Creative Vintage Darlings Spring Blog Hop

Oh my word friends! I’m so excited for this spring blog hop! Our absolutely fantastic Creative Vintage Darlings are hosting this and if you haven’t yet heard of CVD let me fill you in. We are a community of like minded vintage goods lovers. We are drawn to the stories behind vintage items and always wonder who owned them before us and what their lives were like. We attach memories and stories to the items we collect and can’t stay away from flea markets and thrift shops. We haul our treasures back and find creative ways to display and use them all over our homes. If this sounds like you, you might be a Creative Vintage Darling. Our facebook group is absolutely full to the brim of vintage eye candy – join us!

Oh and see all that damage on the edge of my table? That’s HER fault. Rotten doggie.

Okay, onto my vintage thrift shop creation. As you know, I am at the thrift shop constantly. I love love love vintage pretties and sometimes I find myself picking things up for reasons I don’t even understand. How I grabbed this vintage triangle pool rack and racket protector are beyond me. We don’t have a pool table and modern rackets come with vinyl sleeves. Nevertheless there I was in the thrift shop grabbing these things up. I paid $1 for the protector and $3 for the triangle.

The challenge was on! What was I going to do with these things? Man alive, I played with them for hours, stacking and rotating and adding in other things. At one point I thought I could make a lamp but abandoned that idea as I didn’t wish to hunt down the lamp kit. I wanted to keep expenses minimal. I found a scrap of leftover cedar board from when we built our garden boxes last spring and instantly the vision popped into my brain. A shelf! The triangle provides a frame and the racket protector gives some structure. Tada!

I sanded all the parts down and for the cedar, I rubbed it with coconut oil – cedar is naturally averse to rotting (why we chose it for garden beds) but oiling it does help with protecting it from water rings and dust. The oil also darkened the colour just a tad. It helped it mesh better with the walnut stain I put on the triangle. The racket protector was given a spray of primer and then painted in metallic gold. Why not add a little glimmer, right?

Once I worked it out in my head, putting it together was pretty simple. I cut the cedar board down to fit inside the triangle, always using my tried and true method of eyeballing it once and cutting 15 times. Works for me. The key is to start with something that’s guaranteed to be too big in the first place and whittle it down until it fits. You use your preferred method though, maybe measure it or whatever. Then I drilled two holes in the cedar and triangle, using the racket protector as a jig for the spacing, and threaded the bolts through. I topped this sandwich off with the original wingnuts from the protector and the easy part was over. Figuring out how to hang it on the wall was another story. In the end I went with a simple picture hanger. The rope is purely for show, it doesn’t bear any weight, and honestly it might be my favourite part.

Here’s a better look at how it’s put together from the back.

You could choose different hardware if you wanted it sleek and flush. Me, being a bit of a wingnut myself, I decided to let the wingnuts feature prominently on the top of the piece. I like that it gives homage to the original parts of the shelf and a bit of interest too.

Now it’s the perfect place to showcase a little plant and a few other pretty things. The brass acorn is a Japanese garden bell that my husband and I picked up on our trip through San Francisco. A lovely new item with an old story! The canister plant pot was also a thrift shop find. The little white bottle with the bee bum on it was new a few years ago and it’s the perfect spot to tuck in a few blooms.

I’m sure that I’ll fuss and restyle this shelf often when I bring new old things home to showcase!

Thanks for following along with my thrifty vintage DIY makeover! I’m very pleased with how it turned out and the whole thing cost me about $5 after it was all said and done – I had to buy the rope new. It’s absolutely giving me $5 worth of enjoyment and more. If you’re inspired by this upcycle to shop your thrift store for fun vintage items you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. The other Creative Vintage Darling’s admins are getting up to some interesting antics too. Go check out their projects  AND you can find more vintage fun by following our hashtag on Instagram – #creativevintagedarlings and following our group board on Pinterest.