Collections in a Jar 4

 

   It is so sad to see April come to an end and equally sad to end our Collections in a Jar series. My Grand Finale is a random look at a few of my favorite collections in a jar that make me smile.  
   This first collection in a jar proves that I am a shameless pack-rat while also proving that you can make a collection out of just about anything (obviously)!
    I started saving birthday candles after celebrating my daughter's first birthday when I didn't have the heart to throw her candle away. Since then, I've saved each and every candle that has ever been blown out on a birthday cake by a member of our family! It's one of my dearest and sweetest collections in a jar.
    I have a fond attraction for old buttons and sewing notions, and I can't tell you how much I enjoy looking at the beautiful colors and shapes through an old glass jar. I often find these old notions at estate sales, yard sales and flea markets sometimes in the same sewing basket or little box where the last seamstress left them years before. I keep them in a wardrobe that houses my arts & crafts supplies as well as my collection of sewing books; hopeful that the more sewing notions and books I accumulate, the better my chances of becoming a great seamstress one day (for now I'm lucky if I can sew a pair of curtains). My daughter has taken over as Queen button collector in the family. She has been fascinated with them since she was a little girl playing in my Mom's button collection, sifting them through her little fingers like sand.

   Showing collections off in a jar adds an eclectic touch in decorating and works especially well when grouped together. These old jars in my guest room contain various collections of old stamps, skeleton keys and pennies. I can't tell you why, but for several years now I've had this unexplainable urge to save every penny from my birth year and keep them in a jar (just call me RainMan). 

   

     My daughter presented me with this instant collection of miniature dentures on my last birthday. She told me that the moment she saw the quirky little things she knew that I would LOVE them (and I do!). They are  goofy little key chains and they CRACK ME UP! I need to put them near my bathroom sink to remind me to floss everyday but, for now, they sit on my art table and make me smile.

  Speaking of smiling - this jar of little plastic dolls has no special significance except they seem to creep everyone out, especially my daughter, which I find very amusing.
   Well that's it! I hope you enjoyed Collections in a Jar throughout this month at Whimsybop. Stay tuned next week when we focus on Collections in a ziplock bag (just kidding!). 
   Please feel free to post photos of your jar collections on my new Whimsybop facebook page - I'd love to see what sorts of fun things that YOU collect in a jar! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Whimsybop/478628102184715?ref=hl

Collections in a jar 3

   There is a wonderful and magical phenomena that sometimes occurs when items are grouped together in a jar; it creates a sort of time capsule which not only encapsulates the items on display, but also emotion and memory. I find this to be true in my collection of small toys. I love collecting toys for many reasons, but one of my favorite reasons for collecting vintage toys is the reaction I get from others. I can't tell you how many times someone has looked into a jar of toys and has pulled out a memory. The collection becomes far more than something in a jar sitting on a shelf, but is rather a catalyst to something much more meaningful.

     This time capsule is full of toys mostly from my Saturday morning cartoon days. Thinking of my favorite cartoons, I am transported back to those days when there was only one television in the house which only had a few choice channels. It had no remote control and we had to turn it on then wait to let it "warm up" for a few minutes. I would always try to wake up early to allow enough time for my favorite shows before having to do the family ritual of Saturday morning chores. An endearing part of those cartoon days were the interruptions of "School House Rock" intermissions between cartoons; I still remember them to this day - a genius idea! 

   This jar, full of  yo-yos, bouncy balls and jacks comes in handy when kids are bored and need something to keep them busy. The collection is always kept at eye level so when kids visit our home, they will find it easily and feel comfortable to reach into it and pull out something fun and familiar to play with. I remember playing jacks on the hardwood floor in the living room on long summer days with my Mom and sisters.

 

     This collection of vintage agility games, also known as dexterity puzzles, remind me of the games that my siblings and I would play when we visited my Grandma's house in Cleveland (I can't remember if they were her games or if we brought them with us). The game I remember most was a handheld "Tomy" basketball game that was filled with water, (my siblings and I had a waiting list to play that one). The agility games in these jars are proof of a failed attempt to collect enough of them to hang on our game room wall. I had to finally stop because they were hard to find, and I could only find them at on-line auctions selling for unaffordable high prices. A few of my favorites are from the 1940's and made of tin and beautiful lithograph drawings of submarines, battleships and airplanes.

 The idea for this jar full of toys (center) came to me after I saw the DisneyPixar movie: Toy Story 2 and bawled my eyes out when Jessie the cowgirl sang her song: "When somebody loved me," (go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px0j1EHF8Y0 and see what I mean!). Shortly after watching the movie I started finding toys around the house that my kids used to play with, so in honor of Jessie the cowgirl and toys like her, I felt it my obligation to memorialize them in a jar. The note inside says: "Childhood - All too swiftly passes away."
   This last jar contains tokens, houses and cards from my all-time favorite board game: Monopoly. We didn't own a lot of board games when I was a kid, but we did own Monopoly and played it most during winter and summer vacation and cold, rainy days. Sometimes my brother, sisters and I would play a perpetual game that would last for an entire weekend. My brother always seemed to triumph over the three of us girls - sometimes bartering our household chores in lieu of paying him Monopoly money owed to him when we'd land on Boardwalk or Park Place with a hotel on it (My brother the real estate tycoon!).
   Take a look at that old Peter Pan Peanut Butter lid - is that a classic or what? It wasn't too long ago when everything came in a glass jar, now most jars are made of plastic - even Mrs. Butterworth's syrup now comes in plastic (gasp!) ...What is the world coming to?
   Stay tuned for the last Collections in a Jar; it's a good one! (Can you stand the excitement?)


Collections in a Jar 2

  

   In my last post I showed you a few collections I like to display in jars. Most of the jars I use for display are similar in size - with the exception of my five "Big Kahuna" jars that measure 13" tall and can hold a lot of stuff! I'm not exactly sure how old these jars are (or if they actually are old), nor am I sure what the jars were originally used for. My guess is that they are old pickle jars (does anyone know?)        
   When you walk into my newly renovated laundry room (oh, how I LOVE laundry day now!) you'll see this trio of jars high on a shelf. The first jar holds my collection of plastic advertisement icons from my childhood: The Stay Puft Marshmallow man, Snap, Crackle & Pop, The Pillsbury Dough boy and his Mrs., Sprout (I think he's related to the Jolly Green Giant) , Mr. Peanut, and Bob of Bob's Big boy restaurant. 
    Next on the shelf is my ever-growing collection of kitchy gadgets. I have lots more hiding in picnic baskets, but I had to stick these in a jar since they're just too cute and too colorful to keep them hidden.
   Last on this shelf is my jar full of cookie cutters. It's a mixture of new and vintage cookie cutters I love to use when I get in a baking mood.  I like keeping them in a jar because not only do I love seeing all the various shapes, but I don't have to wash them each time I use them because I know they're kept nice and clean even on a dusty shelf.
    
   I've been collecting McDonald's Happy Meal toys since my kids were wee little. Every summer we'd spend a few weeks visiting my folks in South Carolina and every Wednesday morning we'd hit the Pickens' flea market, (leaving the house before sunrise). My kids were always on the hunt for toys and would stop at EVERY vendor's space and go through boxes and boxes in search of their favorite action figures, superheroes and cartoon character toys, usually paying a dime or quarter for each one. Of course I couldn't just stand there and watch - like any good Mom I had to get on my knees and dig with them. Soon I began to take notice of the Happy Meal toys resembling my favorite McDonald's menu items and started my own pile on the ground - and a collection was born! I've slowed down buying them, primarily because my kids don't dig as much as they used to and the prices aren't cheap anymore either - but if I find one for a quarter or a dime, it's coming home with Mama!

   I've saved this jar for last because it's the grandfather of them all; it's my oldest and largest one and measures seventeen inches high! I bought it about twenty years ago at an antique shop in California and it has ALWAYS been my Pez jar (even before the kids came along). Once the kids joined our family the jar started filling up pretty fast - mostly because of a tradition we started which made the 1st day of each month our official family "Pez Day."
    On Pez Day the kids and I went out in search of a new Pez dispenser we did not yet own, which became quite a challenge after a few years. Pez Day eventually fizzled out after about 5 or 6 years; now our teenagers are happy to receive a new pez dispenser in their Christmas stocking and Easter basket. 

   Needless to say, we now have more Pez in our house than any family (or small country) should be allowed to have. Most of our Pez dispensers are hidden away in an undisclosed part of our home because if they were all out in the open, we'd be known as the freakish Pez hoarding family (and we wouldn't want that). It is comforting to know, however, in the event of a food shortage or a zombie apocalypse, our family will most likely outlive the remaining human race because of the crazy amount of Pez candy that will most likely sustain us during such a crisis (if you can make it over to our house, I promise we'll share). 

   Stay tuned for MORE Collections in a Jar - I know, the excitement is building!

 

Collections in a Jar

    Some people collect old canning jars (I have a few of those), and some folks collect old apothecary jars (I have a few of those too) - but my favorite jars to collect are chunky, over-sized jars with wide mouths in which I can show off a collection inside. I find this to be a neat & tidy way to display my smaller collections because they are easier to keep clean (jars are a cinch to dust off), and they are out in the open to be looked at and enjoyed instead of tucked away in a drawer, suitcase or closet.  
   Every now and then when the mood hits me I include a quote, verse from a song, poem, or scripture from the Bible which adds a little thought or whimsy to the jar and makes the contents a little more meaningful and/or fun.
   My TIME jar (pictured above) contains a small collection of old wrist watches, mostly broken. I wish I could say that these watches were all worn by my Dad, husband or someone that I love, but alas, they were not. Nope, these watches were all purchased from one dealer at a flea market last summer in hopes of tearing them apart to make a collage or to re-purpose them into jewelry. The only memory that is linked to these watches is the crazy amount of TIME that it took my daughter and I to sift through the heaps and heaps of costume jewelry (in the rain) in order to find them all! The little note inside of the jar is a Bible verse from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8: "There is a TIME for everything and a season for every activity under Heaven..."

    This next jar isn't as much of a collection as it is a constant reminder that I am queen of procrastination! I transferred the film  into this jar from a shoebox when we moved here four years ago and it's so darn cute that the urge to develop the film has left me. I started getting lazy about film developing after we started using a digital camera. I'll bet this film is at least 12 years old - Yikes! I keep the jar on a shelf, with a few old cameras that I love, perched on top of the family stack of high school yearbooks.    
   This jar of vintage cookie cutters is the eye candy that I keep on my kitchen shelf along with my chrome canisters and cookie sprinkles - all things that make me happy when I'm baking up something good in the kitchen.
 

  

  I have a quirky habit of rescuing Scrabble games from yard sales & thrift stores. When the game is a fairly new one, I dump the tiles into this jar. I get a kick using the tiles to spell out little "notes" around the house. 

   This last jar is filled with vintage cowboy & Indian plastic toys that are waiting to be placed into a "Wild West" themed shadow box that I've been wanting to make for a few years now. I love these old vintage toys by the Louis Marx Toy Company - such classics! The jar shares a shelf with my vintage "Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories" books (wholesome and wonderful stories from the 1940's) that I collected and read to my kiddos when they were young.

    Hey! I feel an idea coming on! Since I have so many more collections in jars that I'd love to share with you, I'm going to  feature "Collections in a Jar" for the entire month of April (try to CONTAIN your excitement), so stay tuned for "Collections in a Jar: The Sequel!"

P.S. I'd love to see photos of  your collections in a jar - please post them on my "NEW" Whimsybop facebook page! Click here to link to Whimsybop on Facebook!