THRIFTY THURSDAY: Do You See What I See?

This Thrifty Thursday is a little different from what I usually do: I decided to take you shopping with me!

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” (Marcel Proust - French Novelist and Author, 1871-1922)

I spent some time today helping a friend with her mother’s estate sale. I love estate sales, especially this kind, where the estate belongs to someone who’s still alive, but has moved. I spent my time almost exclusively standing in the basement, answering questions, and making sure nobody stuffed something in his or her pocket and walked out with it.

While I performed the task of “basement sitter”, I vividly remembered a trip to a thrift store with my Mama and two aunts. I was busily filling my cart with bits of this and that when I heard Aunt Charlotte say, “I’m just going to follow Anitra around and see what she puts in her cart.” I laughed and said, “But if you do that, I’ll get all the good stuff before you can get to it!” Aunt Charlotte told me it would be okay, because I was seeing possibilities she didn’t, and she wanted to learn how I did that.

It occurred to me that my Aunt Charlotte might not be the only one who’d appreciate a lesson in “seeing with new eyes”, so during those moments when I was alone in the basement, I turned on my camera, and took a “voyage of discovery”. What would “new eyes” see? Junk? Or art supplies?

The first photo is easy. It’s a pile of actual art supplies, proving estate sales are art supply stores, too. But do you see the bag o’ bottles? Those went to someone who planned to use them as bud vases. I see them on a window sill, with a single daisy in each.

Look it’s sputnik! No, it’s an octopus! No, it’s the framework for a solar system!

Just what I need—a wire-bending jig for heavier gauge wire:

Hmmm…these tiny figures of a king and queen would be the perfect start to a handmade chess set:

And what have we here? The world’s ugliest necklace?

Or some really cool brass beads?

Are these napkins?

Or the start of a pair of gauntlets?

These were just some of the hidden art materials I found in a single room. Now I wonder: What will you rescue and turn into art, the next time you look at something and see, not what it is, but what it could be? I’d love to know!