Vintage Tin Overload..?

It's been all about tins, recently - I sold one to the lovely Nina, of Temps Perdu, a lunch tin to the marvelous Alex, of Pink Feather Paradise, and a third one today, to a buyer who should remain nameless as I believe it may be for a swap (ooh, how exciting!). So I was a bit astonished to see four quite large vintage tins in my usual Troc shop today, as that's not their normal kind of stock. None of the tins was perfect (for condition, or for my style) but they were large.
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I have actually been looking for storage for patio shelves, but it was clear that battered old vintage tins weren't going to survive out of doors, even if sheltered... But I did some lateral thinking and realised that the nasty '90s IKEA shelves upstairs had some zinc tins on them, which could go outside, and which might just be replaced with these new vintage ones... Voila! Shall we break it down..?

The shelf above houses all our glues, sellotapes, fixings and fastenings - we had two of the zinc tins housing everything before and things got lost and muddled quite often. I've kept a list of what's in where, never fear!
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The tin below is one of the new ones, which I've entitled 'Lady Patronising Cottagers'. My list tells me that it now contains 'stickers and misc'.

This tiny little tin is one of my older possessions - when I started teaching in 1991, in a tiny village school in Cumbria, the new head teacher and I went through all the old drawers. In one of them was this tin - it had a sticker over it and had been holding pins, I think.

I was raving about it and the head teacher was clearly thinking me nuts, and suggesting I bin it. "But it's lovely!" I wailed. "It was lovely once," replied my boss. An early education in Shabby Chic.

Moving swiftly on, here is the one I bought last year, entitled something like: "Unconvincing 1930s people in 18th century Versailles," in my own head.

Did you spot the Little Grey Rabbit tin I owned in my teens? It is perhaps worrying that I owned LGR tins at that age. There are now paperclips in that one, to go with the biro grafitti.

On the other shelves, here's a faux vintage tin I bought last year and the second of my new buys, below it.

"Kid with fish". I've not titled this one imaginatively, because I actually quite like it. I seem to save all my imagination for the ones I don't like. I'm beginning to worry...

Below the main display is my Troc 'n' Broc Vintage Shop shelf. Yes, ladies, you too could own something from this shelf!

The tin at the bottom of the pile below is the most stunning newbie. Don't you think it's kind of Egyptian?
Unfortunately, on top, it features, "Girl you were most likely to scratch at school", so I've covered it up with the lovely Swallows and Amazons tin which is for sale.

I'm being mean, arent't I? I just don't like chocolate box images on top of my Egyptiana.

This one's just dull on top - I haven't even given it a mental name. (Hmm, mental name meaning name in my head, or the other..?) But it is interesting that it looks like a British coaching inn on a French tin.

And so we end with 'Crinolined Lady', whom I love despite her dress, as Serenata and Lululiz both own her too. Perhaps she can walk between her different images, like the portraits in Harry Potter? Maybe she could chat to my blogging friends?

Definitely overloaded today. In my defence, I've been clearing these shelves in 36°C temperatures...