Meet Iowa Jewel Julie

Owls of the Night

When I was planning Country Weekend I had to have Iowa Jewel's collage kits—they epitomized my vision for the store: creative, vintage, and whimsical. 

Life on a Dairy Farm

When I contacted Julie she was enthusiastic--she even created special packaging and custom kits for the store. Visting her Etsy store (here) always makes me happy; exploring Lets go Canoeing, Birds in Winter, The Bermuda Triangle, Sherlock Holmes, Fears and Phobias, Circus Dreams, Along the Rocky Coast, Alfred Hitchcock, Firefly Magic, Our Mysterious Moon, and much, much more, fires up my imagination. 

 The Artist in You

You can also find prints and other vintage ephemera on Iowa Jewel. 

owl and bird print

 Julie obviously loves what she does and has fun doing it. I recently discovered that she reads this blog, and was delighted when she agreed to do a little q and a, which I know that you'll enjoy. (As always, click on pictures to enlarge. Captions have links if you want to see more.)

Picasso

Tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to making collage kits.

I live in a small town in Iowa with my husband and three kitty cats. My biggest dream is to travel the world but until that day comes I am happy to visit everywhere my imagination can take me in collage kit land. 

Let's Go Camping in the Desert

When I was little, my sister and I would make collages out of pictures from magazines and make up stories about adventures we would have traveling. It made the whole wide world come alive for me.  I have always found great joy and contentment in creating.

Where do you get the materials for the kits? 

I go to garage, library and book sales. I also shop on eBay and Amazon. Most of my books are children’s, science/reference and travel themed and are from the early 1900’s through the 70’s.  I have way over a 1,000 books, they are in every nook and cranny of our small house; let’s just say I have a very understanding husband!

Julie and her books

Where do you get your ideas for themes?

Mostly from my never-ending imagination! I am inspired by romantic places around the world. California is special to me. My love for animals and nature shows up a lot! I also love science and old Hollywood. I combined two of those in my Mad Scientist and Evil Doctor kits which are inspired by 1950's horror movies.

Mad Scientist in the Laboratory

A lot of times I come across an image that I fall in love with and end up building a whole kit around that one picture. That happened with my San Juan Capistrano kit. Also I get many requests from my customers for custom kits, and they have ideas that I would never have thought of on my own.

The African Queen

Tell us about your work space and work habits. Do you work on several kits at once or one at a time?

I have a small (10x 10) studio that I share with my husband. Since I don’t have a lot of room, I am always looking for more efficient ways to store all the things I use making my kits. I also do my packing and shipping here so sometimes I set up a portable table and use our dining room table for overflow!  I have 2 long tables that my husband made for me and many shelves to hold my supplies.  I spend most of my time here so I am happy to have a big window that looks out over our beautiful backyard and lets in lots of natural light.

I usually listen to music on my laptop when I am creating.  Sometimes I watch movies and they influence the kits I make or I watch the movie that I am making a kit of to help me with images I will add. Example: when making Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound kit and watching the movie I included a real fork to go along with a famous scene where Ingrid Bergman draws lines with a fork on the table cloth.  I enjoy writing stories to go along with my kits too.

I am always working on many kits at once!  Right now I am making a journal for a friend and woodland animal kits for a custom order.  I keep a list of each kit I sell so I can remake one like it and I have a list of all the kits I want to make and am collecting images for too.

Julie in her studio

Do you ever hear from people who've bought your kits?

Yes!  I get lots of feedback and it’s all been positive!  I am so blest to be able to create something I love as a job that brings so much fun and happiness into other people’s lives.

What amazes me is all the different things my customers use my kits for.  Scrapbooking, travel journals and collage art are probably the main things but just recently one of my skunk kits was used at a skunk rescue fundraiser and mad scientist kits for decorations at child’s birthday party in Australia!

I Want to be an Archeologist

motivation and amusement

So last week when I was obsessing about vignettes, I had a secret motivation...trying to inspire myself to try something new in the Etsy store. Calling them instant vignettes.

And for the store store, I am amusing myself by working on little stories (if a couple of sentences can be a story) to go with furniture I am trying to sell. This was inspired by a comment Mise made. Perhaps her name should be Muse. More on this (little stories, not Mise/Muse) another day. Tomorrow I'm getting up early and going to the Catskills. I want to have the store open Fridays on a regular basis. Most of my customers are weekenders, but when I'm there on Fridays I sometimes have people come in who work nearby, which is really nice.

the store, stepping back (and a giveaway)

I opened the Country Weekend store 6 months ago, in October. It was a very impulsive thing to do. And I have not been there for the past 4 weeks! I was worn down by the long drive, the constant snow and ice, moving stuff from my car to the second floor, and slooow sales (now I know why so many stores there close in winter). Fortunately Harriet watches the store when I can't be there, so I visited family in Vermont and New Jersey, got the Etsy store going, and did a little reflecting on how this started.

•  In June, I started thinking about taking a space in an antiques cooperative.
• In July I looked at the store I'm now in, which my friends were vacating as they moved to a bigger store in the same building. It was 535 square feet for $400 a month, heat included--a bargain, so close to New York City. In a small town in the Catskills where we have a weekend house, but 240 miles from my primary residence. Inside an old mercantile, divided into several shops.
• In August I said why not? I signed a lease that would become effective in September, and started going to auctions and filling up the garage.

I thought up a name, got liability insurance, found someone to make signs (more on her later), called the electric and phone company, worked on a logo, and oh so much more. I opened Columbus Day Weekend.

I went up almost every weekend from September to January and spent a full week there in October. There is not a more beautiful place to spend autumn. Not exactly a hardship post. This is what I look at when I have my morning coffee.

Sales were great through Christmas. People loved it and I had a lot of fun. Then winter hit hard. It started snowing and it seems like it didn't stop until about two weeks ago. But now it's spring, even in New England and upstate New York, and I am looking forward to going back this weekend.

I have made new friends in the store and because of the store. One of them is Lisa, who made my signs.

I bought a couple of her signs for myself before I even thought about the store. You can see the Cottage one at the back of the above display. I loved her work, so when I was planning the store I contacted her and she made all the signs for me.

Outside the store.

And on the front and back staircases.

Lisa is super-talented, creative and energetic.  In addition to signs, she paints and upcycles furniture and decorative items. She sells some of them in her Etsy store, Serendipity Chic Decor.  She has a wonderful blog, Serendipity Chic Design where she offers tutorials on the things she makes. She's very generous with sharing her expertise and has built a huge following in a short time. She also has a great sense of humor and a lovely family whose adventures she shares occasionally. If you hop over to her post you will see she is featuring my stores and blog and hosting a giveaway from me this week. She has been very supportive of my various endeavors and I really appreciate it.

Jen

treasuries

I opened an Etsy shop a month ago, but I was a buyer for years before that. I spent a lot of time window-shopping. If I was in a bad mood, browsing sometimes put me in a better one--it was heartening to see all the marvelous things that people across the country (world) were creating and finding. I'd save things in my favorites, maybe to buy one day, but also just to look at.

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     here

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 I found treasuries especially inspiring. Treasuries (in case you don't know) are a visual gallery of 16 thematically related items.  The front page always features a treasury that changes periodically, but you can click on "Treasury" on the lower left side of the home page and browse them chronologically, or do a search of thousands of treasuries. Type in "blue" or "boyfriend" or Mothers day" (or anything) and see what pops up.

Sorry to sound like an ad for Etsy, but I started making treasuries recently, and it's fun. You don't have to be a seller; if you're registered as a buyer you can make one too. (And to register as a buyer you just need to give an email address, user name and password.)

The first one I created using the theme, Read To Me. I was thinking about how much I loved reading to my children when they were little. (Some of the pictures are missing. Maybe those items got sold?) Anyway, here it is.

I've made two that are related by color. I think they are the best from a visual, aesthetic viewpoint. They are blue, green, and a touch of pink and gray, blue, and white. Between them I made awaiting summer. I was in Vermont and cold when I made it. The most recent one was all vintage. I titled it vintage = earth friendly. I should have spent more time on it. For some reason doing all vintage was harder.

Have you ever made an Etsy treasury? And what about Pinterest--has anyone tried that?

Jen

gray, blue, white

like the ocean

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new treasury on etsy

porches and children

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A chilly spring night in Vermont. Spent a few days with my youngest, Luke (19) and am going home tomorrow, so happy and sad. He lives in a wooden house with a small front porch (that pretty much describes all the houses here and they are all full of students). He has 2 chairs on the porch and is so happy that the snow has finally melted. I love porches. Our house in New Jersey where we lived for 15 years had a huge one and it was the best room in the house. Our house in Massachusetts and the one in the Catskills have decks but it's not the same. So I was thinking about porches and started to make an etsy treasury about porches but moved off the porch a bit. Awaiting Summer.

blue, green and a touch of pink

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I made a new treasury on etsy: blue, green and a touch of pink. You know--sunsets and succulents and pretty things. I am in love with it. It's true.

yikes

Etsy store is open, under the name pinecone vintage.
I hope I don't regret using a different name for this store. It was because of my 2-state, tax issues, nexus worries, none of which are probably valid.
I like writing the descriptions.
Only a few things listed now. I'll add one or two a day for the next couple weeks.

Enjoy your day. It's nice and sunny here in Massachusetts, and crocuses are appearing, though they may run off to Virginia when they get word that it might snow later in the week.

Jen