A Cute Stripey Glass

Just wanted to share this glass I fell in love with at a thrift store the other day. The blue happens to be my favorite color. The stripes are so happy. The shabby gold of the rim makes it a little fancy. I paid a whopping .99 cents for it and it brings me so much joy!

Don'tchya love it?!

Chandelier

I love, love LOVE my chandelier. 

What I love most about it, besides how fabulous it is, is that I found it on the side of the road. 

Yep. This might just be the reason that I keep pulling over to piles of junk today. 

About seven years ago, I was preparing to open my photography studio. This happened to be about the same time that I really started to hone in on my love of all things shabby & beautiful. I decided I wanted just that kind of comfy, vintage feel for my studio. And the perfect chandelier was a must. 

I scoured craigslist, the internet, local shops but couldn't find what I was looking for at the price I was looking for (which was next to nothing). Then one day I was driving home and happened to see a pile of stuff on the opposite side of the road - in which there was a divider, therefore forcing me to continue driving for about a mile until I could turn around and go back to explore. 

What originally caught my eye was a snazzy little wooden table that was buried in cardboard boxes. I stopped and as cars whizzed by me I began to move the boxes off the table when I heard a tinkling and rattling from within the box in my hand. I opened it up to see what was inside and...

 THERE WAS MY CHANDELIER!

I almost had a heart attack.

Even though all the crystals were off and rolling about the box and it was covered in a horrible black tarnish, dirt and spider webs, I couldn't have been more thrilled!

I brought it home to the usual eye rolls and comments about how it couldn't possibly work, to which I paid no attention as I embarked on a three day job of bringing it back to life. I scrubbed, I tediously rehung each crystal, and finally packed it back into a box and brought it to my new studio. Where it sat in the box for a whole other month or two! I was dying. My vision was for it to be hanging in the window glinting and twinkling at everyone passing by. However my friend who was doing the electrical work also had no faith in my little roadside scavenge with which I was still beaming with pride. I really didn't care whether it worked or not. I LOVED it.  

Finally I convinced him to hang it regardless and voila! It worked!!! 

I can't tell you how many people have commented on it through the years, and whenever I tell them I found it on the side of the road I feel like one rock star of a scavenger.

And thankfully, because of that find my faith in other people's junk possibly being my treasure keeps me pulling over to peruse the roadside piles.      

Ladder Makeover

Last week was bulky pick-up day in Kaimuki and I just happened to have a spare hour to do a little sidewalk scavenging. I will confess, I'm not always a confident scavenger. It can be a little embarrassing to dig through someone else's trash, but somehow when you throw in the words "re-purposing" and "art" it sounds a little more civilized, right? 

I actually drove past this pile of stuff with an old wooden ladder in it about 5 times before I finally stopped. I had to eventually stop because I have had a long time fantasy about having a wooden ladder to paint blue, I mean who doesn't??

It didn't help that there was no real place to pullover and I had to stop down the street a bit and drag the ladder back to my car. And then, as Im stuffing the ladder in I realize it has provided quite a few meals for termites. I thought about dragging it back to the pile... but I just couldn't. 

When my boyfriend got in the car later his comment went something like, "Really? A termite eaten ladder"?

And to that I replied, "Shush".

Yesterday when I lugged it down to my studio, I definitely had second thoughts. But then I realized, I live in Hawaii and every bit of wood eventually becomes termite food. So I decided it would live outside anyway. I've got to say, once it got it's little makeover I couldn't be happier that I rescued it from the side of the road and that it now lives in my garden. 

All of this to say, when you see that rotting little gem on the side of the road, shrug off the shame and remember how happy you'll be once you've given it some love and "repurposed" it into something "artful"!!

Ladder before

Ladder after

  

Do you delight in simple things?

If you delight in the simple, the raggedy, the peeling of paint, the patina of brass, scratches, rust, chips and cracks, then you are in the right place.

Fantastically Trashy Designs is the creative outlet of a sidewalk scavenger with a furniture fetish and a love of shabby things with a story of their own. I have partnered up with my girl "Sugar" and I am the "Bee" at Sugar Bee Designs where you can keep up with our projects, workshops and sales, and you can join me back here for ramblings on all things fantastically trashy!