Toolbox Decorating: Incorporating Found Art Into Your Home

I've always been drawn to vintage tools , , , especially those with bright old paint, wood handles seasoned with oil from long-ago hands, or just the right amount of rust on them.

 

Every time I go to a yard sale of flea market, old hand tools and garden implements seem to call out to me.

 

This was the "business end" of a broken rake. Screwed to the kitchen wall, it displays my vintage and collectible linens.

I found this authentic tin letter "L" at a moving sale in Kennebunk last year. It's quite large...must have been part of the sign on a store at one time. Since our last name starts with "L" and the price was right (only $10.00), I snapped it up.

My great big rusty "L" is now part of a grouping on a wall near the reading chair in the living room.

 

 

To fill in the space next to it, I framed the sunglasses my "Greatest Generation" parents wore on their honeymoon to Wells Beach, Maine in 1946. Not exactly tools, but "found art" for sure.

 

 

I found this vintage T-square ruler at the Liberty Tool Shop, an amazing junkers' paradise in the tiny mid-coast Maine town of Liberty.

 

It too looked like an "L" so that's the way I decided to hang it...as part of another grouping in the living room...

Above my vintage doorknob collection...more "tool bench" finds.

 

 

This old planer came from a small shop in Freeport, Maine. I had to have it for the great mustard color on the knob.

 

 

I display it with this book that I found in my father's desk after he passed away...

 

Dad used the book to build our family's first home in Newington Connecticut in 1950. He, his father and his brother, built the house by hand...step by step...using this book and the tools they had.

 

Now the book is grouped with a photo of my Dad and the planer on the bookshelf in the living room. Every time I see this little vignette it brings back so many memories.

 

I guess a ladder is a tool of sorts...I use this one as a drying rack for damp clothes in my laundry room I just like to look at it!

 

 

 

  

 I've still got quite a few rusty tools and "found objects" to come up with uses for. I buy them because I like their shapes...then I decide how I'll use them. I think the rake might end up on a wall with some sort of display hanging from the tines. I plan to use the saw handle as the top support for a sea glass mobile, and the horse bridle piece...who knows? Maybe a towel holder.

 

See how it works? Function follows form...

 

 Do you collect or decorate with vintage tools?

 

 

 

How do you use them???

I'd love to hear your ideas...

 

 

I'm hammerin' this post to the following blog parties this week:

Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps On the Porch

Motivate Me Monday at Keeping It Simple
Masterpiece Monday at Boogieboard Cottage
Time Travel Thursday at The Brambleberry Cottage