One of the first thing you notice as an out-of-towner in downtown Halifax is that the streets are lined with numerous wooden poles which feature some really creative posters for club nights, art shows and yard sales. I might be mistaken, but it’s like the city is pretty much all for spreading the word about local, grassroots happenings at street level, rather than showcasing huge corporate advertisements behind glass windows.

For example, I loved finding the silkscreened poster stapled to a wooden pole for the Long Live the Queen Festival (which was featured in my last post).

What I found really cool though were the yard sale posters along North Street on our way to the Festival. Rather than the generic orange, black and white “Garage Sale” sign or photocopied pages with varying sizes of Times New Roman text, these posters were like pages from a colouring book: handdrawn with block or bubble text, fun, with loads of colour and caricatures.

Each poster had a different address on it. So it was like making these colouring book-esque posters to promote was the norm in the neighbourhood, each one competing for your attention in an endearing way and making you think that if these posters were so unique, then the kind of items at the sale might be unique too.

These are definitely the kind of garage sales that I want to go to.

Last Saturday was my new neighbourhood’s yearly garage sale so I trolled the neighbourhood with some friends looking for some treasures.

I was able to pick up a huge bag of craft felt ($5) and some great-looking blue Italian leather shoes ($3).

But the best catch of the day? The flocking set above at $25! Includes the applicator, six large jars of bright colours, adhesive and instructions. I have been wanting to try this technique for a while, so when this set popped out on a table I figured why not?

This cute little dog (bargained from $2 to $1) also deserves a mention. Another one to add to my growing collection of Japanese ceramic figures!