Yard Sale Crafts

A yard sale can be a crafter's dream for unique, inexpensive craft supplies, and the famous Highway 127 sale is mile after mile of crafting potential. I approached this year's sale with a crafter's eye; here are some of the projects I uncovered.

The key to yard sale crafting is to try to envision an object's potential — brightened with a fresh coat of paint, adorned with fringe or beaded trim, glued to other items, or simply as a shape (rather than a true object) that could be reborn to serve another purpose. At this year's sale I saw box after box of old lamp sockets with pretty Victorian-looking edges, and pondered every time I found some what on earth I could do with them. An idea never came to me — but at a sale in Kentucky, I found a solution. Some creative person out there screwed and soldered an old lamp piece onto an old pewter porringer to make this charming candleholder. Pretty crafty, and not a bad find for $3.

Costume jewelry, earring singles and decorative buttons are always plentiful at yard sales, and they make great embellishments for frames, lampshades, and boxes. Pretty old pieces of silverware can be found for a dollar apiece or less, making great findings for windchimes, frames, placecard holders, jewelry and art. Ever since artist Joanne Hunot was a guest on The Carol Duvall Show (CDS-1212) with her kitchen utensil angels, I've been inspired to make my own. At this year's sale, digging through box after box of old silverware resulted in several pieces that would make good wings, halos and angel bodies, like a 10-cent pie server and eight peculiar, silverplated slotted spoon-like pieces that were only $1. In a big bag of junk jewelry bought on Ebay (the world's yard sale), I found a sparkly little red cat face — perfect to make a cat angel.

I have a soft spot for 'orphaned' lids — they are just too pretty to be thrown away — so I always look for them at sales to give them new life. These decorative boxes are plain papier-mâché and wooden boxes from craft stores, dressed up with paint, old rhinestone necklaces and buttons or a tassel, plus fancy handles made from orphaned lids. The silver oval-shaped box was the perfect size for a pretty silverplated butter dish lid I found for $2, and the white one got a bit of sparkle from a $1 glass jar lid. It's a great way to recycle pretty things that seem to have lost their usefulness.

Old doorknobs are getting to be very collectible, but inexpensive ones can still be found to make wonderful racks for hanging purses, hats and coats. Paint or stain a simple unfinished peg coat rack from a craft store; glue vintage doorknobs onto the pegs or remove the pegs and glue the knobs directly onto the board, and there you have it. It's a one-of-a-kind piece every time.

Pretty glass containers are nearly a dime a dozen at yard sales — especially if they've lost their lids or have a chip. They make wonderful vases, but a person can only have so many vases. Another option for reusing them is to make hanging lanterns. Choose glass jars and containers that have a small lip around the top opening. Wrap wire around the lip and twist to tighten securely around it. Use three or four other lengths of wire to loop through that one and join at the top, about 8-12 inches above the lip of the jar. Twist those wires into a loop for hanging, and voila! Use sand or small pebbles to hold a votive upright in the jar, or melt wax and pour your own directly inside it.

Single salt and pepper shakers are good finds, too. Usually deemed practically useless and priced very low, they are perfect for other shaker-friendly seasonings like cinnamon, garlic salt and poppy seeds; or remove their lids, give them a rinse, and you have a pretty little vase just right to show off a special bloom.

Here's the original table that caught my eye but unfortunately escaped my pocketbook!

Another option for a crafter in the yard sale world is recreating items you see for less expense or to better suit your needs and taste. I fell in love with a small table at a sale in Kentucky. Sadly, the price tag exceeded my entire sale budget, and my shopping friend Vernelle forbade me to find an ATM to make the purchase, so back into the car we went.

At a sale about 60 miles down the road, serendipity. I found four wooden spindle table legs, bundled together, brand-new with hardware-store price tags still attached. They would cost about $12-$15 each at a home improvement store; I got all four for $8, not knowing what I might do with them, but remembering that I'd made more than one trip to a hardware store for spindly little table legs before, and this was a price I couldn't pass up. Then it occurred to me that the charm I saw in the little table up the road could easily be recreated at a fraction of the cost.

Here's my version of the original, re-created for $23 and about an hour of time. It's ready to be painted or stained.

When I got home, I purchased a small round birch tabletop piece at a home improvement store for $9 and two bags of 25mm (about 1 inch) wooden round balls/beads for $3 a bag at a craft store. For about $23, I was able to recreate the charm of the little table with a $300 price tag.

To determine how many balls you'll need to go around the table, consider the size of the tabletop, the size of the balls you use, and how far apart you'll space them. I bought two bags at the craft store, estimating that it would do — and it did. With the tabletop upside down, I placed all the balls around the underside edge side by side. They reached exactly halfway around the table, so I knew that I had enough to go all the way around, leaving about an inch (or one ball's width) of space between each one. I glued down every other ball, using the ones in between as spacers and used them later to fill in around the other half of the table. After the legs are attached to the tabletop and the balls are glued on, you can either stain or paint the table. The original one is stained, but I plan to paint mine white or ruby-red to show off the details. Remember that paint hides a multitude of sins; you can use lesser-quality wooden legs and a tabletop piece that isn't solid wood, like those little three-legged side tables that come ready to assemble for about $5.

Without fail, every year somewhere along the highway sale I find old chandelier crystals, usually from $1 each up to way too much. There are dozens of uses for these sparkly little gems, so I try to buy some whenever I find them. Probably the simplest use for them is Christmas ornaments. Many are already strung on wire or cord and might even have small hooks on them, which fit directly onto an ornament hanger. You can make them a little more special by wrapping them in colored or plain metal wire strung with beads. When I get enough crystals, I'm going to make a lampshade out of them. Maybe at next year's sale.