Tins and Things

I love pretty tins!

I started out buying them on eBay, as you do. I'd occasionally find an odd one or two at car boot sales, in charity shops, junk shops etc, but I rarely find them in such places now - unfortunately people often throw out beautiful tins for the recycling collection, and the few that do make it to charity shops are usually rejected because they've got crumbs in them, or something sticky stuck to them, or they're  bent or otherwise damaged.

I've seen them in junk or antique shops, but they're usually in too poor a condition for me to use. I can get round a few scratches, or rust spots (they're part of the item's history, so I don't always try to avoid them - I clean them up and wax the surfaces so that they don't degrade any further), but when the design is mostly gone, covered by grime or rusted away, there's no point.

I still buy them on eBay, but I also now have a whole fabulous army of tin-hunters (love my Tin Army!), all over the UK, who have become similarly addicted to hunting down the perfect tin. I often tell people at fairs (having explained how I've made the earrings or whatever they're  holding at the time) that they'll never look at tins the same way again, and they often come to me at later events and admit that they've also started looking for tins wherever they go! I've found tins on my doorstep, tucked under my stall at fairs, left in Zebediah's for me (see stockists page) and on my desk at work - yep, even my boss got the bug!

A good general guide as to whether a tin will be suitable for me to recycle into jewellery is to ask yourself "if this design were cut down to the size of a fingernail, could you still tell what it was?"

If the answer is "yes", I can probably use it. If the design is too "big", it won't work (see photos for a few examples)