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. I searched everywhere but could not find the original pattern so I started trying to make the bee body again. After I had it drawn a new bee body pattern on paper again, I pulled my golden honeycomb material out so that I could test my pattern to make sure that it fit togehter properly, and I found one complete body already on the material where I had drawn it and forgotten about it a couple of weeks ago. Boy was I relieved because I was not sure that this new bee would look like the old one. I traced a copy of each body piece before I sewed the bee together so I now have my pattern pieces. I still have to type out the instructions again though.

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 center of three sides of the mattress with the scissors. Cutting through just three sides saves a little of the clean up mess.

Now pull on the cut you have made until you get a little opening started, then stick your foot in there and pull for all your worth. It takes some tugging to get the top off of it, and if you don't hold the springs down then you just pick the whole mattress up.

When you get the top off of it then just flip it over and start taking the bottom 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 then take them out. The spirals holding the springs onto the base are easier to take off before they rust, but if you got a bunch of grandkids who like to kick them all over the yard, and a hubby who gripes because he keeps hitting them with the lawn mower then it is best to let them rust first. My choice was to let them rust first, and then use the needle nose pliers to take the spirals off.

After the springs are good and rusty it is time to get the spirals off, and my first step of getting the spirals off is to yell for my hubby since there is one row of spirals all around the outer edge of the mattress that I cannot take off. Then sometimes he will take over and cut all the spirals for me into long rows. Then you take the needle nose pliers and twist the spirals out. I have found that it is easier for me to hold the springs between my knees, and twist the pliers with both hands since my wrists are weak.

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 lanfill 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 that look just means that they still think I am crazy.

The doll on the spring above is my Captain Jack Pirate Nodder. I modeled him to look like Jack from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I have also made a pattern for a hen sitting on her nest, a crow, an antique quilt heart, and a big bumble bee on the springs. I have plans to make a lot more nodder patterns, but I have not gotten a roundtoit yet. I am going to have to get me one of them things real soon.

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, 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 is always 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 and irritated 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.