Friday 22 August 2008

Crafty Re-use

other people's trash -
polished up to become
ornaments


Crafty for Mad Kane's Haiku and Limerick Prompt
also inspired by this post on Ecostreet

Things I've found in the street that I've been able to use include:
a ring, a book and a wooden ottoman with a blue velvet lid.
I'm sure I could be more imaginative about how I could use some of the things I see thrown away. What's your best junk find and what have you used it for?

17 comments:

Rethabile said...

I remember that when I was a student in Knoxville, Tennessee, my sister and I picked up, from a dumpster, this good-looking chair for her flat. We were both studying biology, so germs were the first things on our mind, and I think we cancelled out our gesture for the planet by spraying the chair heavily with some anti-germ product from the supermarket.

LOL!

Anonymous said...

My parents managed to find me some amazing furniture for my new flat... a matching mahogany veneer g-plan set of two wardrobes, a tallboy, dressing table and bedside table. All for the ridiculous total price of £50 (it was a rainy day so not many people at the auction).

In order to get it home, my Dad was looking for some material to pad the furniture. He looked in the skip outside the auction house.... and found the matching dressing table stool that went with the set!

d. moll, l.ac. said...

out on the street I just picked up some big bowls to use for water for my art classes. Save the budget for things you can't find, I say.

Crafty Green Poet said...

Rethabile - well germs can be a problem, lol

lirone - funny that the astool had been thrown away...

d.moll - exactly, sounds like a good find...

A wildlife gardener said...

First of all thank you for the award, Crafty Green Poet. I will get round to that as soon as I can :)

The best things I 'found' were 13 old troughs which I dug up 17 years ago when we first came here. They are the old feeding troughs which farmers use for cattle...and our plot was a corner of a farmer's field.

Nowadays they cost between £100-150 at places like Ingliston Market when the Agricultural Show is on. I have planted them up over the years as alpine troughs.

We also found lots of glass bottles as the people who lived here years and years ago had no refuse collection, so their garden became their 'dump' as well.

The Weaver of Grass said...

I do a lot of embroidery and am always incorporating things I find into my work. e.g. pretty sweet papers can look interesting layered under chiffon, machined over and then burnt back; tiny bits of copper wire can also prove interesting worked into things. As Koestler once said, "Fortune favours the prepared mind." It is amazing the use you can find for something with a bit of lateral thinking!

Odessa said...

i don't know if its considered junk but i love going to thrift shops and flea markets. some of my favorite finds for dirt cheap are vintage dresses for a dollar each, a new (with tag!) boho bag, a haiku book for 25 cents.

polona said...

well, i tend to keep things i should throw away but don't remember picking trash other than natural things... shells, feathers and so on...

Bill said...

Like Polona, I create my own junk simply by never throwing anything away.

RG said...

A real neat kid's 2-wheel scooter with hand brakes and pneumatic tires. It had been used to ride on to train service dogs to pull.

Now the grandkids ride it down the long hill by our place and wear out their tired bones pushing it back up!

Unknown said...

I have bits and pieces of ceramic pottery scavenged from everywhere from Greece and Italy to last week in California. One day they will become a mosaic. I might use them to decorate my backyard mulch pile (made of concrete blocks) which is useful but ugly.

J. Andrew Lockhart said...

how true!

Janice Thomson said...

I don't collect things but when I need something I always check the flea markets first. I needed a mirror for a dresser a few years ago and while driving out in the country saw a garage sale one day. Found an old mirror for $20 that turned out to be a $1500 antique - boy was I surprised :)It is still being used.

Raven's Wing Poetry said...

I have "trashed picked" and recycled too. Your verse sums up short and sweet what I've done. I've recycled furniture and old scraps of cloth (namely left over sari-like fabric) for decoration. I like.

-Nicole

Jenn: said...

One day bored and my brother's house, I felt creative. He had banned me from his paints, because I use too much (ooops), so I dumped over his trash can and put together an underwater scene using only things found from there. The only thing I used outside of it was glue.

He still displays it.

I think it is a lil easier to do with an artist's trash can though
;0)

LA Nickers said...

Aha! Sounds like you have visited the yard sales in my neighborhood. ;-)

DRY ICE, at NICKERS AND INK

Granny Smith said...

When I was a child I had a dresser drawer full of things I intended to use some day - peeled sticks, an inch of lace, a heart cut from an advertisement, a few sea shells, a few smooth pebbles. The only thing I never did was to use them.