Yesterday I got up at a respectable time and joined my friend and her mum (who were both up at 5am!) to help out with their boot sale and also have a nose around other peoples stuff. It was a lovely day, everyone was very inquisitive and a lot more involved than the previous boot sale I tried to sell my junk at, and my friend achieved a very modest 40 quid for her unwanted goods.

An even better result was that I had quite a decent haul myself, I hadn’t set out to buy anything since I’m moving in a month and I don’t really have the money to spent on random things but I thought if something caught my eye I’d consider it, but I’d only buy it if it was cheap and most definitely worth it!

After all the mandatory glass ware, kids toys and run down old appliances I happened upon my first find:

Sitting on top of a pile of books was this brand new book on my favorite subject, and hopefully the subject I will be studying at Uni in a years time, CRIME! It didn’t even look like it had been read and only a tiny 50p!! Bargain, to be honest I would of been quite happy to just bring that back but I had only got through a quarter of the stalls.

Onwards and upwards, this time with my friend in tow having a break from her stall, I then spotted an even better Crime lovers find:

There were actually even more crime books in another box but these were a nice neat set and all in almost immaculate condition. You could tell they had been read but the previous owners had obviously kept them very well. Now guess how much all 7 of these almost new books cost?? Go on guess….

£2.50!!

That’s like 35p a book! They were originally selling for 50p each but I said if I get all 7 will you do me a deal (Haggling is the best bit of a boot sale) and naturally she obliged, thank you lady, you made me very happy:)

At this point I didn’t think it could get any better to be honest, I had 8 books for a total of 3 quid and a few months of reading entertainment. This was until I found my best bargain hunt style find and probably the most exciting to all my crafty readers.

How gorgeous is that?! A vintage suitcase complete with squeaky old lock and canvas interior. I have seen so many projects around the internet on turning one of these into a display of some sorts using the inside space. My mum was also in an exhibition where the artists had to create a ’suitcase’ and the things all of them came up with were magical! Here is my mums excerpt on her site and click here to see what she made.

The Magical Box of Curation is an artwork created as part of ArC 2008. Commissioned by Firstsite and Colchester Consortium 7 artists who worked within the consortium schools were asked to work together on an artwork which will act as a learning resource for schools in addition to being an object of art. It was decided that each of us would create a ‘suitcase’.

I can’t find the site with all the artworks on but I will ask my mum and post it on here soon. If anyone knows of any good tutorials or have done something similar then I would love to see them.

As for the price of this amazing vintage find, the sticker on it said £6 but I initially didn’t buy it, just looked, so when I came back he said I could have it for a fiver. There were loads more in different sizes, I would of loved to fill them all with amazing tiny things or something and display them in my new new house.