LOVE CAN TRANSFORM ANY OLD THING

I was having tea with my friend Maureen  last week and she was jubilant over the brilliant weather.
'I must be outdoors when there is sunshine' she said. Then looking at me with a wink in her eye, she added, 'and you I suppose don't mind staying indoors and doing some crafts?'

Absolutely true.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I don't want to go to the beach. It is between those hours when I am at the beach and at the computer and in the garden and everything else, that I do my crafts. I love to make full use of every hour and every minute.

So these are my summer projects so far:

1. TEA CUP FEEDER

Reminds me of Mary Poppins' Feed the Birds...Tuppence a bag.....

2.  WATERING CAN BLING

An old trinklet creates a faux spray of water.....

3. BLUE BICYCLE

Theresa gave me a cherished bicycle and I thought it could do with a new coat of paint.

4. A SEWER JOINT PLANTER

I got this sewer pipe joint from Wasted Junkyard on the way to Scariff. You just don't know what you can find there!!!

5. WHEELBARROW Planter

6. LOG HOUSES

My friend Catherine gave me some logs and even if I wasn't trained to be an architect, I decided to create some log houses to test out a recently acquired chop/mitre saw.

7. SIGN POSTS

What is a garden without signposts?

                                      A friend gave me some golf balls for the peas

                                                   
8. A CHAIR PLANTER

9. A TERRARIUM

This was quite a challenge as it was my first time creating a terrarium but I enjoyed it tremendously and have written an article about it.
(https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blogger.g?blogID=8690240085782286672#editor/target=post;postID=5195160046881279273;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname)

A bird's eye view of our garden

10. SWEATSHIRT PAINTING/DECOUPAGE

I won some fabric paints in a craft competition and never got around to using them, so I thought I'd try them on some sweatshirts. Truth be told, random strangers did stop me to ask me how it was done.

11. DECOUPAGED GLASS PLATES

And I made these for some good friends...............

Well, summer is still not over yet, so when the Muse strikes, I will craft again......

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.

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!

A Box Divided Against itself Can Stand

Boxes are very versatile things to play with. More so, a box divided against itself! Found this little box and Michael said, 'Will you leave it alone?' No siree!  That's why the business to go into these days is selling embellishments and I'll be a loyal customer.

A perfect display box for four varieties of tea. Tea certainly tastes better when it comes in a pretty box.

With my head still boxed in by boxes, I found these two box-frames. Gave them a good coat of paint and filled them with potpourri.  Colour coded even. Talk about an extreme case of OCD.

All cracked up

I did some crackle effect on small pieces of chipboard years ago. So recently I decided to try out the crackle medium again. This time round, I bought Rust-oleum Crackle medium from Stakelums, Thurles and had a wonderful time experimenting with the different crackle sizes.

Sue Thomas gave me the wine box and another friend gave me the lavender serviette and I bought the lavender stencil. It is very amusing that whenever my friends have some lovely stuff that they have no use of, they would think of me and pass them on to me to turn them into something beautiful.

You can never go wrong with nature, so I complemented purple with green.

I decided to use the box for my spare cutlery.

This is the original box

Then I progressed into something bigger. This time it is a bedside locker.

Embellished the drawer with trimmings and a lovely new Roman numeral knob.

This is the original bedside locker

Now I have another bedside locker, so I'm going to do something different. Watch out for the   next post!