DIY vintage suitcase

this past weekend vic & i made our monthly trek to the rose bowl flea market in lovely pasadena. we usually meander throughout the flea market stopping to look at whatever happens to catch our eye & at the end of the day i usually go home with a few vintage dresses & vic leaves with an old painting or framed print. however, this past weekend we had a list of things that we really wanted to find. we were looking for old mason jars, old books, vintage globes, and most importantly vintage fans. we foolishly assumed that we would have no problem finding vintage fans. we were naive. we walked down every single row in the flea market in the 85+ weather (getting massive sunburns in the process. forgot to put on sunblock. oops!) trying in vain to find a vintage fan. the only fans that we found, which weren't that many (less than 5), were either $150+ (out of our price range) or dog-gone ugly. so the hunt continues for vintage fans. hopefully next month's flea market will be more successful!

on another note, although we didn't walk away with a vintage fan we did leave with a really cool 1950's suitcase for only $10! literally a minute after i told vic that i was thinking about adding to my suitcase collection we spotted this really great suitcase with old stickers. most of the stickers are Canadian stickers so we're assuming that the suitcase made its way all the way from Canada! i love imagining the former lives that all my vintage objects had before they found their way to me.

the exterior of the suitcase was great, but the interior was a hot mess! so vic suggested that we rehab the interior. we went to ikea & found fabric for only $1.50 & a spray on adhesive for $7. the fabric that we used was actually a pack of baby cloths and although it isn't conventional fabric we thought that the material would work perfectly for this project so we decided to buy them over spending more money for the conventional $5+/yard fabric at ikea.

i have to admit that vic did most of the work in rehabbing this suitcase & i more or less assisted.

the suitcase

i forgot to take a picture of the original lining, but imagine an old silky sort of fabric that was badly stained & ripped. this is a picture of the suitcase after we ripped out all the lining.

i'm "supervising" the work. ha ha.

covering the original pieces of the suitcase with new fabric.

lining the suitcase.

so in total we only spent $18 and about 2 hrs of our time for this amazing one-of-a-kind suitcase!