Friday, September 10, 2010

Upcycled Transformation



Every fall our chuch has it annual parish festival. It is our biggest fundraiser of the year, and it is next Saturday.

Many years ago I started a "silent auction" as part of this event.  Calling local businesses and other parishioners asking for donations and organizing the entire event.  I am no longer in charge of it (by choice!) but I always dontate something to it, 

Here is my donation for this year...

 


It started out as these bits and pieces... 

... an old school desk that was originally in our parish school.  The school sold these for $5 each a few years back.  My neighbor was done with hers, she put it in her trash - and I took it! 

I am not too proud to take something out of the trash for a good cause!



... this stool, that I picked up at a local thrift store for $1 yesterday.  It was covered in rust and quite dirty, but I saw it had potential as a chair for my little desk.




... metal desk accessories, I found at Dollar Tree for... you guessed it... $1 each.




... some regular yellow pencils I covered with oragami paper (had both of those things too!) based on this tutorial I found Omiyage's blog (you can check it out here) ...



... some cute school supplies,
... a couple cans of spray paint (half of which I already had in my stash!)...





... some buttons and magnets (once again, I already had these too!) to use to hang paper and what-not from the metal sides of the desk...

... some ric rac around the bottom of the legs (had it)...










 ... and some fabric and batting (guess what... I had those already too!)...





















Total out of pocket cost for this project:  $19!

I think it turned out quite cute!  

I hope that it will find a home and bring in some much needed cash to our church and school!  

 
What little girl wouldn't love doing her homework at this?

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

What to do, What to do?

I currently have an etsy shop where I sell some of my handmade items, and more recently some vintage items I have picked up here and there while "junking", "thrifting", "garage-saling"...  This portion of my shop has done much better than my handmade creations, and I think I have finally found my niche. 

I have recently been thinking about opening a physical resale shop.  However, that takes more time and money then I have to invest right now.  So I am not thinking about renting some booth space at an antique mall to sell some of my treasures. 

I would love input anyone has done this - pros, cons, costs, what would you do differently, what worked, etc...

Thank you for sharing your secrets with me!