I have been doing pretty good at selling the springs lately, and I have sold them to places as far away as the United Kingdom. 

I recently shipped an order off to a customer there who wanted a copy of my Bumble Bee Nodder Pattern, but the pattern had mysteriously disappeared from my computer. Probably lost during a recent computer crash where I had to replace my hard drive.

I started trying to make the bee body again from memory, but after I had it drawn a new bee body pattern out on paper again, I pulled my golden honeycomb material out so that I could test my pattern to make sure that it fit together properly, and I found one complete body already drawn out on the material.  Good save!  And boy was I relieved because I was not sure that this new bee would look like the old one had. 

I traced a copy of each body piece before I sewed the bee together so that I could save the pattern first, but I still have to type out the instructions again.

How do you get the springs out of the mattresses?

After you find your mattress and get it home then comes the fun part... getting the springs out of the mattress. To do this you need a good pair of bolt cutters, a pair of scissors, and a needle nose pair of pliars.

The first step is cutting through the covering over the mattress down through each side of the mattress with the scissors. Then unless you are very strong you may need to cut around each brad at least for a for a few feet until you can pull for all your worth. You may need to put your foot on the mattress while you tug because the whole mattress will probably come up as you pull on it.

When you get the top part off, flip it over and start taking the bottom cover off. 

When you get the cover off the springs then you need to make a choice of whether to take the springs out now or whether you want to let them rust first before you take them out. 

The spirals holding the springs onto the base are easier to take off before they rust, but the springs are bad to knot up in a pile that is kind of like working a Chinese puzzle to get loose. My choice was always to let them rust first, and then use the needle nose pliers to take the spirals off.

What do you make from the springs?

I get this question all the time from everyone. What in the world do you want old box springs for? I usually tell them that I am going green. I take all the old springs that I can find that would have gone to our over filled landfill and turn them into useful things, and I also sell them to other folks like me who does the same thing with them. They are very impressed with my genius by then, or else maybe that look just means that they think I am crazy.

The primitive spring above is my Raggedy Old Heart Nodder. I had fun making these guys from an old vintage quilt I bought from a yard sale.  

Where do I find all my springs?

One day I was out in a neighborhood with some friends, and I found the perfect set of box springs laying beside the road ready for the city trash pickup. 

I do not own a truck though, and the only way that I could get them home was to pay my neighbor to go get them for me, but this was on the weekend, and my neighbor was gone all weekend. 

By the time he came home Monday and could go get them for me the trash pickup crew had already came by and hauled them away. 

Feeling very disappointed I called the city trash pickup number and asked them if they had any more springs to be picked up. 

The girl on the other end of the line asked me what in the world did I want with old box springs. I told her that I put dolls on them, and I also sold the springs on Ebay. 

After laughing for a few minutes about the crazy things people buy on Ebay, she promised to call me when her next pickup order came in. 

Two days later she called me back telling me that she had an order to pick up a box springs and mattress set, but that they both had to be picked up that evening because the truck was scheduled to run the next morning. 

This time my neighbor was home and could go right away and get the springs for me. He was happy when he got back because the lady at the house where he picked them up paid him $20 for taking them away so all he charged me was $10 for going and getting them for me which made me very happy also. 

I have also had friends and relatives give me their old mattresses and box springs, and I have had a little success with a Craigslist ad asking for old mattresses and box springs.  You just need to be careful with this way because most mattresses sold today do not have springs in them that we can use.