What is a monkeybox?

When I was a little girl, we had a pet monkey named Amanda. My Dad worked in the produce business, so each night he brought home that days culls in a big box - spotty cucumbers, pithy apples, limp celery, moldy oranges and the like. We called it a monkeybox. It was really just trash, but my Mom would take each piece of fruit and trim it, pare it and cut it up to make a beautiful fruit platter for Amanda. Even though it was deemed trash by one, it still had life left in it and was good for the purpose we needed it. That's how I live my life - thrifting, yard saling, looking for another's trash to be my treasure.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Swappin' Vintage Junk

I participated in a Vintage Kitchen Swap over at Papermojo. I mailed my package over a week ago, so I am assuming it is safe to post my photos.

We had to make something for this swap, and that stymied me a bit. How do you made something vintage? Then, it came to me one night. Sometimes I just open all my boxes of odds and ends and bits and bobs ans stare at them in a trance. I start seeing repeats in the colors, themes and patterns and an idea comes to me. (DH thinks I've gone over the deep end when I sit and stare at a box of ribbons and buttons).

I took an old worn and aged recipe for Cherry Blossom Dessert and mounted it in a shadow box backed with red gingham paper cut with pinking shears. (I was going for a tablecloth look). Then I added the plastic cherries, the C-H-E-R-R-Y Scrabble tiles under the glass. The Good For One Coffee Token was added on top of the Shadow Box. Add a little red rickrack and you have yourself a brand new vintage item.
I love old aluminum kitchen things, so I added a few small vintage molds, an old mini bread tin, old measuring spoons, cookie cutters, a creamer and some pretty glass S&P's with red plastic tops. I have a stack of old fruit crate labels, so I added one for color. It's all on a sweet muslin and yellow gingham apron. That green roll on the left is a set of two hand knitted dishcloths.
I added some vintage inspired recipe cards from target and hand wrote the recipe for the Cherry Blossom Delight Dessert. The metal PRESERVES container is new, but looks vintage. I had two boxes of the old vintage Food Warmer Candles, so I shared on with my partner.
An old Premium Cracker tin, some old cookbook leaflets, a new granite splatter ladle and a piece of vintage Embroidery.
Two red and aqua vintage potholders go well with the vintage Salmon label. (That's an original label without a brand name. They made blank labels for canned goods and produce, then added the Name Brand later.) I love the old graphics and hope my partner appreciates the colors and cool old graphics. That's a very old paper napkin at the top.
I had fun with this swap and hope my partner enjoyed it. You can see her blog here.

5 comments:

  1. You are the bestest swap partner.

    I tried the link for the recipients blog, but it said it doesn't exist. HMM?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think I might actually fall down dead from excitement to receive that package. LOL Amazing, as usual! That cherry thing at the top is SO, SO darling--I love every.single.thing about it! You have totally outdone yourself!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think that I would change my entire decor just to match that cherry vintage project. You did a beautiful job.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I bow to you!...
    I had looked at that swap, but felt very intimidated by it and decided it better for me to pass on by. YOU DID AWESOME!!!
    Those 'salmon' labels are out of this world!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow--your hand made item is FABULOUS--what a great idea! Lots of fun items in this swap package that you found!

    ReplyDelete

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