It's always good when you can find a purpose for an old item, it gives it a new life and saves it from the bin, which is I think anyway something we should do more of, it's not a new thing either, people have been changing things from their original purpose for many years, we tend to call it being thrifty or frugal these days, but it's not new but it is a good idea, it saves things from landfill, it save you money.
So here's something I recently gave a new life to -
Not that useful these days.
A pair? of small brass shoe shaped ash trays with some nice engraving, they've had some colour added to the inlay as well, they are quite nice and obviously served a specific function, but these days fewer people smoke which isn't a bad thing, but what to do with a couple of old ash trays?
My first thought was pin cushions, my reasoning was that they are small and have a novelty value which is probably why they were ash trays in the first place.
To turn them into pin cushions was easy enough, all I did was get rid of the section on the back that would have held the cigarette, as these are brass I had to use my multi-tool.
Ready for modification -
Time for some surgery.
It didn't take long to grind away the back section, I used a small sanding attachment to remove any sharp edges and that was it basically, the next step is make a cushion.
Ready for a cushion.
The cushion was made from some old red velvet as it goes well with the brass (better once the brass was polished) and stuffed it with some wadding from an old pillow, I haven't detailed the steps, but basically I stitched a sausage shape from the velvet and stuffed it with wadding, then it was glued into the shoe.
And this is what I ended up with -
