29 Thrift Store Finds You Should Always Buy For A Solid Vintage Craft Supply Stash

Thrift stores can be a treasure trove of inexpensive, second-hand goods that are excellent for filling out your crafting and DIY project supply stash. They are especially awesome finds if you love making things with a vintage bent, since these objects often have a sense of age, charm, and character not found in newer supplies. Many are adaptable for any kind of art or craft making, including sewing, making unique housewares, painting, paper crafts, and other mediums. You can often find a lot of options for supplies if you check a few different areas of the store, including the home décor, crafting, jewelry, and book sections.

Using thrifted elements is an eco-friendly way to upcycle materials that might otherwise be seen as obsolete or trash. They are also usually less expensive than supplies bought at the craft stores. There is also a delightful sense of happenstance that can make your crafting exploits more serendipitous. While thrift stores can often be the least expensive source, you can also hit up estate or garage sales, antique vendors, and flea markets for similar creative finds to fill your craft room or studio with.

Not only are paper patterns great for getting inexpensive plans and details for making things like vintage clothing and home accessories, but the delicate tissue paper of patterns found at the thrift store is great for decoupaging. You can also use them in collage with their interesting lines, texture, and semi-transparent finishes. Old vintage patterns also make gorgeous paper flowers.

Vintage jewelry can be a beautiful addition to a number of different projects, including everything from three-dimensional framed assemblages to sparkling lampshades covered in vintage gems. Small bits and bobs can be used as accents on jars, vases, and candles to add some interest and glam. Use a foam base to create a wreath or floral arrangement made from colorful vintage brooches.

Not only great for your sewing projects and replacing missing buttons on vintage clothing, but old buttons are usually sold in packs or baggies in thrift stores, some still attached to their original sales cards. Turn them into adorable button art, mix them into mosaics, and add them as charming accents on jars, boxes, and other upcycled storage containers.

Old vintage books are fun for creating handmade cards, collages, and other paper goods. They are also perfect for decoupaging, paper flowers, and serving as custom-framed illustrations and botanical prints. Look especially for books with interesting pages featuring elements like diagrams, charts, graphs, and maps, which can be used in scrapbooking or to wrap small gifts like handmade soaps and jewelry boxes. For more colorful pages, use photography, recipe, or coffee table books.

Various bits and bobs of vintage metal, like fasteners, handles, pulls, hinges, and old door knobs can be used in all sorts of crafting projects. Use them as they are to make industrial or vintage style assemblages, or employ them as elements to build new pieces of home décor like hook racks and handled trays. The patina and wear on vintage pieces can be infinitely more charming than similar new materials. 

Vintage frames are a stylish and easy way to frame your art and décor projects for much less than professional framing or newer frames from craft stores. Use them as/is or add elements like paint, a distressed finish, decoupaged paper, metal corners, and millwork appliqué accents to give them an even more detailed and antiqued look, and get luxe frames for cheaper.

Vintage embroidery hoops can be a great element for making other items like plant trellises and beautiful doily art projects that give a boho vibe to your space. You can also use them for their original purpose when embroidering and creating textile art pieces. Or use them as an alternative way to frame your canvas paintings with a round shape instead of rectangular or square.

Vintage pieces from games like checkers, marbles, jacks, and other board games can be great for projects that use miniature items or need fun decorative details. Look for ones made from metal, plastic, and wood with a nostalgic or distinctive design. You can also upcycle boards from games to serve as décor pieces you can collage or decoupage on.

Small ceramic or glass figures can be an adorable way to easily add human or animal elements to your projects. Paint them all black for adorably spooky Halloween décor or use them in centerpieces, to make picture frames, or to add adorable accents to your fairy gardens. You can also turn small statues and figures into shadowbox contents or altered art, or affix them to the top of mason jars as a fun accent. 

Pick up items like pretty tablecloths, pillowcases, and curtains for your vintage fabric stash, which can be a beautiful way to build up your supply with unique patterns you won't find in stores today. Make them into window treatments, throw pillows, and other sewing projects with retro flair. Other great finds include pretty tablecloths, upholstery fabric, and vintage quilts.

Rolls of unused wallpaper or wrapping paper can be an excellent element to add to your paper stash, especially if you love hand-making cards, scrapbooking, or collaging. You can also use the paper to cover furniture whole or in segments, as shelf-liners, and to frame as patterned art. Wrapping paper, due to its thin weight, is also great for decoupaging objects. 

Items like old greeting cards, postcards, photos, tickets, and other ephemera are perfect for making new paper creations like cards, art journaling, and scrapbooks. Turn an old calendar into a stylish wall clock or use vintage postcards to cover a tabletop. Other great finds include handwritten correspondence, vintage menus, and smaller items like prayer, baseball, or recipe cards. 

Vintage trophies and plaques can be a fun element to pick up for a variety of projects. The bases of marble trophies are an excellent source of the material if you need a base for a DIY project. Wooden plaques can be sanded and refinished to make signs, add your own art, or for wood-burning projects. Or, use the figures as glass mason jar toppers.

Old wreaths can be stripped down to their base of wire, foam, or woven material and rebuilt to fit your aesthetic by adding new greenery, holiday ornaments, dishware, paper flowers, and other elements. Not only for your walls and doors, wreaths can also serve as a centerpiece on your table or a way to highlight other kinds of décor with some flowers or greenery on any surface. 

Vintage or antique silverware can be a useful element for crafting projects like fun wall hooks with forks and spoons or adorable upcycled wind chimes. You can also heat-bend metal silverware as accents for DIY décor, cabinet pulls, and jewelry-making. You can even turn several flatware pieces into an adorable humanoid phone holder. 

A cute element that you can use in many different ways, porcelain doll pieces can be perfect for creating custom décor pieces like doll head lamps and assemblages that have a creepy vintage vibe. Even dolls made from other materials like rubber and plastic can be a fun item to deconstruct and disassemble to create new décor and art items.

Vintage ribbon and trim can be a beautiful addition, not just for sewing but also for scrapbooking, cardmaking, and other projects like decorating jars, vases, and bottles. Add some pretty vintage trim to inexpensive curtains to elevate them, or use some trim around a lampshade to create some additional vintage charm. 

One of the most common thrifted items you can find in stores, these pieces have uses far beyond the kitchen. Pick up a few to use for ingenious projects like adorable bird feeders, making wreaths, garden décor, and handmade candles. Even cracked and damaged dishware can be useful for making mosaics for wall art, tabletops, and custom backsplashes.

While any mason jar is a great element to pick up when thrifting for all sorts of uses, vintage jars often bear unique glass colors, engravings, and other details that make them especially delightful for both crafting and stashing supplies. Use them for projects like creating lanterns, handmade candles, or pretty storage containers embellished with paper, fabric, paint, or trimmings.

These delicates can be ideal for everything from adding texture to paintings, framing in embroidery hoops as art, or sewing them together to make a boho-style curtain. Thrifted vintage doilies are also perfect for adding texture to the outside of a mason jar lantern or covering a lampshade for an intricately patterned glow.

Vintage Christmas ornaments are beautiful for craft projects like creating wreaths and centerpieces. They also make festive wrapping accents on gifts. Great finds include old German glass ornaments, glass orbs, hand-painted wood ornaments, and feathered birds. For an easy DIY piece of holiday décor, put some pretty and colorful metallic round ornaments in a bowl, apothecary jar, or basket. 

Even non-working machines can be a great source for vintage and antique letter glass keys, which you can use for jewelry, mixed media art, scrapbooking, and other decorative projects where you want to spell out words. While the round glass keys give an antique feel, even newer typewriters that no longer work can be a great source of a whole set of small plastic letters.

You can occasionally find bulk bags of old keys from various eras for just a few bucks in many thrift stores. These metal pieces may not seem like they would be useful without the locks they originally opened, but ingenious crafters can find all sorts of uses for keys, especially antique and small ones that can be made into jewelry, added to mixed media art, and used in other kinds of projects like making upcycled wind chimes and rustic wooden hook racks.

Old, outdated coins, arcade tokens, and subway tokens can be another great element to add to mixed media art, as well as to the sides of boxes, candles, and other containers to add interest and a little bit of metallic shininess. The tokens often have interesting shapes, textures, and engravings that make them a fun addition to any project.

Colorful and beautifully patterned vintage scarves can be a great addition to your vintage fabric stash, as can other small linens like embroidered handkerchiefs. Sew them into chic slipcovers for your throw pillows or create a stunning patchwork-style curtain for a boho aesthetic. They also make an excellent fabric source for colorful bunting and garlands.

The intricate lines and notes of sheet music, as well as the aged and antiqued texture of their pages, make this one of the best papers to add to your collage and scrapbooking supplies. They are also often perfect for decoupaging large areas like tabletops. Or cover an entire wall in antique sheet music for a fun and dark academia aesthetic look.

Wooden boxes can always come in handy for creating mixed-media shadow boxes, upcycled storage boxes, and distinctive gift boxes. Wine, cigar, and cheese boxes often have beautiful printed details that are a beautiful base for other embellishments like decoupaged paper, lace trim, and old buttons. Or use the boxes as DIY upcycled planters for an indoor herb garden. 

Old belts are an excellent source of inexpensive leather, which can be repurposed for leather crafts and other home decor like stylish rustic chairs and mason jar candle lanterns with a western edge. You can also add them to a canvas to create unique wall art by assembling them into shapes.

These old flowers, alone or attached to a hat, can be a pretty element to decorate your DIY and crafting projects. Many are made of luxurious velvet or silk and can be a far superior alternative to modern faux flowers when adding to wreaths, centerpieces, and embellished containers.