Recycling vintage costume jewelry

I love getting blog post ideas from my readers!  Recently I received an email from Sherri, wondering what to do with her aunt's box of costume jewelry.  I have always enjoyed picking up old jewelry at garage sales and thrift stores and cutting them up to re-use the beads and embellishments in new jewelry.

Buzz Buzz Designs turns recycled vintage jewelry into something new.

About.com has a pretty nice tutorial on re-purposing your old costume jewelry, with a list of supplies needed and some suggestions.

Curbly posted a great idea to use costume jewelry to create knobs!

 The Willies' Etsy shop sells some cute wall art that uses vintage jewelry. You could make some cute flowers using buttons as shown below, or more jeweled pieces like on the knobs above!

Throw some vintage photography into the mix too, and you can create something like this idea posted on Craftstylish!

Wall art is a great way to keep your vintage jewelry on display, even if you aren't wearing it, especially if it has sentimental value and helps you remember the wonderful women who wore it!  Here's one way that Heather used her family members' heirloom jewelry to create wall art to display each Christmas.

Other ideas that come to mind...
Decorating the top of a jewelry box that stores your own jewelry.
Use them to embellish home made cards and gift tags.
Sew them on an old purse to give it some extra sparkle.

Okay, I think I need to go to the thrift store now...