sea breezes

Sorting and arranging....

I finally finished painting on Friday and waited as long as I could for the paint to dry. It's still a bit soft but I decided to go ahead and start putting everything away, the pile of boxes in the ajoining living room were driving me mad.

I had a couple of vintage suitcases in the loft so I used them to store quilt wadding, toy stuffing etc

I used the plate rack to store papers and cardstock, they just fit in, the folder has some stamps. There are a few sewing books and my most recent Somerset Studio magazines. The hat box has my wool and crocheting hooks, I don't have much because I am learning and I am quite rubbish at it.

There are buttons, odd embellishments, glue sticks etc in my tins but as yet most of them are empty, they will fill up over time no doubt

The old box in the next photograph is full of hand made tatting, a gift from one of the older WI ladies, she thought I would be able to use it in a project. It was a gift to her from the husband of a friend who died. There is quite a lot of it and I love the old box it was kept in.

New craft room storage

I have a little craft room at home, it was the front porch on the house but the door was bricked up and so I use it as a little craft nook. Most of my supplies are down at my studio but I like to keep some bits at home. I had boxes and bags stacked in a corner and an office desk that I was given free. I thought about an Expedit unit from Ikea but I really wanted something more feminine and vintage looking, my own little girlie corner of the house.

I saw this dresser on Ebay, only four miles away from home, it didn't sell so I emailed and offered less money and bought it! It will fit along most of one wall, I thought it would look lovely painted and decided it would take a day to paint, it would dry overnight and be done. Wrong.

I bought some off white paint and thought I had stirred it properly but it was thin and runny then too thick. I had to wait two days for it to dry, rub it down and start again. The colour was too blue so I bought another pot called vintage calico which was a lot warmer looking. It wasn't enough.

There is an ugly electricity meter in the corner, I will probably frost the glass on that side leaving a little gap so that it can still be read for our bills without having to move the unit. I had to go back into town for another pot of paint (at £17 a tin it is not cheap!) and was so fed up but I have nearly finished. I am waiting for it to dry now, there are a couple of small drawers to put back and the glass to clean and replace.

I was dreading trying to paint the knobs so I was delighted when I found these cream porcelain knobs in The Range for £1 each. I have plans to alter them soon.

While I was there I was tempted by some tins, they will look lovely on the shelves.

I can't wait to get rid of the piles of boxes in the living room and put everything away in my new storage.

 

Class layouts

I taught my regular monthly scrapbook class yesterday at Pickleberry using some of the gorgeous new papers from Prima. At the moment my printer is stored in a cupboard so I had to dig through old photographs to match the papers, these ones taken by Cheryl were exactly right for the colour combination. The class was to show how to make embelishments, colour and stamp them to coordinate and then how to group them on a page. It was a lovely class, all of my ladies enjoyed it even though a few were beginners. All they needed was some encouragement to cut up their Prima London Market papers! I'm not really happy with the title but life's too short to change it and it's another one for my album.

As I had already made the layout before class I chose different papers from the Prima Doodle Deux line and made a variation using some photos taken last year

I'll certainly be using these papers again, I love them!

A new art journal

It's over a year since I did any art journaling, I hate cleaning all of the mess up afterwards but Helen asked me to show her how to get started so we went down to my studio for the day.

I always start a thick album but get bored and never finish, I have a huge journal that was a gift, I have painted the pages with gesso but I am scared to start it and then spoil it as I can't replace it. It's waiting for something 'special' whenever that will be. Today I used an A5 book of watercolour paper thinking I can finish the whole book fairly quickly and actually have something completed to show.

We didn't really get started until lunch time but I covered every side in gesso, stuck in some chipboard shapes and managed to paint a few backgrounds. I half finished a couple of pages and was quite pleased with how much I achieved in one afternoon. 

These pages have some small envelopes ready for tags to go inside

I'll have to have another day soon to paint some more before I go off onto something else and forget about it.