We’ve had an email from ReuseRecycleMom‘s Von, saying:

I am recycling my grandmother’s old tea cups into bird feeders. I thought I’d share….

I’d love other ideas with what to do with odd bits of china.

We’ve already covered some bits and pieces – like mugs & cups that have lost their handles, and broken crockery in general – but what about other odd bits: cups & saucers like here, or gravy boats, milk jugs and other random tableware.

If they’re in good condition, they can of course go to charity shops or the like – the household bricabrac shelves are my favourite place for picking up beautifully ugly china – but what about stuff that chipped or cracked?

Like with last week’s baby food jars, I’ve seen old pretty cups and saucers used to make sewing kits (the cup topped with a pincushion and used for storage, the saucer used for holding pins/buttons mid-job) and old chipped shallow bowls around here are frequently used underneath plants.

Any other suggestions?

Back in October, John started collecting our used matches in a little dish and I encouraged it because it meant I wasn’t the only person in the house that collected random and strange things for some currently unimagined crafty reuse.

To be fair to John, he did have a plan at the outset – those matches, completely whole just with blackened heads, were going to become stubble on his Jack O Lantern but in the end went for a clean-shaven look and the matches keep accumulating.

They can, of course, be used as kindling for a fire but me being me, I wonder what else can be done with them.

Any crafty ideas? Or practical uses? I’ve seen people using matchsticks as tile spacers – so they could be used for that – but anything else that takes advantage of the burned bit?

(Oh, and if you’re wondering, we covered matchboxes ages ago.)

(Photo by allysonh)

On a random old post, Kinna asked:

how can I use old crayons?

On another random old post, I mentioned a great tutorial I found to melt down old stubs of crayons into fun shapes and someone else mentioned using wax crayons along with old candles to do encaustic painting.

If the crayons are still like new, just, say, an undesirable colour, you could follow in the footsteps of Herb Williams and use them for sculptures: I linked to his work on Things To Do Today a couple of months ago – very cool stuff.

Any other ideas for crayons and the annoying stubs of nearly used-up crayons?

(Photo by itshears)