Junior Chairs and Senior Spectacle Cases

With the Irish summer getting colder and wetter by the day, I find myself spending more time indoors and therefore I have loads of hours and minutes to indulge in crafting. I embrace both the rain and the sun. I know my vegetables are happy with the rain. When the sun is out, we are normally on the road.

So, on one rare sunny day I acquired a Sugan chair.

The Sugan chair is a masterpiece in itself. The term Sugan is the Gaelic word for straw/straw rope used for chair seating. The sugan chair used to be a popular kitchen chair in county districts, particularly in the west and southwest of Ireland and they come in bespoke sizes. So, I  decided to give it a makeover.

The original Sugan chair before the makeover

When my young visitors came over for tea and cake, I brought out the sugan chair, the butler's table and the other stools that I had transformed earlier. There were smiles all round.

I then moved on to transform spectacle cases for senior eyes. We have purchased quite a number of reading glasses and left them in strategic places so we did not need to go searching for them whenever we wanted to read.

The original spectacle cases

Now that I've finished these projects, I'm looking forward to doing some other exciting stuff.

TALLER BY THE DAY

It is rather frustrating when I am confronted by tall cabinets and a television screen that is mounted so high on the wall that I find it problematic to switch it off.

Enter the humble stool.

I had earlier on decoupaged a step stool that was painted with chalk paint.

I then acquired 2 more stools which were flat packed and I LOVE putting stuff together, screws and all. Very good, except that most of these flat packed stuff are not female friendly. Putting the screws and bolts together require immense strength. (Note to self: purchase an electric screwdriver) One of the screws did not go down well in my first attempt but I improved after that.

I decorated the stool below with leftover wall paper and stencilled the sides.

For the next stool, I painted zebra stripes and decoupaged.

Friends have asked me whether I would stand on these hand painted stools. Why not? Being an Asian, I do not wear shoes indoors and socks or fluffy slippers will not harm the surface.

COFFEE OR TEA?

Coffee tastes better when served on a handmade tray - a tray that is painted with vibrant colours and decorated with  fussy-cut pictures of yesteryear's delicate crockery. Below is the tray before the makeover.

I love coffee and I must have my fix every morning. Tea will do me too, but nothing beats the aromatic coffee bean. So I got myself a nifty coffee machine that promises luxury and a little bit

closer to George Clooney?...ahhhhh..........

Now that the summer weather is improving alfresco dining beckons. Coffee, tea and cucumber sandwiches will certainly taste better in the great outdoors...errr......in the garden. So I bought a butler's tray  and painted it with the primary colours of the roses in my garden. The sides too are stencilled in contrasting colours.

Now the setting is complete for a teddy bears picnic.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Lampshades are lovely things and they become more beautiful when you create new designs on them. Having inherited a number of lampshades, I decided to try my hand at a few new techniques related to decoupage.

This is the first one I made.

And this was what it looked like before.

I then made used of leftover wallpaper to decorate another lampshade.

Here's another made from a Cath Kidston design

Which matches perfectly with the seat cover of a chair that I upcycled.

And now with the light on

Once I got the hang of it, I decided to go for more challenging designs. This technique is more complicated as I must make sure that the pictures are in order.

And  with the light on....

Now that I've run out of lampshades, I will move on to decorating trays. Watch out for the next post!