August Tag Sale Finds continued...

Back in August I posted about some tag sale finds I scored. Remember all those ties? Well, that was only part of the wonderful finds of the day. Those were the items that I would be keeping and using for crafting. Here are the items I found that I'll be posting in my etsy shop, Maple Street Treasures, soon:

The collection consist of: 

1 Polaroid Square Shooter camera

1 Minolta Pocket camera (we must have had bigger pockets back then)

1 Kodak Brownie camera

1 very decorative wooden bowl with lid

1 decorative carved wooden bowl

1 small round glass jewelry box

1 vintage linen calendar from 1968

1 set of vintage appetizer plates

1 collection of View Master slides

I had planned to get these items photographed and posted to etsy today, but I sort of pooped out and took a nap instead. I'm headed to bed early tonight, so I should have plenty of energy after work tomorrow to get it done. At least that's the plan... g'night!

Up-cycled Maps

So, do you remember the small stack of maps I picked up at the tag sale a few weeks ago? Well, it’s time to reveal what I’ve been doing with them.

  

I’ve been up-cycling them into wallets.

I am able cut the pieces for two to three wallets out of each map, depending on the size of the map.

I try to lay them out so I get some interesting cities or a variety of colors on each piece. If I plan them out well, I have surprisingly little waste from each map.

Each cut piece is covered with a light vinyl film to make the wallet tear resistant and water repellent and then I head to my one of my sewing machines.

I like to use my very inexpensive, very lightweight, Brother machine for sewing paper and plastic items. It operates almost like a toy, but it really is the best for the job. (I reserve my beloved Necchi machines for my other sewing.)

I sew all the pieces together with brightly colored thread.

     

Sewing paper is really quite fun.

And the wallets work up pretty quickly.

And there you have it! Another lilea b. creation, ready for sale.

Major Score!

We did some tag sale-ing again this weekend. I can't believe the great finds I scored. It's going to take me a couple of posts to show you everything. For today, I'll just show you the items I bought that will be used for crafting.

First, this bottle and jar cutter kit. I've wanted to experiment with cutting old glass bottles and making them into vases and such. You know how I like to find new recycling crafts.

Look at this kit. It had all it's parts and was never used. We found it in the basement of an estate sale. Hubby almost talked me out of buying it, saying it wasn't anything that we couldn't find in the form of "real tools". It was pretty cheaply made: all plastic, even the screws! But, I figured for $1.00, what the heck.

So, I took it home and put it together and I was pretty satisfied with it. Then I went online to see if I could still buy the tiny replacement cutters. Guess what I found. Two of these "cheap" kits just sold on ebay recently. One for $27.00 and the other for $34.52! Part of me wished I hadn't assembled it yet, and the other part of me was so happy I bought mine for only a buck!

So moving on...

For six dollars more, I found some zippers, a few buttons, some corduroy trousers, and some natural color canvas. The canvas is hemmed on the edges as though it was intended to be a tablecloth or something, but it's brand new. These items will all become parts of new purses.

For $12.00 I got 20 balls of yarn (11 of them are 100% wool), 3 spools of cording, circular knitting needles, a knitting stitch gauge, and a Vogue Knitting magazine. The wool will be knit and felted into more purses.

But, my biggest score was this:

Neckties! 27 of them!

Some of them are so unique. This brown one in the center has a picture of a room with throw pillows and a table and lamp.

Some are really bright and some not so much.

Many coordinate nicely with each other, which will be a really good thing when I start using them to make purses.

Neckties often sell for $2.00 to $3.00 at Goodwill and thrift shops. These ties weren't marked, so Hubby made an offer. We got all 27 for just $8.00. Score!

Stay tuned to see what else I bought!

Posts to look forward to:

Vintage Tags Sale Finds

A Bedroom Re-do

A Product Review

A Finished Object: Gaia

Inside My Vintage Books

Yarn Pottery

Up-cycled Maps

A Sampling of Tag Sale Finds

It was beautiful and sunny in my part of the world this weekend. I took a vacation day on Thursday since that was supposed to be the very best day temperature-wise, and it was! Although I worked on Friday, it did give me the feel of almost having a long weekend anyway.

We hit quite a few tag sales Saturday and I got some awesome finds. Here is just a sampling of what I bought.

Some vintage items for my new Etsy shop, Maple Street Treasures.


A great wooden bowl, some kitchen utensils, buscuit cutters, and some books.

Some cool flower pots.
Also vintage although not quite as old as the other items.

I also found a great assortment of craft items. I’ll be keeping some of these and giving some to my fellow “crafties”.

Group shot of the great goodies!

An assortment of zippers... all for just $.50!
Can you believe what a great find this is?

A whole baotload of maps! Can you guess what I'll be doing with these?
I'll show you in a future post.

A bunch of brand new craft scissors in different scalloped patterns.
I’ll check the ones I’ve got and give away the duplicates.

And glitter!

Hmmm, I think I know someone who might like the glitter.

Oh, and I forgot to take a close up picture of the little spool of Daisy trim that you can barely make out in the center of the group photo. This is going to be perfect for some throw pillows I’m making. They will be featured in a future post as well.


So there, now there are more posts for you to look forward to. It seems I have more post ideas than I have time to write actually write them!

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

The Reveal

It's a nice sunny day and the pup and I are ready to finish up our chair project.

We've gathered our fabric and our tools. The fabric was chosen to go in a room with an "adventure" theme. Do you like it?

I've had so much fun with this project! I had never done anything like this before so really didn't know what I was doing, but I did a great job... if I do say so myself. I was even able to find that thin breathable fabric for the underside of the seat like you find on the bottom of upholstered chairs. I salvaged this this fabric from a dust ruffle "base". You know, that thin white fabric that goes between the mattress and the box spring and holds the ruffle. It was perfect and looks just like a brand new chair bottom!

And the reassembly begins.

A few bits of hardware and we're almost finished.

Don't they look great? The pup thinks so.

I think the chairs have passed his comfy test!

I wish I could keep them; they would look great in my craft room. But alas, off they go to their new owner.

 

Stay tuned for my next post that may actally have some knitting content.

The continuing saga of the chairs...

A coat of paint has been added to one of the chairs. You can really see the improvement.

 

I had some help from a little white pup. 

Oh no! It looks like the pup got brown paint all over himself.

Silly pup, the paint is for the chairs.

Although not photoed, the other chair did get its first coat of paint. Next, I'll apply another coat of paint and staple some fresh new fabric to the cushions. (Not sure if I should let the pup help with that task. What do you think?)

Progress Report

Day two of the tale of the two chairs. The cushions have been completely stripped and the chairs have had a light sanding, although you can't tell from this photo.

Removing the staples that held the fabric on the cushions was a much more difficult job than I had imagined it would be and there were probably a bazillion of them. I did learn a few tricks that made digging them out a bit easier so I was able to shave about 45 minutes off the process compared to the day before.

Now I've got some swelling in the palm of my hand and a beauty of a blister on my thumb. The staples were rusty and disgusting, and if ever I should have had a current tetnus shot, it probably should have been now.


If you look closely at the top of the first photo above, you might see a pair of feet walking by. This is my hubby working on his project of the day: getting rid of the sink hole in the center of the patio. (He gave his hand a good smack with that mallet just to make me feel a bit better about my blister.)

We rewarded ourselves for our day's work with a trip to our favorite barbeque place. The place doesn't look like much from the outside, but the food is wonderful. Huge portions for a great price. I failed to get a photo of those huge portions, remembering only after we had already eaten and were about to drive away...

A Tale of Two Chairs

One tag sale.
Five dollars.
Two chairs.

















Three and a half hours.
A gazillion staples.
















Two sore hands.
And only two cushions stripped so far.