One man's trash is another man's treasure

A while back, Alton started talking about this store in Durham called the Scrap Exchange. He seemed shocked that I'd never heard of it before. We found it online, and I was intrigued. The store is a nonprofit organization that collects trash and sells it back to the community. Yeah, sounds kind of weird, huh? Let me put that another way. The store takes in industrial waste, as well as individual donations and municipal leftovers and encourages repurposing the materials through activities like... making art (or, in my case, scrapbook projects). Everything is super cheap, and you never know what you'll find there.

Anyway, this weekend was the first opportunity the two of us had to check the place out together. I am so glad Alton told me about this place. And I'm so glad he was sweet enough to take me there and stand patiently by while I dug through the bins of paper, vintage sewing patterns, old albums, fabric, ribbon... you get the picture. Here's a photo of what I brought home with me (all for less than $10, mind you):

In case you can't tell, that's a huge stack of old sheet music, some wooden spools, two vintage pattern packets (tissue included), some wine corks with cool stamping on them, a big roll of muslin fabric, an old album with cover, some old stock certificates with gorgeous images at the top, and even some foreign currency from several countries! The sheet music alone (and I got quite a bit of it) was enough to have me jumping for joy. Oh, the vintage pages I can embellish with those sheets (and not worry about hoarding it for the most special of projects!) What a fabulous idea this store is. And what a fabulous set of finds for me!