Students here and I am BORED!!! Let's talk about YELLOW DOG!

I have students in here finishing up some keyboarding assignments and my brain is fried from today.  I figured I could tell you a little bit about my favorite store I have found thus far here in our teeny town of Sully.  It is called Yellow Dog Studios.  You can find their website HERE.  Basically, John, takes old crap that no one wants anymore and he turns it into something DELIGHTFUL!  His style is quite a bit like West Elm.  Well, the first time I went to this store, I made my little high school girl that I mentor go with me!  It was very intimidating to find! The show room/studio is in an old shoe factory that is as good as abandoned.  The building is SOOO perfect for his style though, the rustic chic-ness of it and all.  I just love love LOVE it!  Some of his stuff:

This is a bookshelf that I just MADLY in love with as soon as I saw it.  He had two of them but...Mr. Thrifter only let me buy one.  In all actuality, I was pretty fortunate to even get him to agree to that!  I love it though!  We had been searching far and wide for the perfect bookcase that was in our price range.  I had even toyed with the idea of building one myself.  Once I started pricing wood though, I nixed that idea.  Once I started looking around, I realized how expensive they are!  GAH!  The ones I liked were generally in the $300 range.  Let's face it, we are just starting off, newly-ish wed, just buying a house!  We can't afford $300...So you can imagine my sheer excitement when I found this baby for just $150!!!!!!!  I couldn't BELIEVE IT!  And, it just so happened to be the perfect color for our bedroom with the right "feel"--antique-ish yet new.

 Then there is this puppy below.....  This "strata" design is his signature dealio.  I am madly in love with this thing...it only weighs like 50,000,000,000 pounds.  I would LOVE to use this as a night stand with a really sweet lamp on it!  Sadly, it just doesn't go with my quilt, that is in our bedroom, that I spent entirely too much time, money, and effort on to not use!  Maybe some day, I will get my strata side tables....until then, I can visit them often.

And then....oh my, where do I start?!  I have always wanted one of those old steamer trunks that the ladies on the Titanic used to keep all of their things in.  They are just SO cool.  I have looked at several of them at the Classic Home Consignment store but they were all like $75-$100...more than I was willing and able to buy it for!  So my search continued.  Until one day, I happened to stop by Yellow Dog and started rummaging through his un-started (not sure this is a word....if it wasn't before, it is now.) projects and found a reallllly nasty, dirty, junky looking trunk.  Of course, thanks to my thriftiness problem, I was able to see through its dirt and grime to its true potential.  I asked how much he would sell the thing to me for...to my honest surprise, he told me that I could HAVE IT!  Can you believe that?  Ha, I didn't ask twice.  I loaded that bad boy up in my car and away I went.  I took it to my parent's house, they are both really crafty and talented with this sort of redoing business.  I just didn't have the time for this project and my dad volunteered so I figured, what the heck?!  After hours and hours and hours, and SEVERAL cans of spray paint later, my love is finished.  It is great.  I love her.  Now, I just need to Kilz the inside of it and finish her off with my 50cent roll of ugly "vintage" wallpaper and she will be all finished.  We will call her Felicity.  :)

And there she is...Felicity at her finest.  She needs a new latch, but that will just have to wait.  Who knows?  I may just leave her as is!  

Well, that is all for my post about Yellow Dog.  If you guys are ever in the area and would like to see it, let me know!  It really is an AWESOME place!  He is having an art show, Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 6pm in his studio if anyone is interested.  I made this piece for it:

He has about 100 of these that he has asked people in the community to do (start as plain wooden boxes then you are supposed to use your creativity to spruce it up!")  he will be auctioning them off at the show as a fundraiser for the Sullivan Area Arts.

  We will probably have a party before or after as well!  It should be a great time!  Everyone is invited!  :)  Watch for some details.