I like to collect vintage tins. It started out with button tins, which I took the poor vintage buttons out of. Do you know what decades of being stored in an airtight container does to those poor things? The different plastics emit gases and they all sit there it the chemical filled tins. Soon, all the metal buttons get corroded, the plastic buttons crack and crumble and the leather buttons get all icky. Anyway, once I put the buttons into containers that breathed, I ended up with some awfully cute tins. I started displaying them or using them to store things that didn’t need to breathe inside. (Or, if they needed to breathe, I didn’t close the lid tightly.)
Photo:SXC
Then, one day, I found a tin for a few cents in a thrift store. Before you fear the worst, let me assure you that I am terribly selective, so have only collected about twenty tins all together. If I end up with one I don’t want, I can use tin snips to cut it up and then use it for collage work or pass it on to friends who are into metalworking.
Tins make a nice display if you group them together with a variety of other tins in similar colors. They also look great mixed in with collectibles with a similar theme. For example, a tea tin fits in well with tea cups and tea pots.
Do you collect vintage tins?
Post from: Blisstree