Things You Can Do With a Vintage Rotary Phone:

A Round-Up of Vintage Phone DIY Projects

This post presupposes you own a vintage phone in a visually-pleasing colour and you’re not quite sure what to do with it. Bottom line: this post will be useful to virtually no one (if you did own a bubblegum pink or mint green vintage phone, I imagine you would know exactly what to do with — sit it on a side table atop a stack of books next to a vase of fresh cut flowers and call it a day). But let’s say for some mysterious reason you are swimming in candy-hued vintage phones (if you are, please tell me your secrets, or mail me some of your money — you clearly have too much). What do you do then? A phone on every side table in your house? Sure. Or one of these DIY projects below:

1. You might turn one of those phones into a bookend, or turn two of those phones (we’re assuming you’re really flush with vintage phones here) into bookends plural, a project Erin and Stefanie of Oh So Lovely completed for A Beautiful Mess (click the link for more pictures and directions).

[Photo via A Beautiful Mess]

2. You can turn your vintage rotary phone into a succulent planter like Jenni from I Spy DIY has. This is actually crazy adorable, and I’m now on the lookout for a second rotary phone, so I can gut it and fill it with dirt (something I never thought I’d say). If you need more direction, here’s a youtube tutorial.

[Photo via I Spy DIY]

3. Or if you’re feeling really ambitious (and/or you’re a certified electrician), you could turn the rotary phone into a lamp. Your phone could both sit on your side table and actually be useful (something my vintage pieces never do). Bjorn Freed talks about the project over at Bored Panda.

[Photo via Bored Panda]

4. Apparently, you can turn an old phone into a docking station for a new phone (INCEPTION!). Again, I think you might need to be a bit more than crafty to pull this off. For those of you who aren’t Alexander Graham Bell reincarnated, you can buy one pre-made from RotaryRevival on etsy (he doesn’t currently have any listed for purchase, but it seems like he takes custom orders — let’s just hope Apple never changes the plug-in for iPhones).

[Photo via RotaryRevival’s etsy page]

Any other ideas about what you might do with old phones? (Besides just swooning over them, of course.)