Vendor Spotlight: The Junk Girls

If you are an antique fanatic or have ever been to a Three Speckled Hen’s show, you have likely heard of The Junk Girls. This amazing duo, based in San Luis Obispo, have an incredible business, a heartfelt mission, and some newly unveiled projects in the works. We decided we were long overdue for a conversation with one of our favorite vendors. Below is a special interview with Jenny Kompolt and Melissa James of The Junk Girls, whose passion lies in transforming antique, vintage, found & recycled objects into unique and beautiful treasures. The Junk Girls can be found in booth #105 at the Three Speckled Hens show on October 4-5, 2014.

Hi Junk Girls! Jenny, we know you didn’t start out your career as a full-time artist, but worked for major companies doing creative direction & graphic design. Have you transitioned away from that type of work today?

I transitioned in such a way that Junk Girls is now our job 150%! Both Melissa and I come from a graphic background—Melissa on more of a production side and me more on the creative directing side. But we utilize those skills on everything from designing our own packaging, designing layouts, signage, and all sorts of things that require a graphical eye. We comment to each other often that we’re glad we’ve had so many different lives in our past and done so many things, because now our toolbox is full of many different skills that we can pull on.

What made you make the switch from graphic work to physical art?

Well, I did a lot of corporate work for eBay and Netflix in the graphic arena, both physically doing it and managing it. But the art I do really came out of art therapy, because I’ve been challenged with anxiety and depression. I started making art and hanging them on my office walls, and things started selling. All of a sudden I was being invited to shows, and it evolved to other events. Both of us had the opportunity to leave our other company, and we decided to do so and jump into the Junk Girls with both feet. Junk Girls really encompasses all things vintage, antique, and repurposed; the art aspect of that was part of my healing. It’s how I took something that was less than perfect and turned it into something impactful or beautiful, which was similar to how I interpret my life. Melissa’s slant on that was taking phrases or words that were important to her, and metal stamping them on spoons, brass, and different materials that we use. Taking those, people can create their own bit of beauty and heartfelt messaging. We have a real desire to give back to the world and to help others, because art has definitely helped us. We’ve got our arms around a lot of different things, but we’ve never been happier. We’re the happiest we’ve ever been.

What are some of the most unique antique items you’ve ever made art out of?

Oh wow, that’s difficult! I’ve used so many different materials between my art, my lighting, the tables that I make…I would safely say that I really go for vintage and antique, and the more worn out the better, because to me it has more personality. I don’t like too much of one thing, because I’m always trying to find innovative ways to do something new. For example, there were some handmade accordion reeds I took out of an old antique organ, and those were beautiful. I’ve used pieces of copper and brass that have been part of piping and fixtures, I also like a lot of old toys, tools, and musical instrument parts. It’s about finding the stuff and then turning around and finding a place or a home for it. That’s probably one of the best parts of my job. Usually with my art I begin by choosing a metaphor. I choose the metaphor and then I work with it in the form of a quote that tells the story I’m trying to say. A lot of people ask what comes first: the quote or the piece. It’s both. Sometimes I read or find or create a quote myself, and build the art around that. And sometimes I find a piece and go oh my gosh—this is going to be perfect for something. I only work with stuff that talks to me.

Your work was recently unveiled as part of the new Levi Stadium art in Santa Clara, CA. Can you describe that project for us and how it came to be?

Well, we had a warehouse art event and this nice gal came through who I didn’t know. She said, I’ve been watching you for a couple of years and I think you’re very talented. She said she was curating for the stadium and that she was putting together a series of museum quality art, and would I be interested. I said oh my gosh, absolutely! I was definitely different than all the other artists invited to participate. I wasn’t a painter, I wasn’t a sculptor, I didn’t create things with paper… I was much more three-dimensional. I was given themes to include Agriculture, Mining, Levi’s, etc and then begun the hunt for all the stuff to work with. I got to use old worn out footballs, farming tools that had been dug up around the turn of the century, (my!) old Levi jeans, and even an old football trophy from the 1930s. I even got to pick through Candlestick Park to go through and salvage pieces and parts. In total I made 10 different art pieces for the Levi Stadium, and everything I made was out of found and vintage objects. My largest piece is eleven feet long by five feet tall; it’s made out of antique gold pans and is displayed on the fifth floor elevator on the owner’s level. When it was framed and hung, it pretty much took my breath away. 

Melissa, we can’t wait to hear from you as well! When did you passion for making art first begin, and when did it become full time?

Gosh I’d say I’ve had the inkling since I was very little, and I just never actually thought I’d do it as a job or a lifestyle. My mom was very artistic and always coming up with new crafts or Christmas gifts, and my dad did stained glass and took classes to learn how to make lamps. We were always open to that as a family. In 2009, both Jenny and I were both ready to make a change. The pressure and stress of our jobs was really affecting both of us. Jenny’s art was really starting to take off, so I quit my job to support her initially to support and give her as much freedom as possible. It just evolved into me helping and doing more, and finding other ways to participate and incorporate what I love to do which is my metal stamping business.

Why are you considered the “soft side” of the Junk girls? Don’t you work with metal??

Well, I love working with fabric and paper and am more crafty I suppose. And my work is not nearly as heavy as Jenny’s—or as dirty! With my stamping, I actually don’t know that much about metal smithing and I’ve never even really thought of myself as a jewelry maker, but people tell me that’s basically what I am doing! I love laying out the words and using my antique metal stamps from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and it’s just a challenge and a joy to lay out the different words and phrases. At the show, I’m creating a one-off special piece for someone right there and I’ve got to nail it on the first try. Both Jenny and I come from a give-back mentality, and some of the things that customers have had me stamp, I’ve been moved to tears. I work a lot with flattened spoons as well as other metals like brass, bronze and sterling silver.

Melissa made the above piece for Jenny to wear at her at the Stadium Art Opening. “No bird soars too high if she soars with her own wings” is stamped on the brass round and layered it with "Courage" on a small spoon with a Mercury Dime on top.

What can Three Speckled Hens Show attendees expect to see at your booth this fall?

Our booth is known for people going a bit crazy at the very beginning—running to see what we have, and it’s good until it’s gone! Our booth this show will be filled with lots & lots of tables and trugs.  We found a whole bunch of sections of doors from the 40’s and 50’s and all painted those wonderful butter mint green, blue, yellow, etc. colors and have created 15+ tables and lots of wooden trugs with them! And of course, we will have Melissa’s custom stamping, our charms, a bling bar, and some cool furniture pieces. And, we just recently acquired an antique, turn-of-the-century Graphotype machine, which is what they used to make dog tags in the military. So, we’re going to be doing custom dog tags with the antique machine, and debuting it at the show! Our favorite thing about doing the Hen’s show is that they bring in such great vendors. Many times we walk around the show and I buy for my art and Melissa will find something she can’t live without. That’s what I look for at the show – what can I take and repurpose into a big wall hanging or a lamp? The Three Speckled Hen’s show is such a great community; it’s like a family reunion!

Thanks, Jenny and Melissa. We can’t wait to see you this weekend!

Vendor Spotlight: Little Yellow Typewriter

This week we are continuing our vendor spotlight series by showcasing an interview with the fabulous Laura and Zack of Little Yellow Typewriter. You won’t want to miss this wonderful vendor and can find them in the vintage camper parked at booth #240 at the October 2014 Three Speckled Hens show!

About Little Yellow Typewriter:
Laura Hicky and Zack Kraus are the dynamic duo behind the quirky and fanciful interior design business Little Yellow Typewriter. The couple found their common ground in vintage treasures, with Zack seeking out items in their faded glory and Laura eager to revitalize pieces with a can of spray paint in hand.

What initially drew the two of you to interior design?
Laura: I studied interior design in school, so I had always worked with architects or in some aspect worked in the industry. Zack had a carpentry background. We started doing work on our own house, then on friends houses, and that really became the start of the business and doing it for a living.
Zack: We started out shopping at estate sales together, and we started overrunning our home and thought maybe we should have a sale. I think the first flea market we sold at was Melrose, here in the L.A. area, and it just sort of took off from there.

How did you end up in your signature vintage camper?
Zack: I had bought this totally impractical truck, an 88 Ford Bronco that I always wanted. It was a total piece of junk. Then I found this guy on Craigslist who was willing to trade. He was a mechanic, so he was willing to trade with us and it was actually exactly what we were looking for. He’d had this trailer in his backyard for about 30 years, and it was in the desert and it was full of animals. We had it fixed up, and that’s how it came to be.

Where is the home base for Little Yellow Typewriter?
Zack: Our home base is in Burbank, California. We travel a bit but we usually stay pretty close to this area, there are a lot of flea markets in the Southern California area. The farthest we’ve actually ever traveled is to the Three Speckled Hens show. We met the Hens at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and they told us about it and it looked pretty spectacular so we signed up.
Laura: When we are in Burbank, we do mostly online sales, and we do flea markets here in the L.A. area about twice a month. The rest of the time we’re hunting, restoring, and selling things online. We do a lot of business through social media actually, such as Instagram. We’ll often post a photo of something and then people will email us asking how much it costs and we’ll sell it before we can even make it to a flea market half the time!

Where do you typically find the antiques that you revitalize?
Zack: Estate sales are pretty much our bread and butter. We also do the garage sale/yard sale thing sometimes.
Laura: We don’t have that much luck with those actually. We usually do estate sales, which are pretty fun. With somebody who’s 90 years old who’s been in the same house for 60 years, they are no longer there but you can see where they traveled and what their interests were. We can learn a bit about where things came from which is really cool for us. We can often get some background and have a little information to go with the item, which is wonderful.

Do you have any signature items or are the Little Yellow Typewriter items different?
Laura: Everything is pretty different which is why it can be hard for us to sell a lot online. It’s always a revolving door and almost everything is one of a kind. However, Zack does a lot of handmade furniture custom work, and we have a poster collection that we came out with about a year ago, and it’s just been a huge hit. They’re really fun and those are one of our biggest sellers. 

What can attendees expect to find at October 2014 Three Speckled Hens show?
Laura: We’ve got a lot of furniture, and a lot of house stuff. We just got in a brand new shipment of handmade kanthas from India (blankets made from old saris) that are gorgeous. We’re also doing something special this time: the trailer will be decked out in vintage Christmas ornaments. So we hope to have quite a bit of Christmas stuff and we’re veering towards gifts and things like that.

How wonderful! We feel so lucky to have you at our show each season.
Laura: Three Speckled Hens is really our favorite show that we’ve done. It’s amazing to be able to set up for a show that lasts longer for more than a couple of hours.
Zack: Yes, generally we show up somewhere at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., set up for a couple of hours, sell from around 8-3, then take off again. It’s nice to be able to put a little bit more thought into our display and let it sit there for a couple of days.

Is there anything else exciting going on in your lives right now?
Zack: Yes! Our home was just featured in the Fall/Winter issue of Flea Market Style magazine. Our house is actually on the cover and inside we have about an 8-page spread. It’s one of our favorite magazines so it was an honor and very exciting.
Laura: It happened mostly through social media, we had submitted some pictures of our place and got some interest that way. They contacted us, then came down and shot our place and it was awesome.

That is amazing, Laura and Zack! We can’t wait to pick up a copy of Flea Market Style, and to visit you in booth #240 at our October 2014 show!

Vendor Spotlight: Uber Chic Home

This month, we’re kicking off a special blog series where we sit down with several of our favorite Three Speckled Hens dealers and ask them a series of questions. Up first is the beloved Uber Chic Home. We hope you enjoy!

About Uber Chic Home:
With antique goods coming directly from Europe, a main warehouse located in downtown Los Angeles, and booth space at antique shows across the United States, Uber Chic Home is a fabulous Three Speckled Hens vendor who deals exclusively in the reclamation and recycling of antique, vintage and industrial artifacts. The company began in 2005 as the shared dream of co-owners Christian and Dustin, who travel the world each month gathering unique and interesting finds. Uber Chic Home can be found in booth #116 at the Three Speckled Hens show on October 4-5, 2014.

   
Hello Dustin, thanks for chatting with us today! We know that Uber Chic began as a side-job of Chris’s in the 1990s, when he visited Europe with his family and brought back some amazing antiques to sell. Today, how often do you travel in search for your items?
Christian has been doing this for over 20 years now, it’s kind of nuts! These days we travel both for work and for fun—it’s always a little a bit of both. We go shopping for antiques and we also try to have fun while we’re doing it. We go to Europe every single month. Usually Chris does the overseas traveling because he’s got a lot of connections over there because he’s been doing this for so long. Chris knows people in Europe and he speaks German. Meanwhile, I stay here and keep everything going. We used to just import antiques from Europe, but now we’re also building a lot of our own furniture using vintage items. So I keep all that going, I do all of our deliveries and we do a sale at some type of market every weekend. We just got finished working on a project with Joe’s Jeans, they’re using a bunch of our stuff as their décor in their stores. It’s all really fun!

When did you make the switch from collecting antiques to also building some of your own items? 

We’ve always done a little bit of building our own stuff – we had a store in Salt Lake City, because we actually lived in Utah for a long time while our business was here in Los Angeles. So we would commute back in forth from the store up in Utah. The crate-based antique furniture we are doing now we had been doing up in Utah since 2005, just different versions of it. It’s definitely evolved. We really started producing it big in the last two years. 

 

  

You mentioned traveling to Europe once a month. Do you usually go to the same countries?
We go to a lot of the same countries, but each container of goods we ship back is a little different. With the container coming over now for example, Chris spent an extra week in France so it has more French stuff in it, and the one before that he spent more time in Germany. It’s usually a mix of French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, and the Czech Republic.

Can you describe the container process for us? How do you get a large amount of antiques from Europe to the United States? Is that difficult?
Yes it can be really crazy—customs is not nice! They are not nice people! So basically, we have a barn over in Germany and we have some people who find things for us and bring them to us. They tend to know what we’re after because they’ve been in this business for a long time. And then we rent the European version of a big truck, and Chris drives it around to markets all over the countryside collecting items. Then we get everything back to the central location, we have a container sent out, and we have to load it all up. It takes about a month for the container to get to America. Then, you have to go through customs which can take anywhere from two days to about a month and a half. Any you only get three days at the port, so if customs decides to keep the container longer, you pay $150 a day after that. It’s like getting selected at the airport for extra security screening. Sometimes they unload your container and go through it all, which you have to pay for and can cost up to six or seven thousand dollars. It’s luck of the draw every time!

What are some of your most popular items?
We are always looking for unique items. Once people see you selling a lot of something, they try to find it and sell it also. So we try to keep on top of it and switch it up a lot. Something that we sell and almost always carry are really cool old wine bottles. They are not like wine bottles here in America, some of them are up to three feet tall and really amazing – hand blown, 150 years old. We’re also always on the lookout for interesting textiles that we can make pillows or upholster with. We do furniture too. We’ve found French harvest tables, and in our last container we had a really cool set consisting of all the cabinetry and counters from an old candy store in Budapest. We’re always looking for unique stuff like that. 

Amazing! So are those they types of items that attendees expect to find at October 2014 Three Speckled Hens show?
Yes, definitely. We still have one of the pieces from the candy store that will be there, we’ve got the wine bottles coming, and we’ll have a lot of the repurposed crate furniture that we build. That’s a really big seller for us right now too so we’ll be bringing a lot of that.

We see you have a fan base of over 50,000 on Facebook  – when did that following really start to take off?
It’s kind of crazy! We’d had an Uber Chic page for about 5 years but we had set it up as a personal page, just because when I set it up I don’t even know if there was such a thing as a business page! So we started the business page about a year and a half ago, and just from the get-go it’s gone crazy. We do shows all over the United States in places like Washington, Portland, Phoenix, North Caroline, New York, and Texas. We’re basically gypsies! And we promoted the Facebook page as much as we could and it just kind of snowballed. There are weeks where we’ll get 1,000 likes in a week. It’s good for selling too, we actually sell a lot of items on Facebook.

What would you say is the best part about working in the antiques business?
The thing that I like the most is that you meet so many über cool people and people fall in love with what you’re doing—they’re like oh my gosh this is amazing, I can’t wait to put it in my house! Stuff like that is really rewarding because you can tell they actually love something we came up or found for them. We sell to a lot of big stores, but I prefer selling to just people, because I like that they have that connection with it.

Thanks so much for chatting with us Dustin! Let us know if you ever need an antiques team based in Europe, and we’ll be right over! 

Let the Fall Show Countdown Begin!

Hello everyone! We hope you are having a fabulous time soaking in the summer, because we think we are starting to feel a little nip in the air. . . autumn is slowly but surely on its way! If we were "normal" ladies, we might be starting to feel a bit sad about the long, warm summer days coming to an end. But fall is our favorite time of year for many reasons - it means leaves changing color, pumpkin decor, and fabulous new finds for you to discover at our fall show on October 4-5!

 

 We are busy bees (I guess you would say busy hens) right about now. We are literally running around like chickens with our heads cut off! This weekend, Kathy and Carrie are hitting the road to visit some of our dealers and deliver fall flyers like the one you see above. We love getting touch base with our amazing dealers and get a sneak peek at some of the antique and vintage finds they have in store for you. The only hard part is not wanting to buy all of it ourselves! Don't worry, we'll be sure to save some for you ;)

Be sure to monitor our Facebook page over the next month, as tickets go on sale SEPTEMBER 1ST! We will be having lots of fun contests  and giving away tickets nearly every week. If you are on our email list you will also be able to stay in the loop. Starting now, we will be sending out all blog posts like this one via email so that you don't miss a beat! Click HERE to join our email list and add your information on the bottom left corner of the page.

For now, here is a bit of inspiration from previous Three Speckled Hen fall shows:

 

 

 

Don't forget that you can purchase Early Bird tickets again this year, which give you TWO full hours to shop the show and purchase your favorite items before we open for general admission. That's what we call a true steal!!

Start Planning your Girls' Getaway Weekend!

One of the things that just tickles our feathers is how many women make our show their biannual "Girls Weekend" getaway. We kid you not! We have had so many groups approach us at our shows and introduce themselves as BFF's or mothers and daughters (one family from Kansas and northern California meet here every fall) or just an assortment of friends who have shopping, junking and having fun in common.

  This last show we had a group of women who really pulled at our heart strings. They were all longtime friends, mainly from southern California, who share the distinction of being fairly young widows. They called our May 2014 show their first annual "Widows' Junking Weekend".  A great group of gals who put on their big girl panties and realized how important female friendships are and that they needed to take time out to celebrate their friendships, shop, relax, shop, drink a little wine and, of course, shop some more!  

We encourage you to grab your nearest and dearest gal pals and come see us for our October show! Save the weekend of October 4 & 5, make reservations, enjoy some of Paso's great restaurants in the evening and come back the next day to get some great deals before our vendors pack up to leave on Sunday.  Tickets will be on sale online starting September 1 on www.brownpapertickets.com. We look forward to meeting you and your girlfriends!

We are always up for a Girls Getaway!

The Hens,

Carrie, Kathy and Susi

Summer Evening with Friends

Farmyard Friends

Hens and Goats

June 27, 2014, was a perfect summer night. The warm breeze softly danced through the majestic oak trees filling the air with the symphony of rustling leaves and bowing limbs.  The Hens and Goats, side by side, nibbled at the trough and sipped their wine. Wine? Hens and Goats together?

Yes, it was a perfect summer night when the Three Speckled Hens (Susi, Carrie, Kathy and IT Chick, Lettice) hosted the Goat Hill Fair gals (Cyndi, Shari and Donna) at Hen Susi's Willow Creek Farm. We really couldn't hear the symphony of rustling leaves due to the peals of laughter and clinking of wine glasses. Over pizza cooked in a wood burning oven there was swapping of ideas and encouragement between the proprietress' of the two best Antique & Vintage Shows in California.

With similar goals and the love of all things old, the Hens and Goats were a natural fit. Along with believing that with similar goals we could accomplish more by respecting each other's businesses rather than drawing that proverbial line in the sand, we promised to keep in touch and plan another get-together soon.  It couldn't have been a better summer night.

We are hoping that you are having a fun filled summer!

Susi, Carrie & Kathy

Spring Show Success!!

Wow, we can't believe that our spring 2014 show has come and gone! The weekend passed by in a blur of amazing moments. Our dealers set up some stunning booth displays this time around that were full of true one-of-a-kind treasures. They continue to impress us every year, but something about this show was extra special! And of course, we couldn't stop smiling as literally thousands of people poured through our gates. Many told us they were coming to the show for their very first time (thank you for coming!!!) and many were returning as part of a long tradition of Three Speckled Hens fun.

If you came to the show last weekend, THANK YOU so much for helping to kick off our eighth year and making it a show to remember. If you didn't get to make it, be sure to mark your calendar for our fall show: we are already dreaming up plans for October 4-5.

And now, time for a photo roundup of some of our favorite snapshots from the weekend!

Two of our three Hens: Carrie and Kathy!

 

Fun finds at Vintage Bliss

 

Cute succulents at Crimson Heart Studios

 

The ever-popular bag collection at Uber Chic!

Gorgeous old cabinet

 

Teatime, anyone? 

 

Old rulers galore! 

 

Birdman's bird houses

 

Shabby chic doesn't get better than this dresser

 

Time to sail away...until our October show, that is!