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......

ICA CASTLETROY GUILD: Maureen Sheehan Perpetual Cup: Upcycling tin cans

Every year ICA Castletroy Guild holds a craft competition. Any lady aspiring to win the coveted Maureen Sheehan Perpetual Cup this year would have to submit an upcycled tin can.  The details are in the notice that I've drafted below.

I've also done a few samples to give you some ideas of what you can do with the humble tin can. Let your imagination run wild!!

So once the judging is over, just fill them up with goodies (think flowers, candles, trinkets, candy, stationery, shells etc) and give them to good friends who'll appreciate them.

MORE UPCYCLED CHAIRS

I have a connection with chairs. So I got myself a few more second-hand chairs and decided to transform them.

The first one is one that has Orla Kiely's trademark on it. I love Orla Kiely's stuff from dresses to accessories to shoes. So now that I have my own Orla chair to sit on, I must wear my orla outfit, shoes and brooch and sit on it.

This was the original chair

For the next chair, I painted and distressed the wood with chalk paint and made a sugan seat

Finally, I created another one with BEANO - my favourite comic book

Due to the good response to the photos I put up on social media, for the next month, I'll be busy holding workshops on furniture upcycling!

Upcycling Exhibition

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

                                                                                                                            Pablo Picasso

And Picasso was absolutely right. We hold the emotions and then release them again into beautiful works of art. Such is the variety of upcycled objects on display at the Upcycling Exhibition held at the Killaloe-Ballina Family Resource Centre today.

Upcycling is "the process of converting old products into new products of better quality or for better environmental value." '

It is amazing to see furniture and household objects being transformed into works of creativity. 

Not unlike Cinderella going to the ball in a coach made from a pumpkin and drawn by mice turned horses.

I invited my friends who came mainly from Limerick. They formed quite an international crowd: Scot, Hungarian,Brit,Polish and of course the Irish too.

Throughout the weeks, I went round hunting for interesting stuff whenever we visited other cities and towns. These are pre-loved objects that I prefer to refer to as posh junk.

                                                                  A stool from IKEA

                                                             Chair and table from Kilkenny

                                                   Bird house stand from Ennis

                                         Wooden clogs from Garrykennedy (Hachi my dog chewed them)

And turned them into Gorgeous stuff!  After all, one person's trash is another's treasure, right?

                                                            With Nathalie