Brooches, pins, badges, they are all jewellery and often forgotten about AS jewellery. The good thing about them, they can not only be worn on clothing, but in your hair, attached to jewellery itself, pinned to a bag, your shoes, your hat.
I started accumulating in the 70s when I was born. All plastic knick knacks like birds and animals, or flowers. Even an Avon apple with the lipgloss in the back. In the 80s it moved to more plastic brooches and metal smilie badges, and into the 90s I was buying inexpensive gold gem encrusted brooches from cheap stores, op shops, and markets for $2. In the last decade, I bought a few from eBay, which you’ve seen before but are here again. The pegasus, and the multi coloured flower are just two. I’ve bought some to match jewellery sets, and Kmart was churning out the large kitschy plastic tropical ones. I’ve also made many out of other things.
Below are all the ones I could find. Most of them were in my small green travel Caboodle and have been for decades. But I also had many pinned on teddy bears and Beanie Kids (yes, just another thing I collected at one point in my life). From Kermit, ET and the Pink Panther, to masks, clowns, and music galore. Also, if you think the pictures are blurry, they’re not, many of the brooches are in plastic ziplock bags and I was not about to take them out just to take a pic.
Over Christmas, I ended up finding these pink (purple according to the website) glitter craft caddy containers (look familiar?) from Kmart and I wasn’t sure about what to use them for. At first it was going to be stationery, but those ten million things didn’t fit, and then when I started sorting out these and my keyrings, I decided to use one for each. All for $8 each.
All of my brooches safe and sound and tucked away for wearing.
Do you guys have special storage just for your brooches?
Oh wow, what a collection! It’s especially impressive how it spans decades. I love the tropical ones. And the harlequin with the rose. And the colorful record. And even, oddly, the skeleton. You’re so right when you say that brooches are underrated but shouldn’t be because you can put them anywhere! I don’t have nearly as many as you do, but I store my bought ones in a drawer and my handmade ones in plastic baggies in one of those decorative cardboard boxes.
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The record was originally a pen topper, and when it broke off I glued on a pin. As for the skeleton…do you mean poor ET?