Repurposing Ideas, Repurposed

Doing my usual internet trawling for design ideas and to avoid the washing-up, I happened upon this article from Real Simple, detailing 14 ideas to repurpose items for a dream-yet-bargainacious wedding. Flicking through, however, many of these ideas are far from nuptually exclusive, and would work for an array of events, dinner parties or just a bit of credit-crunch repurposing fun. Then it occurred to me that I was actually repurposing an article about repurposing and I got rather excited (and a tiny bit smug about the workings of my ingenious little brain). Anyway, do click on the link to peruse in full, or check out the Craft Hacker tidbits below:

1. Use pretty vintage teacups and soup tourines to hold flowers and food nibbles: filling teacups with sugared almonds is great for a wedding, but why not try candy-coloured foil-wrapped chocolates for afternoon tea, skittles or M&M's for a tweenager's party, or - if you're an ambassador and want to really spoil your guests - some Ferrero Rocher to round off your evening soiree in style.


2. Repurposed cake stands - scour charity shops and you can pick up an array of these vintage beauties. Use for holding fun finger foods, or candles - a great idea to stop them dripping onto your tabletop and to allow you to pack more into the same space through clever tiering. My inner Anthea Turner loves the tip also listed about adding a spritz of cooking oil spray onto the area first to allow for easy cleaning of wax drips.

3. Clothespegs as namecard holder - would look very sweet at a rustic summer's barbecue party, or turn up the vintage by substituting for Grandma's old dolly pegs. With either variety, spraypainting would be a quick and easy way to update if the natural wood finish happens to clash with your hordeuvres. For a more masculine affair, a good old bulldog clip would look great teamed with the right placecard, or even a chunky oversized paperclip, bent out of shape to hold the placecard upright.