Stuff crafters will buy / Etsy Thread

[Jillyenator]

I always save my fortune cookies to eat. It bothers me when people open them to get the "fortune" and not eat the cookie. They are actual cookies that taste good!



I just found an old clothes pin - the vintage wood kind that was made before they put springs on them. Crafters love those.

Along those lines, buckets of clean popsicle sticks, if anyone likes popsicles or has kids that do. People actually buy them new. Better to buy them used from us; save a tree, give us money.

And was thinking about bricks. Those are sellable to lots of people, and concrete blocks. Stepping stones, tiles. I might have said tiles before, but crafters paint those.

Finials. Tops of baluster spindles. The metal thingies that screw on tops of lamps; pull cord metal things on light fixtures. Lamp harps.

Old fishing poles. Old fishing anything, I think - great wall decor for cabins. Old snowshoes and skis, same thing.

[scrapping4ever]

the luckiest fortune cookies ever 2 in 1 pack! No joke

[Sirscrapalot]

Heh..My facemunchers get the cookie part after I get the fortune. I'd give them the fortune to, but they can't read. Just sniff it an try to eat it.

Popsicle sticks rock, especially if you get to eat the Popsicle!

Add to the list..multitude of bottles if your like me in a state the doesn't do a deposit. I save my cool beer bottles, mason jars, an other neat looking glass for a couple people I know who use them for various things, including candle making.

Beer can's an soda can's to. Make neat projects for some folks, tho I usually end up taking mine to the yard when I get a bunch of bags. The cool ones tho I save for others.

Here's a link on things you can use the cans for.

10 Cool Things Made Out of Beer Cans :: Drink :: Lists :: Paste

an another for bottles..

12 Things To Do With An Empty Beer Bottle | Cool Material

an one more for jars..

15 DIY Ways How to Reuse Glass Bottles |

The Christmas light one I see regularly at our local craft shows. They are pretty cool in person. An the solar beer bottle light is something I think I'm going to try next time I have clear ones. Most the ones I have are dark.

Sirscrapalot - Amazing what one can do with just a simple item like a glass jar, bottle, or can.

[scrapping4ever]

Nice! I see you have the blue and green tabs pulled aside.

Where are you planning on selling?

I like the 'ninja stars'. Clever name for them. And "steampunk" gears for the last pic?

I plan on trying the ETSY thing. My Mom sells purses and other fabric creations there but when I give her something to sell she keeps it for herself! She complains at me about my junk but she is just as bad. Don't even get me started on my father. Half of his garage is dedicated to building robots. I need to do a scrapping purge. It is getting bad. I'm worried all 3 of us will be on the show hoarders one day.

[scrapping4ever]

P.S. my sincere apologies for hijacking

[Sirscrapalot]

So would that be a Siamese twin fortune cookie? We keep ours in a drawer..heh.

Sorry for the double post, S4E posted while I was hitting post on my last one! I blame him.

Sirscrapalot - People have got to learn: if they don't have cookies in the cookie jar, they can't eat cookies. - Suzie Orman

[Jillyenator]

Sir, great links! Some of those bottle ideas are neat. I like the idea of having a soap dispenser at workshop sink from a beer bottle. I'd have to use Fat Tire, my favorite bottled beer.

This, of course, is in my imaginary workshop with a sink. While we're renting in NC, my workshop is a corner of the living room. Need to find a nice house with property so I can do my thing in peace.

Wax, any old candles, candle stubs, wax in old jars where the wicks are buried. My MIL gets testy when I don't save my old candle wax for her. She melts the bits down into new candles. She also melts down old crayons into the wax to make colors, so I save crayons for her too. I recently found a huge bag of old crayon stubs in someone's trash. Also a container of colorful never-used pencil erasers, which I gave to a teacher.

There's a technique to get wax out of glass jars - freeze the jars. Use flathead screwdrivers to get the wax out. The freezing makes them uncling from the glass walls of the jars. Bag the wax, add more wax to the bag as you get some, and sell it.

[Jillyenator]

Oh! Big glass jugs. Home brewers buy these. The kind that the cheap wine comes in with the handles: growlers and carboys. I think apple cider also comes in these, although I'm not sure they haven't all switched to plastic yet.

Beer bottles with the caps that are attached by metal things are in demand by brewers too. The Grolsch beer kinds. Those are actually pretty cool little reusable jugs. I might have to drink more of them so I can sell the bottles.

Home-brewers want any beer bottles that have screw-on or lock-on caps.

Wine brewers want the wine bottles with screw-on caps too.

[Jillyenator]

P.S. my sincere apologies for hijacking

No apologies - this is an awesome contribution. LOL about Hoarders. How many of us could be on there, I wonder?

And the robot thing is interesting - what materials is he using for the robot making? Maybe that could be a category here too.

[Jillyenator]

I keep thinking of more things. Mint tins, like the Altoid containers. Any little closable metal containers are in demand. They are getting rarer; a lot of companies are using plastic containers now. Of course, the little vintage metal snuff containers and stuff like that are sellable. One small, simple snuff box is selling on Esty right now for $1,250.00

Even the bigger tins, like the round Danish Cookie gift ones. Metal candy containers in heart shapes from Valentine's Day, or the rectangular ones from over the holidays. The big popcorn tins. New tins sell to crafters, old ones sell to collectors.

And Sir will like this one - metal coolers.

[scrapping4ever]

Go to google images and type in botigans the first 2 images are my dads

[Jillyenator]

Wow. Those are freaky good.

[Sirscrapalot]

That is pretty cool(the botigans heh), an of course I love metal coolers. One day I'll pull the trigger an me the old coke ones. An a pepsi one, that old stuff is cool.

An tins are pretty good also, I know my wife keeps any good ones she finds. As she likes to bake. heh.

Sirscrapalot - i had a quote, but I don't know where it went.

[emeeks]

Not sure if it's been mentioned or not, but the AL rings in hard drives I sell for Steampunk Jewelry.

They actually do pretty well.

[FLimits]

All right, you guys made me go look at Etsy. (I'm seriously 100% not-craftsy. I think I was spooked away from even trying anything like that by an aunt who could out-Martha Ms. Stewart herself. My efforts would have looked so lame and pathetic compared with her spectacular feats of transformation. Anyway...back to the subject...)

So of course when I went to check out Etsy, the first search term I put in was "computer." (groan -- hey, I'm nothing if not predictable) There wasn't much that caught my eye, but I did notice some interesting jewelry made from things like circuit boards and chips. I would figure anything pretty -- some of the old ceramic chips with gold, for example -- could be used by jewelry-makers.

There were also some nice clocks made from hard-drive components, sound cards, CDs, even game cartridges. I don't know if this necessarily means Etsy is a good place to try to sell the raw materials to make these things, but it would be pretty easy to make some of this stuff and sell it there. The seller who has the clocks is called GeekGear. He's selling these clocks, which must take a maximum of 1/2 hour to make, at prices from $15 to $30, and he has 2,629 reviews, so he must be moving a lot of merchandise. It's pretty smart. I kinda even want one of those clocks now. :-P

Last but not least, there's the whole keyboard craze. If you're not up on that whole thing, check out the mechanicalkeyboards subreddit, GeekHack, and Deskthority. There are a lot of keyboard-obsessed people out there, and they put a lot of time and money into building new keyboards, modifying existing ones, etc. So if you find a nice mechanical keyboard, obviously, you want to sell that intact. But these key-hounds are now buying things like old laptops, gaming consoles, terminals, etc. just to cannibalize them for their keycaps. So if you ever have something that's not resaleable (or just not worth much) but it has nice keycaps, you can harvest them and sell them. Just be sure to read up on the types of switches people prefer. Keycaps that fit the most popular switches (Alps, for example) will be the most valuable ones.

[emeeks]

I actually have a customer that comes in from time to time and makes these INCREDIBLY awesome works of art with the scrap I give her. They're so nice, she wouldn't let me take a picture of them. They go on for auction. They're pretty cool though.

All right, you guys made me go look at Etsy. (I'm seriously 100% not-craftsy. I think I was spooked away from even trying anything like that by an aunt who could out-Martha Ms. Stewart herself. My efforts would have looked so lame and pathetic compared with her spectacular feats of transformation. Anyway...back to the subject...)

So of course when I went to check out Etsy, the first search term I put in was "computer." (groan -- hey, I'm nothing if not predictable) There wasn't much that caught my eye, but I did notice some interesting jewelry made from things like circuit boards and chips. I would figure anything pretty -- some of the old ceramic chips with gold, for example -- could be used by jewelry-makers.

There were also some nice clocks made from hard-drive components, sound cards, CDs, even game cartridges. I don't know if this necessarily means Etsy is a good place to try to sell the raw materials to make these things, but it would be pretty easy to make some of this stuff and sell it there. The seller who has the clocks is called GeekGear. He's selling these clocks, which must take a maximum of 1/2 hour to make, at prices from $15 to $30, and he has 2,629 reviews, so he must be moving a lot of merchandise. It's pretty smart. I kinda even want one of those clocks now. :-P

Last but not least, there's the whole keyboard craze. If you're not up on that whole thing, check out the mechanicalkeyboards subreddit, GeekHack, and Deskthority. There are a lot of keyboard-obsessed people out there, and they put a lot of time and money into building new keyboards, modifying existing ones, etc. So if you find a nice mechanical keyboard, obviously, you want to sell that intact. But these key-hounds are now buying things like old laptops, gaming consoles, terminals, etc. just to cannibalize them for their keycaps. So if you ever have something that's not resaleable (or just not worth much) but it has nice keycaps, you can harvest them and sell them. Just be sure to read up on the types of switches people prefer. Keycaps that fit the most popular switches (Alps, for example) will be the most valuable ones.

[Jillyenator]

I read this elsewhere: Stove parts, along with knobs, switches, burners and timers. There's apparently a guy on ebay who only lists used stove parts.

FLimits, that is actually quite interesting on the mechanical keyboards. I went and read about it and learned a few things about the history of how the key situation evolved.

I know I always pop off the keys on ANY keyboard for my MIL's crafting - she likes to spell things out with the keys, and also presses stuff like that into mosaics.

[happyscraper]

I give all my sewing related items to an organization that does craft "therapy". They rehabilitate stroke, accident, and trauma victims (and others in need). I met her at a yard sale and when she explained to the people having sale, what she was looking for (they had nothing she needed). I told her I have a lot of brand new fabric and all kinds of thread, needles and even some sewing machines. She was a little hesitant and I asked not what you needed? No she says we need all of that, I only have a $20 a month supply budget, I told her no you can have them! She had a little mini van, that appeared to be full (with her organization logo on it). I told her I don't think you have enough room though. She asked where I lived, I told her no it's at my business. I told her I have a hobby, I scrap I said. Funny she thought I did scrap books, now I was confused. She explained to me about the hobby of making photo scrap books and that it was mostly women (I assured her not this man). I took her to my secret, better than scrap room. I showed her the boxes of sewing stuff and said you can have it all. I thought she was going to faint, she tells me, I will need to make a few trips, I said no we will deliver it to your organization on Monday morning. Jill thank you for this thread, I'm going to get her to make me a list of craft items. If anybody knows about "crafting" it's this lady. Then if you give it or sell it may help someone, it's just not my speed (I like tools).

This was very good of you to give all that stuff away. Did you ask her to give you a call if she comes across any scrap? I bet she would remember you if does. What goes around comes around.

[happyscraper]

Three chears for Jilly for starting this thread, very intresting. I'm going to start finding crafters and see if I can start saving some of this stuff. I wonder how much money I've thrown away over the years. I have about 3 or 4 big boxes of cookie tins that I use to put screws and small metal items in and tape the tops on and put them in the shred pile. Maybe I can try to sell some of the nicer ones. i get them for free from the thrift store that I pick up from. My sister uses old blue geans to make braded rugs. How about the split key rings, I get them some times from the thrift store too. Now if I could find some crafters that would buy my ABS plastic I would have it made.

[Sirscrapalot]

If the tins are clean an nice looking, look for folks who bake also. I save the ones my wife doesn't keep, that are still in good condition for the Senior activity center here on my sandbar. I give them to the ladies who run the bake sales table. They love'm. I keep the others for things like you said Happy. Usually only the rusted an not good for anything else. The good ones I do keep for myself I reuse. I like the Thomas Kinkade ( I think thats how you spell his last name) winter themed ones..an will reuse them over an over for things in the shop. Yea..I'm weird, you all know this though.

An yes I love this thread to, perfect for those of us who not just recycle but like to see items reused an given a new lease on life.

Sirscrapalot - Now I'm starting to jog. But every time I do jog I have 9-1 pressed into my phone, with the next '1' ready to be launched in case I drop. - Kevin James