Smiley Faced Pouch Time Capsule

Matt just came home and asked me “Anything happen while I was out?” and I was able to reply “Only that I found a TIME CAPSULE!”

I have FOUR HUGE storage bins that I packed up of all my belongings from my parents’ house when I moved out around 2000ish. These storage bins went into a storage shed at my sisters’ house and stayed there until Matt and I bought our house in 2011. Now they reside in my garage, but I still haven’t gone through them. These bins alone are like time capsules, filled with my Cabbage Patch Dolls and diaries and Seventeen magazines, etc., etc., but this is not the time capsule I refer to.

I want to execute a project in our house and had to get something that I knew was in those storage bins. I opened the first bin and fortunately what I wanted was sitting right on top. But immediately underneath, was this little smiley faced pouch. It was a zipper pouch I used in high school, and carried the necessities in it (probably my driver’s license, cash and chapstick) and it might have been attached to my keychain. When I picked it up from the storage bin it was stuffed round and I immediately grabbed it to see what was inside. The zipper wouldn’t budge and then the pull actually broke right off. I could tell the zipper was completely corroded closed and there was no way it was going to zip open. It was so stuffed and I knew I had to find out what was inside so I decided to document opening it just in case it was good.

In other news, and just by chance, last week Kaylah from the Dainty Squid posted a picture on instagram that she said was “A collection of absolutely worthless things that mean everything to me.” I replied that she needed to hashtag that and that I wanted to play along. I am 100% the type of person to keep “junk” purely for sentimental reasons. She hashtagged #worthlessthingsthatmeaneverything and I thought “ok, now how shall I go around gathering little trinkets from all over the house and get a picture of it?” Little did I know this gem would all but just drop into my lap a few days later.

I love when things like that happen. I kind of feel like it’s the universe telling me that I’m on the right path.

But really, who knew what would be inside? It could be awesome, but it could just as easily and more likely be a bunch of junk like rocks I picked up from who-knows-where because let’s face it, that would be so me. Instead it ended up being AWESOME!!!!! Scroll down.

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Can you believe all this stuff was stuffed into that little pouch? Some of it really is junk, like a half of a broken button. What the heck is that about? Maybe in my old life that button meant something to me, but right now I haven’t the slightest clue why I would have kept it. BUT, there were other things in there that really do mean the world to me. Things I have long wondered “what happened to that? I wish I still had it.”

A few highlights:

Near the center, a little to the left there is a white ceramic oval that says my name. I received that, probably for a birthday, when I was 6-8(maybe younger?) from my Godmother. It was a pin that I treasured. It said MY name (Robyn) on it and as a girl if ever I would find customized items, AND on the super rare chance that they would have my name, it would 100% surely be spelled Robin. As a little kid having an oddish name was a rough thing for me, I dreamed of being named Samantha, or Alexandra (then I could have a nickname like Sam or Alex), but no instead I had a name that was unusual and on top of that it was an unusual spelling. I got over it by the time I was in high school and all the kids started wishing their names were unique and trying to come up with unique spellings for Sara and Jennifer. Underneath my name it says “Strength of Character” and my mom always said that my Godmother said about me when I was little, “There’s no worry that Robyn won’t get what she wants in this life. She knows exactly what she wants and goes after it.”

When I was in high school I took a train trip to a family reunion with my Grandma Wells. We were in Amish country and they had tons of gift shops. We went into one store and they had an assortment of these super tiny ceramic vegetables, Top to middle of the Righthand side. I loved them so much and talked my grandma into buying them for me. It was no easy feat. I LOVED my grandma, but my memories of her were also VERY THRIFTY and money conscious. She was born in 1910 (I believe) and lived through the great depression, and that pretty much changed everyone that had to go through that. So, getting her to buy something for me was HUGE. I also got her to buy me a pair of huge black, chunky healed maryjanes that trip and I wore those things until they DIED. I still think of those shoes and wish I still had them as well. Sometimes I try to find something similar but that was a very 90s style.  I remember her asking me “what are you going to do with those (the vegetables)? and I said I didn’t know but that maybe I could somehow turn them into charms and make a bracelet. You can see that never happened, but I still love them as they are, all the same. I just love everything miniature and I have often wondered where they went.

In the bottom center is a brass silhouette of a “Jamaican Basketball Player”. It was the very first assignment in my very first metalwork class in college. We had to learn to use our jeweler’s saws and this was the shape everyone in the class had to cut. This is actually the discard piece from the finished piece of jewelry that can be seen here (the second lowest hanging piece on the display)

One last note, the pile of red junk appears to be a disintegrated remains of a red water balloon, yet, the silly putty is perfectly good still!

Please feel free to click on over to flickr and see see the image BIGGER and to hover over the images to see exactly what everything else  is.