Repurposed find!

Earring conversion that is sooooo easy, you just might leap for joy!

 I love blue and I love any flower that is a daisy or looks similar to one.  So when I saw this cute little earring sitting in a box I knew I must have it.  It's a loner but that was okay because my first thought was glue it to a frame or something.  The other great thing about it was it is a clip on earring, which I love those things, they go on and off so quickly.  To be honest I am not sure why it is so hard to find them anymore.

While I was poking around in the little dollar basket for a nice pin.  Old blouse pins had become a new obsession for me they are so shiny and colorful.  And then BAM!  an idea slapped me upside the head, why not clip that cute little pin to my shirt and just like that.  I repurposed a truly fabulous earring into a pin without a single drop of glue, no twist of the pliers, and no hammer to break apart.

These are my most favorite kind of re-purpose, one that is easy, quick, and fun!  One that will take a single earring that sat inside a jewelry box all alone (sniff sniff) and then tossed away, but now has a new home on my jackets and plain old shirts!

And here it is clipped to my shirt, this one is tiny, but everyone noticed my cute little blue flower on my shirt.  The best thing about these is that they don't poke holes in your shirt, and there is no little magnet to get knocked down your shirt.  So enjoy searching the little bins for new pins!

t-bags

This project is a repurposed project.  I love t-shirts, and I wear them alot.  I also wear them out or stain them, and until now have always just put my favorites or memory jogging ones up on the top shelf of my closet.  Then today I ran across a pepsi refresh project video, where a woman took old t-shirts and turned them into bags.  My first batch was very large bags, but none the less cool.  The next batch I am working on will be more like the size of a grocery bag, which is large child or teenager sized shirts.  There is a ton of instructions but they are all the same basic model.  But I like lots of pictures and small words...


Step on of this project is to gather your stuff... old t-shirt, scissors, pen/pencil, plate, and sewing machine (I suppose you could hand sew)

This is one of my shirts I used, the poor thing is stained but I can't bear to get rid of it.

Cut each sleeve off the shirt leaving the seam on what will now be bag portion of the t-shirt.  I used my fingertips to make sure the seams on the front and back of the sleeve are on top of each other.  Only do one sleeve at a time, this project is quick so there is no need to rush it.  At this point you have your basic sleeveless shirt.

 Lay the shirt flat and naturally ( the front neck will be lower the the back of it a little bit then place the dinner plate on the shirt in the middle of it.  Using a marker lightly mark around the plate you can either trace one long line or a few spots.  

 Then remove the plate and begin cutting the neck off.  Cut just outside the line so it will go with the scrap.  Once it is all cut it will look something like this.

 Turn the shirt inside out and line up the bottom seam and using a straight stitch sew right in the existing seam.  A straight stitch worked fine for me, but really, whatever makes you comfortable, don't sew backwards in the beginning and at the end to kind of lock it in place.

Once you are finished it will look sort of like this.  Flip it right side out and throw it in the hot wash cycle and tada...  A real recycled-reuseable shopping bag.

A redesigned light....

Here is a light that my husband... who is a great stained glass artist...  found when we were out recently.  The light was cute, but really could use an updo.   The first thing he did was pop out the old glass by bending down the tabs, it is important to use leather gloves so you won't get cut on the glass. 

Now head on down to the local stained glass shop and search through the sea of gorgeous glass.  They can cut it down to the size you need for a fee. Once you have your glass just pop it back in place and bend the tabs up to secure it.
That's it... real easy to replace the glass in these sort of things.  Just remember to open it up to see if it has tabs.

Here it is with a candle in it... Our kiddo said it looked like a ship in a storm.

Clearanced item Repurposed!

So I found this little doodad at the hardware store on clearance.  I had no idea what it was until my mother-in-law told me (thanks mom)  So it is a support for a curtain rod bracket, keeps things from falling down when you have a long rod or heavy curtains.   But what I saw was a cute little way to hang a razor or other little things in the bathroom.

This is super easy.  First remove this little screw here and throw it away, and make sure when you mount it that you turn it away from sight so you don't have to see it.

Then make sure you mark the screw holes where you are going to put it  and then just bolt it right up to the wall.  This came with molly's so if this is going in a place where there is no stud behind it, you can use them to stabilize it better.

That's it screw it to the wall and drop in your razor or whatever you are going to hang there!   Simple easy stuff, and cheap!

Repurposed find

While out shopping with my hubby, we found this mirrored bathroom shelf, at Lowe's on clearance for $10 it was missing some hardware.  We took it home, and it sat in the garage for a while.  One day while cleaning the garage we thought about it, and tried to hang in the bathroom.  However it just didn't work.  Too big, too bulky, didn't fit up to the studs just right, off center... blah blah, yada yada and all that sorta annoying stuff!

This is the beautiful corners of it, 

I love the colors of this thing too!

Sometime along the way in my life I started to collect salt n pepper shakers.  I am not sure how this happened but somehow it did, I woke up one morning and had more shakers than a restaurant!  My smart hubby suggested the bathroom shelf for it.  The spot in the hall fits it perfectly, and the only thing we had to do was hang it, and un-install the magnets for the mirrored doors.

Super simple re-purposed shelf

My Daddy's Fishing Lures... which haven't been used in 30 years!

A recent post gave me the idea about another frame idea... this one required no frame upgrade.  The frames were 50% at the thrift store, so I checked them out.  and found 2 I really like.

This frame had two mini african masks in them, the inside was really easy to get to on both projects, just unscrewed the back and gently pulled the masks off then glued my lures in place.

Same process with this one but I did have to paint the background black, because I wanted it to really contrast this old lure.   These look really great on the wall, and everytime I see them I am reminded of fishing with daddy.

This is an old tray I found at a yard sale I only paid a dollar for it.  I just screwed in a hangar on the back.  The little fuzzy thing is a lure a picked up at a sale.  I am planning on eventually putting the rest of my collector lures in this, but I couldn't wait to display it.

I love fishing and I do have tons of lures I use all the time, but sometimes I find something that I just have to have but don't want to use anymore.  Lures are a beautiful thing, and lure making will be my retiring hobby.