Loving the luggage

I lovce this idea for a nightstand

I have always loved old suitcases.  I had a little blue Samsonite one when I was a kid.  I stupidly sold it at a garage sale when I moved from the Bay Area to OC... One of those things that in hindsight, you wish you had kept...  I drug that little blue case with me on summer trips to grandmas house in Bakersfield, many childhood sleepovers, color guard shows and overnights and Gramma's house.  I still have the little blue train case my mom gave me when I was a kid. My intention is to turn it into an art survival kit with lots of things you would need to do art if you were stranded on a desert island somewhere.  It is currently in storage.  I spray paint my luggage.  My friend Cindy Wood paints lovely scenes on hers.  Sometimes I stack them up for bedside tables and nightstands.  I have used them in the living room for end tables, and stored them in the studio full of art supplies.

Whatever I use them for now, I love the aura they project.  When I open an old case,  I love to imagine the life this case lead.  The places it has been, the hands that have held it.  The young bride on her honeymoon, the widow leaving home for the first time without her husband, the college student full of dreams of the future and adulthood, the pregnant mother packing her things in anticipation of the baby's arrival.  The little girl going to grandmas for the first time alone on the train.  Cruises, cross country trips, exotic locations around the world.  Sometimes I wish I could blink myself to the various places the case has been, just to take a peek.

I just can't resist them.  Of course I don't want to pay $30 for them.  I want to get them for a couple bucks at a garage sale...  but occasionally, you come across one you just can't resist.  I am currently on the hunt for one made out of aligator that is really beat up so I can spray paint it... I might just cover a beat up old one of mine with faux alligator paper and spray paint it aqua.  Here are some I saw out and about that made me drool recently.


I am in love with the aqua one in the middle.  I WOULD have paid $30 for it if I had the cash on me...