week 22 - end of summer flea market finds

it happens every summer. august comes…and then goes way too fast. wait, summer is over? why did it go so fast? well, it happened this year again to me. even though we did tons of fun outings and events, there were still many things that we didn’t cross off our list.

flea markets. that is always on my list. although they are 'hit and miss,’ i love them. It’s the adventure of the hunt for the perfect piece of furniture or mesh trinket. this past saturday my husband and I went to the highwood street market on the north shore.

it was great. we even had a coupon to ensure a reasonable $2 entry fee. this offset my $4 hot dog. the festival was in a beautiful park area…so plenty of trees for shade on a hot day. it was just the right size also, only taking a few hours to see all the vendors.

one booth particularly held my attention. (no, not the one where the vendor’s dog was apparently biting other dogs). this woman had buckets and buckets of trinkets…watch parts, game pieces, old door hardware, vintage earrings….all things mesh! I was able to find some really neat hardware pieces and metal trinkets that you will soon see on our fall collection.

i’m convinced that these types of festivals and finds we discover at them make mesh the unique product that it is.

-sherry

on the table | acceptance letter to the oak park art fair on november 7th!!!

week 19 - gram's gems

the other day i was spending some quality time with gram (my 89 year young grandmother, who happens to be as much of an accessory extraordinaire as i am). as i was playing the role of 'tech services', due to a pesky computer glitch (again, another uncommon commonality between us), gram happened to be rifling through a few small boxes of trinkets she had been collecting for mesh. you see, gram has a lot of collections around the house that she has lived in for 65 years. she happens upon trinkets on a daily basis that she put in a 'safe place' years ago. now, every time she finds these - miscellaneous broaches, clustered clip-on earrings, rhinestone shoe clips, and the like - she collects them all in one place and shares them with me when i visit. we walk through the story behind each piece/pair and she sometimes parts with them, and sometimes decides to hold onto them for safe keeping.

much like gram, we love to tell the story behind each one-of-a-kind necklace we create. whether the beads came from our friend richard in london, or the stones were discovered during sherry's honeymoon in rome, or we tracked down the trinkets in a dark alley 'boutique' of new york city....there is always a story behind every mesh piece.

i have to say that i strive to be like gram...a collector, a woman with a keen eye for quality, a creative soul that just simply 'gets it'. it would also be ideal if i were up for a trip to vegas on my 89th birthday...

-melissa