Looking for something to mix into your Fall decor — something that will work with your country burlap and chicken wire looks as well as it will with more simple styles and even more elegant looks? Perhaps something that will work not only for today but can also work for your Thanksgiving table? Check out these handmade vases!

I like the mix and contrast of glass, metal, and thread. Tone on tone ivories and whites makes for an elegant sort of rustic glam, which is perfect for Fall decorating. The delicate dried flowers gives them a more elegant look. But you can use fresh flowers — or, my current obsession, air plants. The neutral tones allow for these little vases to work into many decor styles — and be flexible enough to change with the seasons!

About 20 years ago, I spotted the idea in a textile art magazine… I call them “floss vases.”

Sadly, I no longer have the publication nor even remember its name. (If you know it, please do let me know so I can properly credit the idea!) But I loved the look so much that I kept the idea in my head. It didn’t take long to stumble upon a box of vintage and antique balls of Coats & Clark crochet thread at an estate sale. It took longer to find the glass pieces for the vases themselves. Eventually, I scored a box of vintage glass cigar tubes. But the box of crochet thread was now buried in storage… You crafters and collectors know how this goes. Years of moving didn’t help. But recently, when we cleared out our storage unit, I found the boxes one at a time… One by one I dragged them home. Finally, decades later, I was able to put these beauties together!

While I adore the ivories and whites, this idea has lots of possibilities — including more color! Colored balls of floss or thread can be used. And the decorations can be colorful too.

Other favorites are what I call the “ecru and blues”…

(Shown here with a little vintage sewing drawer piece I made.)

Here are some made with colorful thread balls, paired with vintage diaper pins, hair barrettes, and buttons. They are very cute for nurseries and little girls’ rooms.

To make these, all you need are balls of crochet thread, glass cigar tubes (or test tubes or other small glass tubes or vases).

If you don’t have such vintage items on hand, you can try Etsy, of course. Or, if you are excited and would rather not wait (or risk the scenario I described above!), you can get new items at Amazon for this vintage look: Crochet thread balls, test tubes.

Assembling them is relatively easy. The vintage glass cigar tubes have rounded bottoms, so they must be hot glued or otherwise affixed to the paper bottom of the balls of crochet thread. For best results, I recommend putting the plastic seals on the top of the tubes to use. Simply cut off the part which would fit tightly inside the tube. Now you have a tiny flat-bottomed “dish” which can be filled with hot glue. Fit the round bottom of the glass tube inside the little dish of glue and hold ’til it sets. (Low temp glue is fine.) Once that’s set, use the glue gun to apply more glue to the flat bottom of the cap piece and quickly insert it inside the ball of thread and hold it securely in place until the glue sets, affixing the whole piece to the paper bottom of the ball of thread.

Once the glass vases are inserted, and, if necessary, secured in place, you are then free to decorate with bits and bobs you have sitting in your craft drawers… Bits of broken jewelry, charms, buttons, beads, sequins, bows, found objects, etc. Depending on the pieces used for decoration, you can attach them to the balls of thread via pins, tacks, chains, and even the glue gun again.

I like the simple clean look, where you can see the thread and the vase. But you can create your own variations… Stack more balls of thread to hide the vases. Load up the glam by covering up the surface of the balls of thread as much as you’d like.

All of these vases can be found in our booth spaces at both the Fargo Antiques & Repurposed Market & the FM Antique & Repurposed Market. Small vases (single ball of thread) are $12; larger floss vases are $16 each. As always, if you are interested in any of these items or any others on our site, contact us! We do ship (in the U.S.).

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There are many stories and legends about trapping spirits or imps in bottles, and they are especially fun to make and display at holiday time.

wax sealed spirit bottle fair oaks antiques

When you see these, you may be tempted to not even clean out your fresh-from-the-dirt bottles — but remember, there may be dead mice and far worse hiding in them. So clean and disinfect them first! (For heaven’s sake, at least disinfect the outsides!)

vintage antique glass bottles dug from dirt making spirit bottles

Making spirit bottles is a lot easier than cleaning them. The hardest part is finding and/or cutting corks to fit the bottles and then sealing them tight with sealing wax. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here…

If your bottle is stained or streaked from its long dirt nap, you may wish to do nothing else but cork and seal them. But if you want them to look more spooky, you can put bits and bobs in there that look a bit creepy… Found natural objects, like seeds, leaves, and feathers work. And you can add bits of moss, sting, and the like as well. Not to give too many of my secrets away, but you can pull apart some strings to make wispy webs — and I like to toss in a bit of flour and other bits to make some dust and things stick to the webs. You don’t need to add much of anything really. The simple “what is that” factor behind some cloudy glass in a distinctive bottle has a large effect.

Now you need to seal the evil spirits inside the bottles. For bottles without any caps or lids, I use cork stoppers. And I like to smudge the corks up a bit to make them look older and creepier. It’s easy to do this by rubbing the corks on newspaper. Given the random range of bottle sizes, you’ll likely need to cut or chop some cork pieces to fit. That’s OK, because they look old that way too.

corks spirit bottles

Whether you have cork stoppers or the original caps n the bottles, you’ll need to really make sure the spirits remain trapped in the bottles. For this, we used sealing wax. We opted for red and gold, but you can pick whatever colors you think work best. If you are doing this with children, adults should do this part — and carefully! Hot wax burns! (One note here, the gold colored sealing wax was more temperamental to work with.)

derek dripping sealing wax on spirit bottles

Once the bottles are sealed and the wax cooled, use twine to tie on some paper labels. We used slips of old paper from a sadly-too-damaged “lost” antique book to make labels, writing names for witches, demons, and diseases in German, Russian, and French! For finishing touches, I pulled strands of the twine part to have older looking strings. And we rumpled the edges of the paper tags too.

making spirit bottles

For the antique shop, I made a large display of the spirit bottles, hand-painting warning signs on more of the antique wooden shingles. We set down a vintage black hat and a few more seasonal items to create a little Halloween vignette. If you don’t want to make any spirit bottles yourself, you can come buy some at the antique shop — or contact us. We will ship! UPDATE: You can now find the spirit bottles and signs in our sister shop, LunaTiques!

spirit bottle display fair oaks antiques exit 55spooky halloween spirit bottles how to danger spirit bottles do not open

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This is one of our latest — and grandest finds: An antique venetian glass chandelier. This antique fixture is entirely glass (not acrylic), including the arms, the original clear crystal prism drops (with an amazing round crystal ball drop hanging from the center of the bottom), and the hand-blown globes or chimneys are hand-etched with a fine grapes and vines motif.

antique venetian glass chandelier vintage glass chandelier all glass chandelier crystal prism drops antique hand blown hand etched lamp chimney

We were so thrilled to find this antique venetian glass chandelier that we almost kept it! But, as we already have three antique chandeliers waiting to go into the house we are restoring, hubby put his foot down and one had to go up for sale. (Sometimes men have the silliest rules!) It is now available for viewing and purchase at Antiques On Broadway.

Once I got over my broken heart by imagining how delighted someone else will be to have this all glass beauty, the question became, “How do we best display it so that its beauty can safely be seen?” Hubby knew right away: Make a chandelier crate.

Since this was the same week our furnace died (during sub-zero temperatures here in Fargo,ND!), we quickly put together this wooden crate in our living room. (I enjoyed holding onto the freshly-sawed wood parts for their warmth!)

This last photo is what it looks like sitting in the window at Antiques On Broadway — as seen from the street.

antique venetian glass chandelier in crate fargo antiques on broadway

UPDATE: On September 7th (2014), we moved this beauty to our new space at Exit 55 Antiques. Here’s a photo of it on display!

venetianglasschandelierexit55

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Just some of the old brown glass milk bottles we have available for sale.

vintage borden's and devine's dairy brown glass milk bottles

Like beer bottles, these bottles were made of brown or amber glass to protect the contents from the deterioration of sunlight.

vintage brown glass milk bottle

Glass milk bottles are not too common; and these amber ones are even more rare. They have neat old dairy advertising too.

Currently, the collection of these (and many other glass bottles) is at Antiques On Broadway.

vintage glass milk bottles advertisng collectibles

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Sometimes I fall in love with things — to the point of obsession, or, as the hubby would say, to the point of stupidity. *wink* Today’s example is an old preserves jar.

vintage old manse preserves bottle jar

I knew that whatever was in this old glass jar was not a “good thing,” but somehow the metallic silver tone still sparkled and beckoned from behind the decorative molded glass. Look how the caramel-colored whatever-it-is seemed to flow along the inside of the smooth art deco lines! And who doesn’t love the dear Old Manse paper label on the front?! So I snapped it up.

old manse jar bottle before

But as soon as we got it to the van — and I do mean that it literally began after I bought it and brought it to the van — something really funky happened…

There was a strong odor — like that of gasoline. And there was some icky-sticky stuff beginning to bubble and ooze from a tiny rotted puncture in the jar’s lid…

leaking lid on vintage preserves bottle

Hubby once again admonished the purchase, saying we should toss it out in the garbage. As if! I was too smitten.

So I took the old glass jar home and proceeded to clean it out.

First, I tried to remove the lid. But it was firmly adhered to the red rubber seal — and the red rubber seal to the glass. So I proceeded to gently but firmly tear along the rotting edge of the jar’s lid with an old house key. Just a bit a first, so I could pour out the stinking liquid. It didn’t drain this old bottle as much as I’d thought. Thinking the more solid pieces were preventing proper drainage, I went back to continuing to tear at the old lid. It was pretty soft with the rot, but when I hit an area which was too tough I did enlist the husband’s help to finish prying the lid top all the way off. Eventually we effectively scalped it, leaving the red rubber seal and rim of the lid intact. This fully released the Kraken of smell. Ugh.

removing the stuck lid on the preserves jar

pried zinc lid off old jar

There still was not a lot of liquid to pour out. In fact, most of the whateveritwas was as stubborn and stuck to the glass as the seal and lid.

Given the approximate 2 and 1/2 inch opening of the jar, I had to be careful working with the ripped-off lid and what remained of the rough, sharp edges. We used a pliers to peel off sections of the old zinc lid and rubber seal.

Next, I had to try several different things to try to dislodge the gunk. I tried a pair of tongs, but whatever was in the center was as strong as a human tongue — and had roughly the same texture. Only it, and the entire jar, was covered in that metallic silver stuff too. Silver stuff that just didn’t scrape off. Not even with the business end of a steak knife.

I stabbed a few holes and slits in the center “tongue” and filled the jar with a mixture of bleach & water and let it sit. Several hours later, no change; so I repeated filling the jar with bleach water and let it sit over night.

Still nothing budged.

While hubby and I had initially thought that was that this was just a bottle of rotting preserves, the silver stuff a result of some sort of rotting chemical reaction with the old zinc jar lid; but after a few attempts to dislodge the stuff it became clear this was unlike anything I (or you!) could imagine.

I turned to the Internet.

Eventually, I came across the BLM/SHA Historic Glass Bottle ID & Information Website. I figured that among all the archaeologists and collectors of old glass bottles someone must have run into whatever it was I was stuck with. There were no articles or advice to be found on the subject of cleaning old bottles; so I sent an email, crossed my fingers, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long for a response. Bill Lindsey was quick to reply. Unfortunately, Lindsey had “no ideas at all” on how to clean this Old Manse jar. “Sorry,” he wrote, “I’m into the bottles and their history, not the contents very much.”

Well, I too was not so much interested in the smelly gunk as I was the old glass bottle. But, unfortunately, this was a mess I had to deal with — if I wanted to salvage the bottle. And I did!

Over the next few days, I continued to literally chip & tear away at the physical problem.

What makes this vintage glass jar or bottle so beautiful is exactly what makes it so hard to clean! The art deco lines, the rounded shoulders, the way the glass bottle narrows to the bottom — these were all difficult to clean. I sat for hours, wedging my hand into the mouth of the jar, carefully chipping, scraping, tearing, and cutting at the stuff inside. I used steak knives, tongs, and an old bread knife. (The bread knife, while it unable to cut anything anymore, had a long, slightly curved blade with a wide, rounded, blunt end which could reach areas of the molded class that other things could not). I alternated between the “tools” and using the “tools” to employ the power of Chore Boy scrubbers by leveraging the scrubbing pads into the glass. And, boy, were my hands sore from all the unusual dexterity! I had a very small space to work in, to apply pressure in, while my other hand held the bottle securely. In between scraping sessions, there were soaking sessions too. I made progress. But it was far from clean.

At this point, hubby was convinced that what was in this old glass bottle was old model paint. That would explain the large quantities of metallic silver, if not the hard waxy stuff. So I began to apply mineral spirits. It helped. But it sure was not the quick fix one hoped for, not even after I had manged to tear-out, chunk by chunk, that thing I called “the tongue”.

removed clumps of the tounge of junk in jar

I continued to alternate scraping with soaks and rinses. Not only using the mineral spirits, but with other cleaning products (including dish soap, standard kitchen spray cleaners, and CLR), and, of course, lots of hot water. Often I would fill the bottle about half-way with my fluid of choice and, with my hand over the mouth of the bottle, swish and swirl the liquid around. Sometimes I left the Chore Boy in for a bit more help. I hoped. It may surprise you, but that swishing actually did break off some of the stuff that lay at the bottom of the jar (in the crease where the bottom joined the sides of the jar was especially hard to fiddle any “tool” into).

cleaning old preserves jar bottle

stuff in bottom of old glass bottle jar

Oelerich & Berry Co Chicago bottle

All the chemicals aggravated my skin, of course; but I didn’t trust gloves to hold the glass securely. And there was no way I was going to break this jar! Not after all of this! Plus, I had to do all this while trying to preserve the old paper label.

When I took much-needed breaks, I corresponded with Lindsey about my thoughts on dating the glass preserves jar. (Details of that are here.)

Eventually, bit by stinking bit, I did get the jar clean. Probably not clean enough to preserve any food in, mind you; but good enough to meet collector standards. And without any chips to the glass itself, and minimal wear on that beautiful label. Isn’t she a beauty?! I just knew she would be!

vintage Oelerich & Berry Co Old Manse bottle

Now, the only question hubby has for me is, am I going to sell it? UPDATE: I am selling it here.

old preserves bottle before after

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