My Creative Space

She was being VERY creative when she made this!

One heavily stained NEW t-shirt c/o dada who let baba play with adult paints (in a white T-shirt-sheesh!)

Time to apply these 

Nope. No matter how artfully arranged, there just aren't enough for sufficient stain coverage.

So I've been busy making more, and more, using cookie cutters for shapes.

In the meantime the T-shirt that rested against the paint spattered one in the laundry pile has been successfully stain-disguised

She thinks she can fly with the butterflies now!

And more bunting beginnings.

With left over colour cards from my doll-house-do-up-dead-daffodil-colour-search, from an idea posted by Polli

My Creative Space

More bunting (I know, I know!!!)

Of the proper (sewn up) Great British bunting variety.

I can justify more bunting in many ways.

1. The canvas-y fabric in a neat little red, white and blue pile cost only 20c at the local school fete white elephant stall.

2. I saw a great tutorial on making 'proper' bunting here on this lovely, crafty blog.

3.It's the next logical bunting step after paper bunting of various types, simple cut fabric bunting and doiliy bunting.

4. This.

                A very useful, recently inherited tunnel house. Bit grey and manky looking. Needs bunting.
                           Especially for when we have Claudine's 2 nd birthday midsummer garden party.
                                                        It's going to have a Brit. theme!

                                                        Sharing my creative space here

                                           

Doll House do-up #3

 

Oh it's been a grand week on the doll house do-up front. It feels like it's all coming together nicely, mainly because it she's got some slap on her face now; some colour!

I washi papered the 'grown-ups' room in one fell swoop-just the one wall, and the ceiling. It looks right that way, kind of like a tree grown up and over. I spent an age measuring and cutting it exactly to size, and modge-podged (a kind of glue/sealer) it on. Fortunatly the washi paper, despite it's delicate appearance, withstood several removals and squidging and slidings to get it into the just right position and the glue dried perfectly clear. There is still a few millimeters of gap at bottom left left bare. It's bugging me so I will patch it up at some stage, and add a further coat of sealer to protect it from Claud mauling.

The kitchen colour is resene 'laser', with some white chucked in.  The shoe box-sized room is appreciably smaller now I've painted so many coats trying to get the 'dead daffodil' colour just-so!

Resene 'Moby', is just the blue I wanted, to paint tall tongue-in-groove panelling for the 'shaker-style' hall I have planned! Think pegged coat rack, church pew, dark stained floor boards. Funnily enough I don't have the skill or tools sufficient to just rustle up some miniature panelling, real or painted on, so I just ordered some off a website. It arrived and it's beautiful, if short, plastic and not ammenable to painting-over. So blue walls it is!

Also, in a departure from shaker-minimalism, I think I'm gonna slap a bit of this on the ceiling.

You can't get to much of a good thing aye!

I found this curly-wurly letter rack down the oppy today, it screamed fancy Breakfast at Tiffany's bed head. Can you hear it too?! It's a bit wide so I'm sending the hubby off round his mates to saw it in half and de-weld (?) bits off to make it a narrower but hopefully but no less fabulous bed head and foot board.

Coincidentally the bed base is also an old letter holder I sawed up. I actually could do with a letter holder, and this one is so pretty, but, oh well, there have to be sacrifices in the pursuit of doll-house beauty!

And hey, the parquay is in!

I won't bore you with the trial that laying it was. It looks goooooood, that is all you need to know.

I still haven't decided on what colour I'm going to stain it.

This room is going to be the mid-century-lounge-cum-dusty-victorian-library. Heh!

I'm going to make all my own fixtures and fittings. Double heh!

All I have so far is the fabric I'm going to upholster the sofa (I make!) with

$2 from the oddments bin at the local curtain place for a massive piece.

Handy for if when I go wrong!

The bits are from a 'kit set' pew I bought. Yikes!

Making your own HAS to be easier than putting that together!

There are 4 pages of instructions. Double yikes!!!

And finally, this is the vague plan I have for the bathroom.

                          I'd love to use one of these shells for a lampshade but they're so fragile.
         If any clever crafty folk have a clue how I might (easily!) cast or coat or copy this to make
                                          it impervious to child bashing please let me know!

                                                      Get me, I'm an (giant) interior decorator!

Until next week...

My creative space

 My creative space this week, aka 3/101 things to do with a Martha Stewart snowflake cutter

Bunting (of course)

Gift tags

Westling balls

Yes, it's early, but if I'm to catch the cheap-by-ship post to the UK I need to get cracking!

My Creative Space, and a question...

Been mucking around with bits of paper, making bunting mainly.

Two lots of the tri-colour for two Brit-birthdays

(The cabinet is also a work in progress. Two more drawers to repair and we'll be there)

Map bunting started, taken from a beautifully coloured, 1943 school geography text book.

Pretty, or horrific abuse of interesting old stuff?

All I thought was "ace colours for 20c".

I drew the line at using the map which showed the relative areas held by the Allies and the nazi forces at Nov 1942. Genocide and bunting don't mix.

Husband thought someone would probably collect these and it might be 'worth something'.

I read a blogger recently lamenting the wanton use of precious china cups for DIY candles, worried they'd crack with the heat. Just after I'd finished drilling my 'by royal appointment" china plate for a tiered cake stand.

Older lady at Sunday library craft group was horrified at my using sheet music to chop up, "some of that stuffs rare". Ditto mother-in-law at chopped up old doily bunting "it used to take us days to make one of those".

Do we have a duty as old-stuff aficionado's to research the stuff we buy before we smash it up for mosaics, or is it ok when it takes on a new life, recycled, loved, looked at all over again. Is the reason I can't find my dream 70's marimekko dress because it's been chopped up for a quilt?!

Do you draw the line anywhere when it comes to using old stuff for craft?

Me doing that creative space linky-thingy again

Beautifying my workspace #2

A work in progress... Well not much has changed. Yet!
It's been tidied and de-cluttered. However, I'm already tired of going back and forth to get stuff out of storage. Ideally I need about 100 more cool boxes, or set of plan drawers cum cubby holes cum little drawers, that lock to keep little kiddy-mitts out, in Rimu or another NZ timber, with some brass hardware. Heh. Dream on. I don't think any such thing exists after a trawl of furniture and antiques stores (well the ones left post-earthquake anyway).

Then the hubby remembered he had, in a shed at his family farm, a set of munted old wooden drawers that he used to keep screws and nails in, a few era's ago when he was a coach-builders apprentice. These look like the ones pictured a-top, except with more, smaller drawers. I'm certain they will fit under the shelf on the right, in place of the sewing machine cabinet that Claudine regularly trashes. The best thing about them is that the drawer runners are shot. ie only an adult has enough strength to yank them open. Hurrah!
So we've made an apointment with the farm leasee to go pick 'em up. Hopefully a polish will be all that's required, otherwise they will have to join the 'doing-up' to-do list. I'm too impatient for that. I'm already mentally labeling all the drawers!

Next, the pictured litho by NZ mid-century modernist Roy Cowan I got at auction ages ago is off to the framers, set to replace those old watercolours. Whilst I'm really not into interior decorator art, the interior decorator tactic of having some linking colours is definatly going to help here, to link this space with the rest of the room as there is a wee bit of pale blue in some of the other art and pottery there, and in my lovely 1950's paper fans http://www.acornandwill.co.uk/acatalog/vintage_paper_fans.html

Beautify your workspace

Even my husband says this is "messy looking" It's also not working for me, constantly moving stuff to get space to work, taking forever to find things and having to set up and then pack up my printer every time I need it so the little sprog doesn't wreck it etc. I'm giving myself a week to improve both aspects before I post an 'after' photo. Where to begin..?!