In Advance

Tomorrow marks one year since the fatal Christchurch 6.3 Earthquake. I shall do a wee blog post with some photos and memories of that time in my life and My Story

Hugs for all the other Christchurchians going through this with me!
xx

Blanket box - Re-Vamped!

Ta-Da!

I finished my blanket box!

I bought this sucker off Trade Me a month back and it had dark brown wood and the stain had started to flake and peel.

Since I had a huge bucket of paint from all my other projects I thought I would give this a coat or two.

Luckily Dave suggested I remove the awesome hinges before I painted. Such a thinker!

So on the occasional sunny day the box came out for a coat of paint. Then I re-attached the hinges and sanded it back.

The peeling stain lifted up some ridges on the top of the box but when I gave it a light sand it came up really nice and looks really rustic. I just sanded all the edges a-la Shabby Chic and ta-da! One re-vamped blanket box for a yet-to-be-defined purpose. Craft Box? Actual Blanket Box? General Storage Box? It is so cool. I am loving it.

Hinge - So glad I didn't paint over them! Thanks Dave!

xx 

Amy

A Quilt of Sorts

Family BBQ

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, thinks have been a bit busy lately, my parents were visiting which was awesome! It was great to have them around.
It also meant we could have a proper parent BBQ with Dave's parents and sister + hubby as well as my parents. It isn't often everyone is together in the same city. The weather stayed nice too - bonus!

The latest project happening in this house is a quilt. :)
 I have done a couple before but they were technically just patchwork duvet covers.

This was my first patchwork attempt. It used our table runners from our wedding and op-shopped fabrics

Attempt # 2 -I made this for two of our bestest friends as a wedding present. I embroidered the middle piece.

oops sideways! 'Ben & Ivy, December 18 2010'

This quilt attempt I will actually get batting and stitch through the whole lot.

I picked up some bed sheets and pillow cases from an op shop a couple of weeks ago and decided to use them as my fabric.

Pretty florals

Cut and slightly in place, mostly a brainstorm happening here.

The general layout

A couple of rows sewn

So it is a tiny bit rough, but that's how I roll. I am really enjoying working with pretty fabrics, even though they are old sheets! It will look good after an iron and the seams stretch out a wee bit. That is all I have done so far, the rest is cut and waiting.

Killer was having fun too with all the material on the floor...

A tail peeking out

A curious kitty

It has been a good inside project for a rainy week. Bring on the sunshine and the rest of summer!
xx

Musical Trinket Box

Remember this? from Garage Sale Treasures

It has been completely transformed!

Ta-da!

What do you think?

I am super stoked at how it turned out, it came together bit by bit, I didn't have an end picture in mind when I started out which is how I usually operate.

Even tonight I knew there was something more I needed to add to it and I finally dug out the
Fleur de Lis stamp I have for special occasions.

The sheet music I bought in Nelson at an antique shop during my getaway after the September 2010 earthquake. I bought a couple of old music exercise books for the specific purpose of cutting up and being 'craftified'. 

So to do this transformation I put 2 coats of paint on the box then sanded the edges back and roughed it up a bit.
Next I cut out the pieces of sheet music to fit each side of the box and glued them on with PVA. 
Finally I busted out my stamp and delicately placed it on the front.

The hardest part was waiting the days between coats of paint.

Now what to put in it?

xx

Linking up with Creative Spaces :)

Steampunk

This long weekend Dave and I took an unexpected road trip to Dunedin and back in one day. 5 hours there, 5 hours back. What a mission! We were delivering friends to pick up their new car and stopped in Timaru on the way home to see friends. 

The church we got married in!

 On the way home we stopped in one of my favourite towns in NZ. Oamaru.

2 and a bit years ago Dave and I got married in Oamaru. In the most epic church ever.

In the last couple of years Oamaru has made a bit of a name for itself as the Steampunk capital of New Zealand.

This is Steampunk - a mash-up of sci-fi/fantasy/Victorian awesomeness.

So they have created a wee tourist attraction which I LOVE! 

The Steampunk train coming out of the building.

So cool

In proper colour.

I didn't have $2 so I'm not quite sure what the peep show was all about

A bit of retro-fitted facade

Hmm shall we go inside?

I am stoked Dave and I have the same taste in design and inspiration.

Now we just need a whole bunch of watch mechanisms and brass to steampunk our stuff.

Sorry, a bit of a disjointed blog post today, lots of ideas and cool photos to show you.

Frame Re-Purposing #2 & #3 Completed!

Remember those frames I spray painted? Well I found a use for them!

I went to an op shop and found some old floral sheets, tasteful ones at $1 each.

I chopped them up and ta-da!

Some pretty wall art to brighten up a room. In this case, our lounge.

It's a pretty grey day here (where did summer go?) so I went and picked a bunch of flowers and did a mini photo-shoot with my camera settings on vivid, just to make things pretty...

A nice easy Sunday afternoon project.

Have a great day off tomorrow for Waitangi Day all you folk here in NZ. We are off to visit a friend of Dave's who has a brand new baby - yay!

xx

A Gift

Hello again blog-friends!

I finished another long-time-coming project the other day, once again with Dave's help. I think he is my motivation.

So this project started from an old picture I bought from a garage sale about 6 months ago. It had a not so cool picture but an awesome wooden frame.

The finished project

From the same garage sale I found these old keys. They were all oily and rusty sitting in a jar and the woman who sold them to me looked at me strangely when I paid her for them.

I had plans for this from the beginning but I couldn't get it to match with my vision. I ran out of white paint, then I couldn't get the texture right, then the middle board didn't match the frame. So it got stashed in the spare room for a while.

Then we got some recycled paint and Dave suggested we paint it all with that.

So we did. Team effort there. Then we left it to dry and sandpapered it back a bit to give it a more 'rustic' look.

Edges sanded back

Then Dave used Araldite (his favourite adhesive) to glue the keys on. I must point out here that he is much more of a perfectionist than me - he penciled out the spacing for the keys. I would have just stuck them on how I thought it should go then regretted it later.

So we just erased the pencil lines and it was done! Easy project, not sure why it took so long to get finished but I'm glad it did.

Now we gave this away as a gift to a wonderful family we recently purchased our new car from. There was a bit of a delay with the finance company (I'll spare you the rant) and they were so lovely and patient with us the whole time so we wanted to say sorry and thank you. They are into Shabby Chic too so they loved it.

I love giving!

Killer posing. She loves cameras.

Dave slightly distracted by the TV.

Long weekend here this weekend. Looking forward to having Monday off work!
xx