Decorating in the kitchen

Like many of my readers I love to trawl the seconhand shops and garage sales in search of little things that make my heart sing.

The problem with that is that you end up with a lot of things that you really have no room for.

I know because I have three boxes still in the shed which hold all my pretties, most of which fortunately have had homes in my previous rentals.

This time however there really is nowhere to display anything and the owners or agents seem rather tough on the adding anything ideas.

It's taken me quit a while to finally work out how to store things up and over the kitchen sink.

And I think it works.

Only problem is that those three boxes are still unopened in the shed because I have continued my habit of finding little bits. 

What you see has all been collected in the last  seven or eight months.

Eeek. 

I might have to make another shelf.

The shelf is made by hanging a found piece of skirting board using $9 worth of chain from Bunnings and two key rings from the Plaza onto strong nails hammered in right above the picture rail. The nails are firmly anchored so the strength of this relies more on the chain than anything.

Fly away home

The goodies above will hopefully be winging their way to the southern capital in a day or two, trapped inside a lovely young ladies suitcase.

Today was one of those days where you go looking and find exactly the things that fit your brief.

And the kindest of people behind the counter who virtually give the goodies away for free.

Wonderful.

The man behind the counter told me that he thinks this little beakless bird could be a fairy wren.

I don't know.

But I have a feeling she might just like it.

The tablecloth down the bottom is a keeper for me. 

Fits my table like a glove and suits my personality perfectly.

It wasn't my turn to cook tonight but todays chef is off colour so I am making pancakes. Best get cracking.

Corners of my home

Today Kate spoke about her home being a Copper Art home. Now I don't for a moment believe that to be really true but I guess many of us can identify with starting our homes with stock, standard decorating ideas.

There is no real reason though why we should continue to be crowd followers if we don't want to. 

I've used my very dodgy camera to point and shoot a few corners of my home to prove that it doen't need to take a lot of money to make a home feel individual.

 

Shoe cupboard $5  garage sale 

Picture $1 op shop 

Small table free curbside 

Basket from my childhood 

Table free curbside find
Doily $1 op shop
Jug $3 op shop

Table from ebay $200 including 6 chairs some of which are no longer with us

Various chairs from op shop or garage sale - most expensive $15

China cabinet free from friend
Pretties from ebay, op shops or garage sales.
Only the cats were bought new.

One jug bought new.

The other one thrifted.

Lavender left over from days gone by when I had more money than sense.

T-shirt refashion

Take one Black Pepper t-shirt with a touch of bling

Cut a couple of inches of the hem. 

Slit it down the centre.

Shape the neckline and undo and inch or so of the shoulder seam.

Sew beautiful cotton lace purchased by beautiful daughter whilst in New York along the bottom.

Sew more beautiful lace along the centre.

Do a touch of handsewing, including attaching some buttonsand neatening the shoulder seams etc.

Now you have a refashioned Black Pepper t-shirt jacket.

Hooray!

Befores and Afters

A ten dollar dressing table from the tip shop.

Sanded and coat with two oats of paint.

A toy basket from the side of the road.

Painted in cheap white paint from Bunnings ($16).

Oops!

I think I need to go back and paint the base.

The rest of the mess is courtesy of moving time.

My latest love

I am completely in love with my latest find from Saturday's garage sales.

Love, love the crazing and the little flowers and the chocolate coated strawberries we had on it.
Everything.

In fact I loved my whole loungeroom on Saturday.
All tricked out in vintage tablecloths and tables and chairs.
And people
And champagne glasses.
And cheesecake.
Wonderful.
And so tidy I couldn't find the camera.

Sorry but here's another one.

Yet another of those useful and fast dresses made from a circular tablecloth.
I saw this cloth in the op shop for weeks and kept rejecting it, because I still have this idea that I don't do yellow and also because it was too pale, until the day that I found the t shirt.
I realised then that they were made for each other so forked out the $4 and took it home.

I cut the sleeves off the t shirt and lowered the neckline all around. as well as shortened the length to attach it to the tablecloth.
The extra bits were chopped up and gathered for around the neck and other bits were strectched until they became stiff as a board and sewn around the sleeves.

I'm not sure what was originally on this little spot here in the bottom photo but it left four holes. I still have to work out how to cover that but it isn't really important as I generally wear a shrug or short sleeved cardigan over these outfits.

I still have at least one more of these outfits to make so am apologising in advancing for the boringness of these posts.

Using what you have

I used to live next door to a wonderful 80 something year old when I was a teenager. Everyone called her Nan.
Sha was the true eccentric.
Her little flat looked like a harem with billowing reds, pinks and oranges.
Always perfect.
She was always perfect.
You would never see her without makeup and apparently she would put it on while doing her daily exercise routine.
You also never saw Nan in the same outfit.
Never ever.
Everyday she prepared a new one with goods bought at the auction house which was one of her favourite haunts.
New shoes (house paint), new jewellery (house paint of course), new clothes (ricrac or lace quickly staple on and pulled off the next day).
She was highly creative.
She always stood tall (probably 5' nothing) and spoke with certainty.
Only her closest friends knew that those ridiculous hats might hide a white median strip in the perennially black hair.
Her favoutrite motto was: "A good soldier never looks behind".
And in memory of Nan I am asking you not to look behind my lovely new slip either!!

Made with love from reclaimed and found items just like Nan!

Cheerio!

My creative space - cardigan overhaul

I'm working on transforming this lovely cardy. So far I have tea dyed it so that it is not grey but an ecru sort of colour and attached gathered lace. I am still not happy with the colour and will probably end up dyeing it brown and changing the buttons.
All in time for next winter.
Grrrr.

For more creative peeps try here.

Anthro-style on a budget

Both these tops are the design of my oldest daughter.
I just did the manual work like sewing and beading.
I wouldn't have had to do anything if I hadn't shown her the anthropology site but whose complaining.
I think she looks really sweet and the tops do too.

This one was made with a specially bought t-shirt that had long sleeves. Actually it was specially bought so I could cut it up to use for flowers on another top that was bought at the same time but we discovered that the cut off sleeves had heaps to spare so DD1 pulled out the doily basket and started to play around with designs.
Some are full size doilies and others are sections that have had their frayed edges sealed with fray stoppa.
The butterfly has been embellished with tiny cream beads.

This top is a sportsgirl top bought at a garage sale for $5.
The embellishments come from a bag of unfinished work I picked up at the oppy a number of months ago.
Again beading was done, this time in a colour to match the top with three seed beads place in the centre of each little flower and in a row around the large one.

T shirt transformation is finished

Well, here it is.
Just a cheap oppy find in some of my favourite 70's colours (from when I lived back then) cut up the middle , slightly shortened in body and arms, neck shaped and a touch of lace around some edges and hand sewing with 3 strands of black floss for the others.
Too easy! And very wearable.
Just have to work out how to clean the stabilisaer off from inside and promise not to use it again in such a situation.

But can I do it?

On of the great things I have begun to enjoy in this blogging journey of mine is the value of thrifting. Yes, my friends here do it but I think it is also the encouragement of the blogging world that has really helped me to embrace it wholeheartedly.
I now buy my shoes (liberal pourings of vinegar on all of these) and top clothes only from recycling venues, eg. garage sales and opportunity shops. Also furniture from the roadside and fabric from vintage manchester. All wonderful sources of cheap produce and good for the environment too.
I am also learning the joy of renovating or updating my secondhand goods to make them truly unique.
Unfortunately my figure already makes everything look different and it desperately needs some tuning.
I have tried all sorts of things to trick my brain into accepting the need to do more. So far nothing has worked, not a new bike, exercise clothes, repeatedly telling myself how bad I look, new watch to time myself so I don't overdo it - nothing.
Yesterday I spied this little beauty down the street at the oppy with a sticker for $15 on it.
I'm still desperate, especially with all the clothes remodelling going on in my head at the moment, so I bought it.
It is in the lounge room, right near the computer. Now all I have to do is figure how to raise the computer table so that I can bike and read at the same time and life should be sweet!
Only joking.
I want to be on my way to a new and improved figure.
The only question is can I keep it up.

Cheerio!!

$8 grab bag

One of our local op shops has an $8 bag policy. That is, you grab an armload of clothes and if they all fit into their smallish plastic shopping bag you only pay $8. It is only meant to apply to clothes from certain racks but some ladies are nice and let other bits in for free too. Todays bag consisted of these (minus the two crochet doilies) and another four blouses.

I was thinking of this weeks theme of sewing for children when I bought this super cute little jacket. Does it still count if I didn't make it myself? After all my children are all too big!

Actually I think it would look even better with a little lacy/doily embellishment.

The brown on the left strikes me as good for an Anthropologie rip-off (gotta be honest now) and the Westco on the right is destined to be the back and straps of the cross stitch pussy (first photo) bag I will make some day in the next... maybe 20 years?

More from the $2 tissue paper

Here in our little cottage we believe in colour co-ordination. (Really?! Is that why I have to sleep on this bed now? Sigh.)

This lamp shade was a lovely mid green suede which totally did not go. A couple of licks of paint and a layer of that cheap tissue paper did the trick.

Likewise this shelf in that cute little cabinet. The shelf is made from part of a pin board picked up at the oppy for $1 and given a layer of tissue paper and a couple of coats of glue/water solution.
And this tissue box used to be a soft pink with pretty little frangipanis on the front. It was roughed up with a green scourer, coated in black craft paint and imediately covered in more tissue paper. A little rubbing with the finger has helped the black to come through and given it a character of it's own. The little box behind it was also a light pink with darker pink ribbons holding the corners together. DD1 decoupaged it before she moved up and replaced the ribbon.

Being so co-ordinated might seem over the top, but we are cluttery people and having a lot of things in the same colourways means that that the overall effect is not one of mess.