Flea Market Finds

My daughter and I headed to the flea market this weekend.  I love that I have a 12 year old who loves antiquing as much as I do.  She's into jewelry and ceramics, whereas I'm into books and other pieces for the home.  Here are a few of the treasures I found:

1. Vintage alarm clock in such a gorgeous shade of blue.

2. Small rocking chair with charming peeling blue paint.

3. Set of three vintage canning jars.

4. Pressed glass bowl.

And the best part - this all came to less than $30.  You've got to love flea markets!

Repurposed Vintage Ledger

My daughter and I met a friend at a fabulous antiques mall a couple of weeks ago and I picked up this vintage ledger.  The spine was in pretty bad shape, but it still had lots of usable pages.  So, I decided to rebind it so I could use it to track my budget!  Following a budget isn't much fun, but I'm hoping that using a lovely vintage ledger like this will motivate me.

Firstly I cut out the insides of the journal with a very sharp knife.  I separated out the individual signatures that you can see here still bound together.

With a straight edge and sharp knife, I removed 1/4" from the edge of each signature.

I have an industrial strength binding machine to create my photo albums, but if you wanted to do a similar project, visit your local copy shop.  Most have some kind of binding machine and will be able to do it for you.

Once I had cleaned up the covers, I realized that they were too thick for the binding machine (my projects never go quite as planned), so I had to punch the holes with a heavy duty hole punch (Crop-a-Dile) - that took some wrist strength!

Once more into the binding machine to add the spirals.

Here's the finished project - I've already started using it!

 

Thanks for visiting!  Have a great day,

Ali

Flea Market Finds

I'm so lucky to have an eleven year old daughter who likes going to flea markets and antique stores as much as I do!  Last Thursday was a half a day from school and she turned down two play dates (if they have those at age eleven?) to visit a local antiques mall with me.

She collects vintage china and jewelry and found some really nice pieces.  Of course for me it's all about the paper.  I found a fabulous old atlas to add to my collection plus a few other treasures:

A lovely old blank ledger from the 1818, a spool of twine that was calling my name and a cabinet card in great condition.

I also picked up a few more vintage Christmas postcards to add to my collection.  When I got home a clipped them onto a piece of branch I stuck in an old white jug.  I think I need to add a few more....

Happy weekend!

Ali