Recycled Salad Bowl Sets

Vintage wooden salad bowl sets make great holiday gift baskets, and there's no shortage of them at yard sales and thrift shops.
Here's a vintage salad bowl set which I recently cleaned, painted, sanded, and stained ~ ready to use as individual holiday gift baskets. I use them to hold gifts of various themes, such as guest soaps & rolled wash cloths, kitchen spices & spoons, or hot cocoa & tea packets with candies, etc. I use cellophane gift basket bags from Dollar Tree & tie with jute twine for fast and easy gifts.

Did you know you can remove grease & grime from vintage wooden wares with baking soda? (Not for use on valuable antiques, of course!) I mix baking soda
& warm tap water to form a thick paste & rub it over greasy wood surfaces, allowing it to dry. After rubbing the paste off with a dish towel dipped in hot water, I put them in a sunny spot to dry. You might want to test a small area before completely covering your wooden wares in baking soda, sometimes this causes the wood to crack. 

For this particular set, I painted the outsides only ~ using various colors of latex flat interior paint, sanded the edges for an aged look, then rubbed oil-based wood stain with sealer over the entire surface including the natural wood interiors.

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