Fun Wallet Update

Sometimes, I wander around thrift shops, looking for things to upcycle. My favorite, nearby, is a reuse store. There are two: one on a major route in my town, and one in a rundown-type strip mall. Neither places have been hit by the ‘thrifting is expensive’ bug, and therefore both still have excellent deals. I found a few wallets I knew would be fun to update, each about a dollar, and I tossed them in my cart.

Once home, I took out acrylic paint, and updated them in ways that matched my personality. All that was needed was paint, paintbrushes, and a paint palette to keep the squirts of color on. I don’t know why I have an odd fascination with stars. When upcycling, that’s a shape I’m often drawn to. 

I’d learned that, sometimes, wallets need a way for them to stay together. If you have a lot of things in your billfold, like I do, normally including business cards on top of other cards, there needs to be a way to hold everything inside of it.

This is where creating a fun elastic to wrap around your wallet comes in. Pick your stretchy cord, your beads, and your length, and create something that looks kind of like a bracelet… but is able to bind your wallet together so it can actually close.

What’s fun about this is that you can always slide it on your wrist while you’re paying a cashier, or adding money to it. You can also make several elastics and cycle through them with different billfolds, constantly making new and different combinations to carry with you.

Also, you don’t need to go out to purchase wallets for upcycling. Instead, you can use whatever you have lying around. Whatever old wallet you have, something you’re sick of looking at, you can throw a coat of paint on, and maybe even some designs. You can also glue a paper design on your billfold, using some sort of fixative so you make sure it stays put.

Putting together your own, special way, to keep money makes spending it that much more special, especially if you’re spending it on more things to upcycle!