and it has a new name – This is OUR second-hand life to celebrate my magpie existence with the boy

So Mr SH and I have been discussing what to do about our obsessive collecting and hoarding whilst watching American Pickers and thought that we might give this wheelin’/ dealin’ a go.  I don’t really want to make any sort of proper money out of it but I thought it would be good to sell some things on.

Today I started with my vintage knitting patterns that are now being listed on Etsy:

And as a Shop Opening offer:

Honestly – I’m not just saying this because I’m selling them as PDFs and would like to make a little bit of dosh – but this patterns are gorgeous.  So far I’ve not listed anything I wouldn’t wear myself and am taking the entire book down to my mum tomorrow to get some hints and tips so I can start creating my own ‘Mad Men’ style knitted outfits.

I’m going to put a load more up in a few minutes – I think it’s better to have a well-stocked shop – and the Vogue book is nearly all posted so I’ll start pulling out some of the other tasty outfits.

So while I’ve been laid up in bed trying to sleep through the wheezing, I’ve been stumbling and looking for amazing upcycling/ reusing/ remaking  ideas.  Today I thought I’d collect together a few of my favourite furniture from upcycled items.  In our flat we have some amazing bookshelves that are upcycled goodiness – however I’m not sharing photos with you yet until the flat is sorted and I’m happy with them enough to take photographs   That’s to say – I’m stupidly happy with the shelves, I’m just not happy with how untidy I am and how messy they are.  I’m embarrassed to show them to you!

So here are some of my favourite furniture upcycled projects:

Repurposed drawers:

schubLaden

schubLaden

These wonderful designs are from a German shop called schubLaden {meaning drawers in German}.

This image was found on Flickr – however I’m not sure who actually designed these:

repurposed drawers

I would happily make Mr Second-Hand spend his spring evenings sawing away at old cabinets so I could have something this splendid in the flat

I have a real love for Vespas – in fact I still think that one day I will own one.  So these seats made out of old Vespas by Italian company Bel&Bel make me very happy indeed {although I’d rather have the bike than the chair!}:

Bel&Bel

Bel&Bel

Katie Thomspon from Recreate is an absolute genius.  These beautifully created pieces of furniture made from repurposed cases are simply divine:

Recreate

Recreate

Recreate

Not surprisingly all of the seats I’ve chosen to feature are now sold however her website states that she does do custom orders – if only she wasn’t in South Africa!

Finally I’m going to feature the wonderful work of Dallas welder, Joel Hester.  His furniture made from repurposed car hoods are simply inspired.  All of the projects are ‘handmade to order’ which means that you truly get one off pieces especially for you!

Firstly – the beds:

Aren’t these gorgeous?  Unfortunately I can’t post larger pics but if you click on them they’ll take you right to the page.  They are all designed around the shape of your mattress, the size you want etc.  What more could you want? If I had the money and the space I would be purchasing one of these.  However, Mr Second-Hand is creating our bed this Spring so I’ll be posting photographs of that

I’m just going to post the coffee table too that I love because of the unique pattern on it caused by the original paint and rust:

Coffee Table

This is from their website about the standard coffee table specifications:

Things that got away:

• A set of 1930s camera magazines – £4
• A 1970s coffee table – no idea on price – wouldn’t fit in our tiny lickle flat!

However we managed to get some bits of cutlery.  I don’t like having matching crockery and cutlery – it just reeks of my old life.  So we got ourselves some bits of cutlery:

Air France and Saint Spoon

The flat based ones are actually Air France forks – Thrifty Boy has a real obsession with logos and branded items and these fit our collection perfectly.  On the left is what I’ve always known as a ‘Saint Spoon’ – however apparently they’re called Apostle Spoons .  When I was growing up my neighbour, Hilda (who was like a grandmother to us) always used these spoons and I’ve had a fascination with them ever since for some bizarre reason.  So here is my first Apostle Spoon

Next to the Apostle Spoon is a knife.  I really liked the handle of it and although it isn’t silver I thought it might make a nice piece for a charm necklace along the lines of:

Damselflygemma on Flickr

Stumpy25's Flickr

I’m really not sure how to start – also I’m allergic to most metal so I’ll have to coat it in something – but it’s so pretty.

Next mugs:

For our collections!

I really love The Little Prince (in fact my next tattoo is going to be a Little Prince one) so finding this cute little plastic mug will add to my collection of bits and pieces well.  I would like to turn it into one of these cute little pin-cushions:

Sister Valentine on Flickr

but it has this cute little design in bottom of it:

Stars

and I don’t really want to lose that.

We also love Commemorative/ Royal Wedding/ Jubilee mugs and found this lovely one:

Stoneware Charles and Di wedding mug

We’re very excited about the upcoming wedding in April between Kate and Wills – hopefully the junk markets and charity shops will be full of tat very soon!

Finally the obvious wander to the book stall – I really must get some photographs of Deptford Market to accompany my ‘hauls’ from there! It has to be seen to be believed :

The Caravan Gallery: http://www.thecaravangallery.co.uk/

I bought this book as I love Britishness.  I’m proud of being British – not something a lot of people say.  I love our eccentricities, our small houses, our quirks, our crap weather etc.  This book collects together some fantastic photographs that capture British life very simply – AND it opens with a postcard showing Ipswich my home town   The photography reminds me of Martin Parr – which is NEVER a bad thing

Smash Hits Shit Book

I actually said to Thrifty Boy the other day that I really wanted this book – and what happened? It turned up on the market so I had to pick it up.  Why do I call it a Shit Book? Well, this is my really classy way of referring to the books we have in the bathroom for reading while we’re on the toilet!  This book is perfect for that.  As Thrifty Boy is a few years younger than me he lost out of being brought up with Smash Hits so it’s a whole new world being opened up to him.

And finally a book that I wanted as a teenager and never got round to buying because I was too busy buying music and tickets to gigs:

At last!

So my total spend?:

• Books – £2
• Cutlery and mugs: £2
• Total spend: £4

HURRAH!

This weekend I happened upon 6 magazines from the 1920s for £3!

As you can see they’re falling apart quite badly so I’m thinking that I’m going to have to remove some pages for different things.  I don’t like cutting up old magazines but as these are disintegrating anyway it might have to be done.

I’m really loving the adverts in them and I’m considering framing some of these for our kitchen:

And I’m going to scan them in for Archive.org just to keep them complete for prosperity.

However I’m not sure what to do when I’ve finished all the hacking.  Any ideas?  Here are some that I’ve found in my stumblings:

National Geographic Shelf

Book/ Magazine Beads

Paper Flowers

Tutorial here

I could make a mini-album/ book like these [click on the photograph to take you to the original image]:

I could make rossettes, bows etc.:

I think I’d really like to try to make a little journal – but I’m not sure.  I’m not very good with all these choices and just a few magazines to play with – including magazines I’m not really sure I want to cut up!

[<a href="http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=338100.0">tutorial on Craftster here</A>]

or this:

[tutorial on Craftster here]

However life took over and we still haven’t got around to creating these wonderful things. At the moment we are brassic so I’m hoping that we can start putting one or both of these together while we’re trying not to leave the flat and have our usual adventures, which often involve trips to one or two pubs on the way.  And some eatery of some sort.
In preparation for this I’ve been scanning in the ones I find interesting/ unusual – if you click on the wind-swept doggy below you’ll find some that I’ve scanned in:

Thrifty Boy also found an awesome box of photographic slides in a junk shop in Greenwich. They weren’t cheap, however they ARE amazing – Novosti Press Agency slides of Russia in 1975. You can see some of the set here:

These ones we don’t really want to turn into anything so we’re hoping to make a light box to display them in. We saw this one in SuckUK:

SuckUK Slide Light

But it’s about £150 – £200!  As Thrifty Boy is very clever he’s currently designing a slide box for our slides.  Hopefully it means that we can have an ever-changing wall display of our collection

I’ve found a couple tutorials to share here for light boxes:

ehow

steampunk workshop – not a slide display but you can follow the same principles

Instructables – again not a slide display but a great tutorial – very expensive though – I’m sure it can be done a lot cheaper than this!

I have (sadly) no desire to actually knit any of the patterns – afterall I can only manage squares and scarves – however I do just LOVE the images on them.

This one is by far my favourite – just click on the photo to take you to the rest of them!

This, my dear friends, is a beautiful scrapbook created from a 1968 catalogue of Christmas cards. The colour instantly grabbed my attention. Imagine my joy when I opened its pages:

Look at this beautiful woman. She appears throughout the album and I just wonder if the scrapbook belonged to her.

Lots of notes and letters – some in Spanish – beautiful handwriting.

A couple of pages of stamps – some of which I’ll turn into Photoshop Brushes to give away here.

Some great matchbook covers and Christmas cards

Sketches [not very good unfortunately]

The dates on these range from 1968 to 1969 as far as I can see – so it’s 40 years old. Most of the items on the stall I bought this from come from house clearances so the sad thing is is that it feels as though perhaps this woman no longer is around. That this was just thrown into a pile along with other belongings.

I don’t know what to do with it now. Part of me wants to turn it into my own scrapbook because the book is so gorgeous. Perhaps remove all the items [most of which are held in by photo corners] and reuse the book. Or I could keep it how it is. Or create my own art around it. I just don’t know. At the moment I’m just enjoying flicking through it and marvelling at this woman’s collection and craving to do my own now!

It started with Ben and I looking for a vintage picnic set.  When we were last in Camden we saw a beautiful white and red (of course, our colour pallet is very much influenced by my love of black and red, and Ben’s obsession with the White Stripes!) picnic set.  After trawling around ebay and Google, we didn’t manage to find anything similar.  So later today we will trek to Camden to see if we can find it again.  I was convinced it was on sale for £20, Ben thought it was for £45 – fingers crossed I was right and that it’s still there.

Next week we’re going on a road trip.  Off to Wales to meet Ben’s folks (and extended family by the sounds of things) then onto Ipswich to meet my family – and now some of my extended family as my cousin’s decided to get married – typically at the last minute so that will be great.  So – this is why we’re interested in a picnic set as we want to take one with us

Here are some pics then of gorgeous vintage picnic sets … YUMMY

This is pretty close to the set we saw

SO CUTE!

How perfect is this? Wouldn't you feel marvellous picnicking with this?

Gorgeousness abounds

On Saturday we picked up two clothes rails – I despise wardrobes and have done for a long time.  Wardrobes have doors, doors can be shut and hide things – specifically mess.  Therefore if I have a clothes rail my clothes will not get messy and indeed be on show.  The downside is obvious of course – light from the windows can fade my clothing and dust can settle -  however I do much prefer them to bulky and unsightly wardrobes.  Unless one day I can find a beautiful art-deco wardrobe that will fulfill all my needs.

Yesterday we had two goodies to collect.  First we took a stroll down into Brockley to collect a random box of kitchen stuff.  A 4 slice toaster, 3 saucepans, some glasses of varying sizes and a random oval plate.  All of which (apart from the toaster of course) are sitting in our magic cupboard (read dishwasher) ready to be cleaned and used.  My asthma hit me after that and Ben collected our two clothes airers.  Since we moved in we’ve been drying our clothes on the radiators which has meant that we’ve not been doing much washing.  Now we have TWO airers ready to dry our clothes on which makes us very happy bunnies indeed.  I can’t wait to empty our big bag of washing that needs doing and hang it all around the flat.

Freecycle is always hit and miss.  Sometimes you’ll see something you really want (like a bag of vintage cameras) and miss out on it by milliseconds.  I kind of think that this is where the fun lies.  You send your email you see what happens.  I’m sure some people have insider knowledge of what’s coming up before any one else and gets all the fine goodies first   But that’s just me because I WANTED THAT BAG OF VINTAGE CAMERAS! (even though my dad has a box of cameras and equipment to unload onto me next time I see them).

Later this week I will be the proud custodian of a darkroom too – I can’t wait.  I’m not sure when I’m going to have the time/ money to start developing my own photographs but I’m sure as hell going to make time/ money to do so.  I’m very very excited to see what godawful results I come up with.  It’s been a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong time since I set foot in a dark room so I’m quite nervous/ excited.  Our bathroom will never smell the same again!