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Hudson woman sells eclectic mix of vintage and modern items in backyard
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Beacon Journal staff writer
POSTED: 12:00 p.m. EDT, Jun 19, 2009
HUDSON: The first time Gina Bishop opened her barn to sell her quirky mix of furniture and accessories, the crowd was bigger than she expected.
The second time, ''it was insane,'' she said.
She was on to something.
Bishop runs Home Girl, a business that sells vintage and modern items as well as original artwork and other handmade goods. It's sort of a hip home boutique, except Bishop's shop is a barn in her backyard, and it's open only a few days a year.
Saturday is one of them. Bishop's barn will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at her Maplewood Farm, 2357 Hudson-Aurora Road. It's the final day of a three-day sale.
The barn sale has become a much-anticipated event for Home Girl fans. At the last sale, Bishop said, a number of them lined up at the door and then raced through the space, snapping up things and then sorting through their finds later to decide what to buy. Some returned every day just to see what new things Bishop had brought out.
''It's the kind of place I want to shop,'' she said. ''I want you to be surprised, and I want you to have to come back.''
Bishop brings an eye for design, a flair for merchandising and an infectious enthusiasm to the business, a very part-time job that she said is a better outlet for her uncontainable energy than continually repainting her walls.
Her main job is being a stay-at-home mom to Lila, 7, and Edie, 5. ''I do this for sanity,'' she said.
She learned the business during her years working in operations for Abercrombie & Fitch, designing displays for all the Bath & Body Works stores and then running a shop in suburban Columbus called Bloomsbury Loft with two partners. She gets help on the financial side of the operation — as well as some hands-on assistance with tasks like hanging things — from her husband, Brian, a financial planner. She's the dreamer, she said; he's the one who executes those dreams.
The family moved from Columbus to an 1824 house in Hudson three years ago. From the first time Bishop saw the barn, she envisioned it as a selling space.
With the help of a handyman, she gave the old outbuilding a fast face-lift before her first sale last year, painting the floor, installing inexpensive paneling horizontally to approximate barn siding and adding old industrial light fixtures purchased for a pittance from a factory in Wheeling, W.Va. The underside of the roof had been charred by a lightning strike decades ago, so Bishop just painted it all black.
She scouts thrift shops, garage sales and flea markets to stock her sales with an ever-changing array of one-of-a-kind items and also has local artists create things to sell. She calls her signature look modage, a juxtaposition of old and new that incorporates folk art, midcentury modern, country, contemporary and anything else she's drawn to. It's the way she decorates her home as well as the way she stocks her shop.
''My style? I don't really know how to classify my style,'' she said. ''But it works.''
Bishops said she got her love for vintage and flea-market finds from her mother, who decorated that way long before it was popular simply because she couldn't afford new things.
''When I was a teenager, I'd be embarrassed. . . . And now I'm like my mother on steroids,'' she said.
She loves to incorporate a bit of playfulness into her decorating and embraces imperfections like the chips in a chair's paint or the bubbles in blown glass. Her shop is a melange of the reclaimed and the repurposed — rusting mailboxes set on end and used as vases and wall hangings, a stack of metal picnic baskets, children's chairs painted a cheerful aqua, bead-encrusted light fixtures suspended over an aging armchair.
She also likes using things in unexpected ways, such as setting an outdoor planter on a dresser and fashioning a throw pillow from an unfinished hooked rug, its pattern markings still visible on the canvas backing.
The idea, she said, is not to adhere to rules or follow trends but to surround yourself with things you like, things that express who you are. ''It's about saying, 'What is it that interests you?' instead of what other people have,'' she said.
Eventually Bishop hopes to sell items online, but for now she's sticking with her periodic barn sales. She doesn't want to hold them more often, she said, because then they wouldn't seem as special.
The next barn sale will probably be in August or September, and she'll also have a booth at the Country Living Fair from Sept. 18 to 20 at the Ohio Historical Society's Ohio Village in Columbus. To request notification of future barn sales, e-mail Bishop at ginabishop@windstream.net.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
HUDSON: The first time Gina Bishop opened her barn to sell her quirky mix of furniture and accessories, the crowd was bigger than she expected.
The second time, ''it was insane,'' she said.
She was on to something.
Bishop runs Home Girl, a business that sells vintage and modern items as well as original artwork and other handmade goods. It's sort of a hip home boutique, except Bishop's shop is a barn in her backyard, and it's open only a few days a year.
Saturday is one of them. Bishop's barn will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at her Maplewood Farm, 2357 Hudson-Aurora Road. It's the final day of a three-day sale.
The barn sale has become a much-anticipated event for Home Girl fans. At the last sale, Bishop said, a number of them lined up at the door and then raced through the space, snapping up things and then sorting through their finds later to decide what to buy. Some returned every day just to see what new things Bishop had brought out.
''It's the kind of place I want to shop,'' she said. ''I want you to be surprised, and I want you to have to come back.''
Bishop brings an eye for design, a flair for merchandising and an infectious enthusiasm to the business, a very part-time job that she said is a better outlet for her uncontainable energy than continually repainting her walls.
Her main job is being a stay-at-home mom to Lila, 7, and Edie, 5. ''I do this for sanity,'' she said.
She learned the business during her years working in operations for Abercrombie & Fitch, designing displays for all the Bath & Body Works stores and then running a shop in suburban Columbus called Bloomsbury Loft with two partners. She gets help on the financial side of the operation — as well as some hands-on assistance with tasks like hanging things — from her husband, Brian, a financial planner. She's the dreamer, she said; he's the one who executes those dreams.
The family moved from Columbus to an 1824 house in Hudson three years ago. From the first time Bishop saw the barn, she envisioned it as a selling space.
With the help of a handyman, she gave the old outbuilding a fast face-lift before her first sale last year, painting the floor, installing inexpensive paneling horizontally to approximate barn siding and adding old industrial light fixtures purchased for a pittance from a factory in Wheeling, W.Va. The underside of the roof had been charred by a lightning strike decades ago, so Bishop just painted it all black.
She scouts thrift shops, garage sales and flea markets to stock her sales with an ever-changing array of one-of-a-kind items and also has local artists create things to sell. She calls her signature look modage, a juxtaposition of old and new that incorporates folk art, midcentury modern, country, contemporary and anything else she's drawn to. It's the way she decorates her home as well as the way she stocks her shop.
''My style? I don't really know how to classify my style,'' she said. ''But it works.''
Bishops said she got her love for vintage and flea-market finds from her mother, who decorated that way long before it was popular simply because she couldn't afford new things.
''When I was a teenager, I'd be embarrassed. . . . And now I'm like my mother on steroids,'' she said.
She loves to incorporate a bit of playfulness into her decorating and embraces imperfections like the chips in a chair's paint or the bubbles in blown glass. Her shop is a melange of the reclaimed and the repurposed — rusting mailboxes set on end and used as vases and wall hangings, a stack of metal picnic baskets, children's chairs painted a cheerful aqua, bead-encrusted light fixtures suspended over an aging armchair.
She also likes using things in unexpected ways, such as setting an outdoor planter on a dresser and fashioning a throw pillow from an unfinished hooked rug, its pattern markings still visible on the canvas backing.
The idea, she said, is not to adhere to rules or follow trends but to surround yourself with things you like, things that express who you are. ''It's about saying, 'What is it that interests you?' instead of what other people have,'' she said.
Eventually Bishop hopes to sell items online, but for now she's sticking with her periodic barn sales. She doesn't want to hold them more often, she said, because then they wouldn't seem as special.
The next barn sale will probably be in August or September, and she'll also have a booth at the Country Living Fair from Sept. 18 to 20 at the Ohio Historical Society's Ohio Village in Columbus. To request notification of future barn sales, e-mail Bishop at ginabishop@windstream.net.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com.
Comments
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akron, oh
Posted 11:08 PM, 06/19/2009
Gina...You Go Girl! i cant wait till my house is done and we can fill it! Tracy (triplets)
btw...who is the handyman...i need him
