

I know I've been promising a Friday Finds on Mini Mosaics, but I'm finally ready to follow through. We've got our mini mosaic bracelet listed, the first mini mosaic brooch we listed has sold, but I've got another that's even more precious (if you can believe that)! You can click through here to the mini mosaic bracelet. I've photographed the latest brooch, and will get that image up tonight!

Speaking of charming! Have we got the cocktail forks for you ;-) Honest, though...take a look. They are sterling silver, from Denmark, and have the most gorgeous royal blue enamel handles. And the crowns! I just love the crowns, don't you?

Well, I hope this tease of our new listings encourages you to visit our Etsy shop! We'll be back shortly with more pictures to share, and this week we will have a Friday Finds.

Oh, and the best part is we're going treasure hunting this weekend, which means more goodies to share with you in the coming weeks!! Let us know if you are looking for something in particular, and we'll keep our eyes open for you!

What's Working Wednesday: October is BOGO Month!

That's right, all month long we're offering BOGO 1/2 off all beaded necklaces.

Buy any beaded necklace and get the second (of equal or lesser value) 1/2 off! Stock up!! This sale ends October 31st.

[To take advantage, enter code "BOGOBN" in the "Note to Seller" section of checkout. We'll refund half the value of the lesser beaded necklace via PayPal.]

Now...to whet your whistle...here are some of our favorite beaded necklaces:

Up and Coming Pieces - Should Be Listed by Week's End

Here are some items we have been working to get listed. The first one hasn't been listed mostly because we aren't sure what it is ;-) Do you have any ideas? We'd love to hear them.
We are in heart of this sewing etui from Austria. We'll be sorry to see it go, but we're sure it's going to find a good and loving home! Maybe yours?!
Slowly getting into the world of supplies, we found this vintage, hammered metal buckle and button set still in its original packaging! Check it out!
Had no idea how difficult it would be to photograph black rhinestones, but it is even trickier than other pieces and forms of jewelry. But we're trying! Here we have a lovely tulip shaped pin in a black metal/black rhinestone fashion. Two of the rhinestones are missing, which we're trying to capture in the other/detail pictures. It's still precious, and happily due to the black metal background the lost rhinestones aren't terribly noticeable!

The tulip brooch is now listed!!

What's What Wednesday: Latest Listings & Upcoming Friday Finds

Hoorah! Beaded necklaces and Christmas goodies are getting listed. You must find something you like, now. Being a vintage shop, most of what we have is one of a kind. Which means once it's gone...it's gone. So we're recommend that if you see something you like, to buy it right away! There aren't more where these came from ;-)

Oh, and we're working on Christmas shipping schedules, gift wrap options, and so on. We'd love to hear what you do, what you'd like, etc.

Finally, we've been wanting to do this for awhile, but haven't seemed to be able to motivate ourselves and find the time: this Friday's Finds will be on Micro Mosaic pieces from Italy. We have a lovely one just waiting for you!

Monday Musings: Christmas Is Coming

Yup. Time to start prepping for Christmas in the shop, and it's only September! We have a lovely selection of beaded necklaces to list as well as Christmas-related vintage pieces. They're really quite fabulous.

Once the VJSE Back to School Sale comes to a close tonight, I think we'll launch a BOGO 1/2 off item of lesser value sale on beaded necklaces, and most come with free shipping!

Enjoy the Back to School Sale while it lasts! Then check back to see when the next sale starts!

What's What Wednesday: Latest Listings or soon to be listed...

As I mentioned in yesterday's posts, we have new things to photograph, describe, and list! Here I'm going to highlight a few things we got up last night and those things we hope to get up today!

Here with the lovely Audrey Hepburn is our clear rhinestone, bow-tie brooch:

And lovely button covers perfect for adding a touch of elegance to any outfit!

And a couple of necklaces we will work to list tonight:

They're up! They're up! Plus an extra necklace!

• Find the gray, black, white, and copper necklace here.
• Find the autumnal, segmented necklace here.
• And for good measure a pearl and gold toned necklace here!

Tuesday Travels: Family Holiday Weekend

I know...it's been forever. We haven't posted in awhile, but we're back. It was a nice weekend at home with mom in North Carolina. Now I'm back in New York with a load of new jewelry to post! Keep your eyes peeled for new listings...just in time for our Back to School Sale in conjunction with the Vintage Jewelry Sellers on Etsy team.

You will have to check the VJSE website for other participating stores and their specials.

We are offering 15% off orders of $15 or more from September 8th through September 15th. Just make sure to put BTSVJSE in the "Notes to Seller" section when you make your purchase; the difference will be refunded to you via PayPal.

Teaser: This week's Friday's Finds will be about Mini Mosaic items. Can't wait. Looking for special pieces to include. We have a lovely mini mosaic bracelet (likely from Italy) we'll have listed in time for Friday's post.

Friday Finds: Another Treasury!

Can you believe it? Two treasuries in one week? My last treasury just expired this morning.

This one is also based on the Vintage Jewelry Sellers on Etsy team, but the color scheme is fairly autumnal. I hope you like it!

Here are some of the highlights from this particular treasury as today's Friday Finds:

Thursday Thoughts: Etsy Mini Showcase

We're so excited! We miraculously were able to secure a space on the DZ Fantasy Blog! The blog is all about fiber, fantasy, and sculpture; which makes our inclusion so much more amazing. It's a great opportunity for new people to find us. People who may not otherwise be aware of the glory that is vintage will have our Etsy mini to enjoy right there.

If you get a chance, check it out!

What's What Wednesday: absoVINTAGElutely

It finally happened! My first ETSY treasury is up!!! For those of you who don't know the labor of love a treasury is, trust me...it can be an all-consuming experience. For those who know, isn't it exciting???

Honestly, I've been waiting weeks to see the number get even close to the magic number of 333. Last night when I couldn't sleep, I thought, "Hmmm...It's the middle of the night; I bet that's when the majority of treasuries expire. Let's see what happens."

SCORE! 333 Treasuries with one expiring in an hour or two. So, I waited.

Yup, I waited almost two hours for the treasury to expire so I could put mine together.REPRESENT VJSE!

Since I can't seem to post a treasury mini, I will post some of the items I picked for the treasury:

Friday Finds - Coro Necklaces

Today's Friday Finds is all about Coro, specifically their necklaces. Looking through different VJSE shops, I began to think about how lovely Coro pieces are. We have a leaf necklace that I find really charming, and it's a fun little pastime of mine to shop through different but similar styles. Coro loved leaves.

BCTreasureTrove has a particularly interesting Coro necklace (this item is now sold). I just love how the leaves come in threes and wrap their own meander pattern style around the neck. Yet, when you look at the matching earrings, you don't even feel as though anything is missing. They stand on their own entirely!

You can see that while the theme remains the same, the pattern is quite different with our Coro necklace:

Each of the leaves in this pattern also has three elements. The leaves are the main element, but then there are also berries flanking the sides of the leaf.

Just when you think you are learning some central themes, you realize how wrong you are. After all, Coro was around from 1900 to 1979! Naturally they moved within different themes, styles, and on to new ones over the course of nearly 80 years. Here's a leaf necklace by Coro that isn't in keeping with other themes I've noted. Being a novice can be fun because almost everything is new and exciting!

The above is a necklace and earring set by Coro currently listed Whiggytreasures! Don't you just love the interlocking chain running through the center of the leaves?

While these necklaces are indicative of Coro nature themes, they also do exquisite pieces with little or no nature references such as this gold-toned necklace and bracelet set at Vintage Day's Etsy shop.

And that's today's Friday Finds. I hope you love the pieces as much as I do. And the photos are lovely to boot! Would love to hear about your favorite Coro pieces!

Thursday Thoughts: Photography

Working on finding space and lighting for our photographs can be hard. Mom's not all that dedicated to the art of photography, and I'm still rather new. Plus, I live in Manhattan, which means getting decent light, especially in my tiny apartment, can be tricky at best.

Happily a lot of what we have is jewellery and therefore rather small. The macro setting on my Canon point-and-shoot tends to work pretty well. I'm still working on having the right amount (or any amount) of natural light, limiting the shadows (or using them to what I consider my advantage). But I continue to have trouble keeping myself and my camera out of the reflection when there's a shine to the item being photographed.

I gather there quite a few folks on Etsy who are having similar questions since a lot of posts, articles, and so forth seem to be about photography. Would love to get our sweater guards listed, but have to find room (and lighting) for photos with the guards, sweater, and wall in the photograph...without losing the guards in the photograph...or having household clutter in the picture.

Wish me luck!

Monday Musings: Fresh Coat of Paint

It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do! That's right. A simple coat of paint. Lately my tiny 2-bedroom East Village apartment has been feeling cramped, messy, and (to be frank) a bit dirty. Roommate to the rescue: we'll paint this weekend!

Our living room is now a charming, clean, and crisp off-white/linen color! I think I'll pick up a quart of glossy white for the baseboards. Then all we need to do is pick an accent color, paint the last wall, and refresh the mantle. The room will be glorious soon! And I have a new lease on life.

Maybe I should paint my room, too??? How often do you re-paint your rooms?

Friday Finds - Mother of Pearl (MOP)

I'm hoping to start a fun Friday series called Friday Finds. It'll be something along the lines of an Etsy Treasury, but smaller scale and always done by me.

This inaugural edition was completely serendipitous. I had just joined the Vintage Jewelry Sellers on Etsy Team, and was visiting the store of a fellow team, Vintage Treasures 4 U, when I saw this Vintage Swordfish, Mother of Pearl pin (below).

I wrote to her immediately. Those same discs, or at least very similar discs, appear in my four-leaf clover pins!

Thinking I was lucky to have discovered a similar piece to mine, I was ready to call it a day and be content. Bless Judi at Vintage Treasures 4 U, she wasn't! She soon sent me a link to our team leader's store Cranberry Manor to show me an exquisite Lisner necklace with the same MOP discs! Love it!

And that, boys and girls, is how today's Friday's Finds came to feature MOP. These precious items have a sophisticated glamour to them that is almost wholly attributed to the precious MOP discs incorporated in their designs. I'm off to see what other MOP stuff there is! What are your favorites?

Hello, World!

Just a little programming humor for everyone this morning. (For those of you who don't know...when you are learning a new programming language, it is tradition to make your first output "Hello, World!")

But now the real reason for our Subject Line: we're shipping globally, now! That's right. After lots of thought and lots of reading posts in the Etsy forums, we're taking plunge. We've done our due diligence, and now it's time to hope we know what we're doing.

According to our Google Analytics, we have visitors from countries on almost all the continents. We'd hate to turn someone away or appear to make it impossible to unite them with one of our unburied treasures. So here it goes...we'll ship anywhere!

Look out world, here we come!

Julie & Julia

A long standing friend of mine is a movie critic, which means lots of free movies while their in previews. This is an absolute treat since I wouldn't see half these movies otherwise. A few weeks ago, I asked said friend if he would take me to see Julie & Julia ... I was super happy when he agreed!

The preview was great. We met on the Upper West Side after work, headed into the crowded theatre, got a massive bag of popcorn, and sat back to enjoy the movie. Meryl Streep did not disappoint. I suppose that goes without saying. Amy Adams was cute. She wasn't a knock-out, but she wasn't playing an icon, either.

All-in-all, it's a great movie for foodies. (Oops, I almost called it a film, and it is clearly a movie!) If you love to cook, watch the Food Network, or simply consider yourself a foodie...see this movie. If you do not love to cook (or any of the other variables previously listed)...skip it.

Personally, I love to cook. I wish I had room in my tiny East Village apartment for entertaining so I could have dinner parties. My mom says this will happen. She's so certain, my Christmas present was a cherry drop-leaf table with additional inserts. It seats 12. Well, if it had chairs it would seat 12.

Do you have a favorite children's story?

The Children's World of Books - Close Up, originally uploaded by a.vague.reCollection.

You're not the only one. Mildred L. Batchelder did, too, and Barbara Cooney loved to illustrate them. Together they made this rare illustrated print of The Children's World of Books for the Seattle World's Fair.

Feel the Flickr Love

What a wonderful, loving world this is! Really, we'd only been on Flickr a few days when three of our photographs were invited to be included in two different groups! It's amazing. We're thrilled!

We hope you'll check out our Flickr images, but we also hope you'll check out our Etsy shop! Better yet, ask us about our listings. We love to share stories, and we really do love each piece.

[Okay...so that was a previous post back when we were on WordPress. It's still exciting, though. To top it off...read on:]

Most recently we were invited to participate in the Flickr group paperNstitch. Now isn't that nice? We love being part of a community, don't you?

Wednesday Wanderings

Randomly driving around North Carolina the other day, we stumbled upon an estate sale in Warsaw. Honest, serendipity had a plan for us. There it was; how could we pass it up?

Maybe we should have, though, because we certainly didn't have enough time to inspect things closely. Oh well, live and learn. I'd like to think we learned our lesson, but I wouldn't be surprised if our excitement carries us away next time, too.

One of the things I love most about random drives through America are the village, town, and city names? What do you think is the most popular town or city name in America?

We're Tweeting!

That's right, we're on the ubiquitous Twitter! Find us and follow us @vaguerecollectn

A New Day...A New Blog

The day isn’t exactly new, it’s true. But we’re glad you’re here. We are working on our official web-home. In the meantime, you can find us on Etsy. We’re still on Twitter and Facebook as Mom and Misha (our startup name). Hope you’ll find us there and move with us as we streamline everything into a vague reCollection.

a vague reCollection is a unique collection of unburied treasures found during mother/daughter anthropological archaeological expeditions. One person’s buried treasure is our treasure to bring to you.

Through this blog, we hope to keep you up to date on our latest travels, hints at our latest finds, and updates on things we’re adding to our Etsy store. Oh, and we’ll let you know when the official website is up and waiting for your first visit!