postage stamp nail polish
reuben miller

At the end of designer Reuben Miller‘s clever riff on the extreme repurposing movement, some readers commented that that a fly swatter face protector and a paint brush door stop were “stupid’; other’s thought Dada. Some, like us, dug the IDEA that you can make something out of just about anything.

But we fell in love with one repurposing idea for real: stamps as nail “polish”. We’d just come back from the post office where we’d bought some pretty groovy stamps: a tiny Edward Hopper sailboat scene:

Edward Hopper stamp nail polish

…some teeny tangerines mandarine oranges commemorating the Year of the Rabbit:

Year of the Rabbit stamp nail polish

We’d cut ’em out and stick ’em on…maybe give them a coat of clear polish. (Too bad our favorite Pioneers of American Industrial Design featuring the iconic Eliot Noyes Selectric typewriter, Russel Wrights’s silverware, and Walter Dorwin Teqgue’s Brownie camera…are too big to fit on a fingernail.)

flower stamp nail polish
reuben miller

Thanks Sandy!!

Related posts: repurposed swing set = hanging garden
pamela’s brilliant d-i-y wrist warmers
repurpose: japanese screen as window “shade
mexico’s brilliant make-shift

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5 replies on “dada-esque ‘extreme repurposing’: postage stamp nail polish

  1. Those are kumquats, not tangerines!

  2. They may well not be tangerines, but I don’t think they’re kumquat’s either: wrong shape. I’m going to do some research and see what I find. Stay tuned.

    …I’m thinking maybe they’re Mandarin oranges…

    We got official word from our friend Viviane Chen who knows a ton about Chinese foods. They are Mandarins!!!

  3. I am currently researching ways to repurpose stamps and this idea is simply unique to me. I may just try it.

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