Eye Opener: Photo Essay

I had a hard time deciding what to do for my photo essay, but I was surprised to find out it was a lot easier to accomplish than I originally thought!  I decided to take some pictures of "stuff" at my grandparent's house over Thanksgiving.  My grandparents are avid rummage sale-ers, so they are always finding cool "junk" that people give away for practically no cost!  Some of the items they showed me were things I could re-purpose, and others were things they bought at the rummage sales that someone had already re-purposed them!  Check them out:

 

 I found these old decanters in their basement, which are used to store wine.  My grandma collects a lot of glassware like this, but she hardly uses them for any practical purpose.  I thought these could be a decorative vase for some flowers because of the great designs on the sides.  

 

My grandparents are pretty good on recycling, hence this giant bucket of crushed aluminum cans.  These were just lying in their basement, so I don't know if my grandpa was saving them or waiting to recycle them.  When I found them, I instantly thought of how you could make some pretty cool artwork with these, since they're all crushed up in perfect little circles.  It would be cool to make a pattern from the different colors around the sides and put it in some type of frame for artwork, or you could even make some kind of cool wind chime with them!

 Ever wonder how people used to iron those giant dresses and fancy outfits when they didn't have electricity or only had limited electricity?  Here's an old iron, which had to be used by placing over a fire so it could get hot enough to iron clothes.  My grandparents use these (they have a few of them) as doorstops or weights to hold something down.  I think they're pretty cool as decorations, too!

This was one of the items I found that was already re-purposed: a rock!  I thought it was pretty cool how whoever painted this was able to use the entire front half of the rock to create a fawn.  It's a great decoration!

 

These are my favorite antiques from their house!  Do you know what they used to be??  These glass objects used to be candy holders for children to buy at their local store.  The train is hollow from the bottom, and my grandma said people used to put little sprinkle-like candies inside it and place a piece of cardboard under it so they wouldn't fall out.  The donkey would carry its candy in the cart behind him. These are great to re-purpose because they are cute decorations by themselves, and you could still use them as candy holders today!

When my grandpa showed me this, he asked me what it was (this was before the box of matches was placed in it).  I thought it was some kind of bird feeder.. but it's actually an old match holder.  It even had slits on the side so you could keep the box in the container to strike the matches!  My grandparents said these usually weren't decorated so nicely, so they assumed someone else added the decorations.  Maybe the previous owner redecorated and didn't use it as a match holder?

This is probably my favorite antique/re-purposed item my grandparents have.  Can you guess what it used to be?  This used to be an old meat grinder (the handle part to grind the meat is hidden behind it).  The previous owner painted it and made little pockets on top of the "table" of the meat grinder to place matching salt and pepper shakers.  I thought this was definitely the most creative re-purposed item I've ever seen!

I think the most important thing I learned when doing this project is that you need to keep an open mind when trying to re-purpose things that seem like junk.  Once I got rolling on this project and found my first item, it seemed to be much easier because I began to get more creative in discovering these cool things!