The Folding Ruler

Happy Thursday!  It's time to share another vintage, thrifty item from my overgrowing stash of stuff!  As always I am linking with Leigh @ Tales from Bloggeritaville for Thrifty Thursday and with Suzanne @ Coloradolady for Vintage Thingies Thursday.  Thanks to both ladies for letting me share my thrifty and vintage finds.

Today I have one item to share.  I wanted to add some vintage Paris postcards as part of the accessories to my guest room redo and so I went hunting in my "stuff" to figure out how to display them.  This is what I came up with....a vintage folding ruler.
















I love anything with numbers and letters on it and these folding rulers are one of my favorites.  I don't like the clean, new ones.....I like the ones that you know have been in somebody's tool box for years, with rusty hinges and numbers that are slightly worn off from years of use.  At last count I have 11 of these rulers.  I have purchased most of mine at antique malls or flea markets and I have not paid over $2.00 for any of them.

Now you might be wondering what I'm going to do with all of these rulers besides displaying old postcards (so does my husband).  Here's a few ideas:

Fold it into shapes.  Once you have the shape, just wire the loose ends together (it's easy to take apart if you want to use it for something else later).  Here's a picture of a star I used in my holiday decorating.  You could also easily make a crown with a one of these rulers.

Don't pass up broken rulers if you find them.  I used five sections of a broken ruler and formed the shape of a house (I hunted high and low for that house in my studio to show you and I can't find it at the moment).  I used some scrapbook metal letter embellishments, spelled out the word HOME and glued them to the bottom of the house.  This is going to be a part of a picture collage that I will be working on.

Another broken section is going to be used as an embellishment to a framed photo.  I glued some lace to the underside of the ruler piece and placed it beneath the picture.  I think it helps anchor the photo in the frame.

Small pieces from these rulers could also be used for jewelry or key chains.  Here's a key chain that took me less than 5 minutes to make using a broken section of the ruler.  I sanded the broken edge, drilled a hole for the key ring, inserted the key ring and job done.

I'm sure there are 100's of more uses for these folding rulers.  I would love to hear what you've done with them.

Jane