Author Archives: zefiart

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About zefiart

Blogger, DIY-er, poodle lover, graphic designer, dog groomer, recycler, artist, wonder woman in my spare time.

where’s dinner and do you have regrets?

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Where’s dinner?
Do you ever regret throwing something(s) way? It isn’t something I think of often, but lately something I read reminded me of stuff I threw out many years ago which I now feel a bit bad about.
Not the photos of a particular ex-boyfriend…  I can live without that memory.
No, I don’t regret that. But there are some small things that I do regret throwing out.
You know how, when you’re in love and everything seems like it’ll last forever, this is the man of your dreams, the white picket fence looms in the future and your rose tinted glasses haven’t yet come off and been crushed underfoot? At that point in a relationship you think you want to erase all the previous loves of your life and begin anew. Wipe the slate clean so to speak.
So you throw away all those old love letters you cherished for years. The ones from your first boyfriend who you thought was SO romantic (till you realised that most of his letters were simply lyrics from his favourite songs). Or the great passionate summer romance you had where the guy could only speak french and italian and who’s letters you had to read with the assistance of a dictionary or a friend who spoke italian.
And the gifts. You decide you can live without that little heart charm given to you by the man you believed would be your life partner. Or the sweatshirt a two-timing louse gave you from Disneyland, telling you that he wore it while visiting there and felt like you had your arms around him. 
Uhuh.
You toss these things out, without a thought, without regrets. You give away the charm or drop clothing into the brotherhood bin.
(Now you kick yourself for not selling the stuff and making a quick buck out of it, but you never worked that way.)
No. The stuff I regret throwing away were things given to me by people (men) who I wasn’t actually involved with – thus somehow the stuff they gave me was more genuine. Untainted. And I still threw it away.
One of those things was a painting. A watercolour given to me by a french boy I met when I was in Paris on a school trip at age 16. We sat up all night, in the hostel kitchen where he worked while attending art school, drinking hot chocolate out of huge bowls, and talking – Paris by night outside the window… Then he snuck me out to see his place (a tiny loft) where he didn’t try to seduce me or take advantage of me, but instead gave me a drawing to remember him by and asked for a page from my visual diary to remember me by.
It was so innocent. So exciting! Doesn’t every girl dream of a romantic night in Paris?
Hello? Do you have my dinner?
The other thing was a poem, written to me by a guy I thought was a friend. Who it seems had more feelings for me than I was aware. It was a beautiful, sensitive poem, asking me to give him a chance, to stay in Greece and not return to Australia.
When I thought I was in love with Mr Right, I threw these things out along with old photos and old love letters.
Why would I throw away a painting? Or a poem? They’re art, someone’s hard work and talent.
Yet I did. 
I’ve also thrown away, given away, or sold (not so often) things I’ve grown out of or no longer need. Those items I don’t regret… in general.
I do regret not holding on to my mother’s old clothes however, even after they no longer fitted me. They were beautiful 1960s outfits, mohair twin sets and tweed pedal pushers. Nice.
Well… we can’t keep everything. We have to move on and make space in our home, our lives and our hearts.
And a clean out of the old is good for the soul, right?
Plus, there’s the added advantage that by getting rid of old stuff, you make room for MORE stuff.
Yeah. I like that.
Lets not look at it as throwing things away, but rather as making room for new (old) stuff!
Like these 7in long nails I found at an op shop last week. How wonderful are they? I can already see them as part of a project….
z

blue crystals, chains and rust

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There’s something about the combination of rust and sparkle that just does it for me. And lace and burlap, but that’s another story entirely.
When I found the first hand sander at a tip shop some time ago I bought it cause I just loved the smoothness and softness of the wood where it had been worn smooth by use. I had no idea what I’d do with it.
In fact if it didn’t still have sandpaper stapled to it, I wouldn’t have had a clue what it was.
Then I found another. And another. It was like once I’d seen one, I was seeing them everywhere. 
 
 
 
Like cars. Have you ever noticed that you can go through life quite happily not having a clue what a Holden Astra looks like, but then you see one and suddenly they’re everywhere?
That’s how it works with wooden hand sanders too. Once your eyes are open to them, they’re everywhere. And I’m buying them. I can only hope I find more. I have more ideas of what to use them for.
An image on Pinterest of a collection of clunky rusty objects on chains gave me the idea that this sander would be ideal to hang a random collection of objects from.
The first one I made I already had a few items in my miscellanous box which were just waiting for the right project. This time around I actually had to scavenge to find the right items.
I went through my miscellaneous box, I went through my collection of spoons, I even went through the bottom of Wayne’s tool boxes. I got some goodies there, but unfortunately Wayne saw me and confiscated them.
Oh well. Easy come, easy go.
Still, I had a few interesting things in my pile. A couple of old hinges. An old spoon. Some rusty nuts, bolts and washers. One of my collection of metal cup cake tins. Lots and lots of rusty wire in shapes made by Wayne. Beads. Crystals.
Cool.
This is one reason I just hate it that tip shops are closing. The one in New Norfolk is gone. Another is soon to close. You can’t get the same amount of rusty junk in op shops. 
At a tip shop you often find boxes full of crap, just begging for me to go through them. Which I do, carefully sifting through all the rusty hardware and finding a bent hinge, a crooked hook, a broken doorknob.
Treasure!
 
 
I just love that stuff.
I’m wierd.
However, there’s no arguing that a collection of junk and sparkle like this looks pretty amazing.

This particular suncatcher has chains and silver beads from a broken necklace, strands of watchmakers chain and a blue crystal with aurora borealis finish which makes it reflect colours in the sun.
I apologise for the overload of photos… I couldn’t make up my mind which ones to use, so I just used them all! 🙂
z

welcome stars

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I’m finally starting to feel more like myself. There’s still a whole lot of coughing, spluttering, sneezing and wheezing going on, but all in all – I’m feeling better. Thank goodness. This not being able to do stuff (create) has been killing me. 
Last night I finished a couple of projects that only needed tweaking (and got Wayne to tweak a couple more).
The welcome sign is one of them. This had been on the hallway wall for a couple of weeks and all it needed was to be photographed outside where the walls weren’t the same colour as the paint on the timber. How did I do that? I started with flat white paint, added a touch of this and a drop of that and mixed up a colour that looks almost exactly the same as the colour on my walls!
 
Anyway, this project only needed photographing so here goes.
The timber piece is one that came off the old stable. I gave it a brush of pale blue/grey paint and then hand painted the word on it. I printed the word out, rubbed the back of the paper with charcoal and traced the letters, then painted them. I’ve found that doing it by hand beats any kind of transfer method I’ve tried. Using a thin brush and some acrylic paint I can give the letters the worn look I want by using more or less paint in areas.
I then took some sticks from under one of our gum trees and made stars using thin silver wire for the joins.
I added a few beads to the bottom of each star for a bit of bling. You can’t see the beads as well in the photos as you can in real life which is a pity.
All in all, I think it came up rather nice. When I see it near the door it makes me smile.

 Now on to other stuff!

z

a box for my angel

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Its been over a year since I lost my Billybear. He was my baby boy. His registered name was Toniri Angel by My Side and he was the angel by my side for almost 13 years.

When I brought him home from the pet crematorium I got a small craft box for his ashes as I’d done for Scooter’s ashes the year before. The plan had been to decorate the box in a way that meant something to me, then keep him next to me on the bedside table. Billy always liked to sleep near me.
 
Unfortunately, nothing came to me, so the box stayed plain until a couple of weeks ago when I suddenly had an inspiration.
One of my favourite songs of all time is Garth Brooks’ The Dance. I have it on my website on the page of dogs I’ve loved an lost on my website. To see the page click here.
I realised it was the perfect thing for Billy’s box.
So I went about getting it done. I printed out the lyrics to the song in a font I liked. Using tea, I stained the pages to look old, then cut out panels. I glued those onto the box using a mix of PVA glue and water.
Once that was dry, I gave the box a couple of coats of clear water based varnish to seal it.
Without intending to I ended up with a crackle finish. I’d read (on Pinterest) that you can create a crackle finish with glue, but it said the glue had to be tacky. My glue was very dry. Still… it crackled.
To finish the box (and hide the imperfect fit of the paper around the lock) I used some burnt umber artists acrylic and a cloth. I dabbed the paint on, then rubbed it off. It gave the box a more aged (and rusty lock) appearance.
Billybear is back in his box on my bedside table now. Next to me, where he belongs.
Hope you like your little box Billybear.
 z

its not the cough that carries you off

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Or so they say.

It doesn’t always seem so when you wake up at 2am you’re coughing up a lung and can only sleep when slung over the arm of a couch…. a bucket within reach.

This flu has really taken it out of me. I started with a sore throat a week ago, next day I had a headache, by that night I had a fever, a chest full of sludge and other unpleasantries.

This is definitely not fun. I much prefer to be the one who’s well and full of energy, who can keep the house running and passably neat, while yelling at Wayne to stay in bed and forget moving till I said he was well enough.

Having things flipped on me sure sucks.

But frankly, I was so sick I didn’t care.

I didn’t care when the house got dirtier and messier. I didn’t even notice for about 3 days. When I did notice, I just couldn’t raise enough energy to care.

Finally, yesterday, I got up enough ‘give a damn’ to sweep the kitchen floor.  I had to. The dog-hair bunnies under the kitchen table started barking at me.

And I had to put on a load of washing cause I was out of clothes. During the worst of it I had to change clothes at least once a night. I was running out of Ts.

I had to hang them up in the living room to dry by the heater though, even though the sun was out, cause I couldn’t dare be outside. Wayne had already warned me that there better still be dog poop on the lawn when he got back or there’d be hell to pay.

I don’t think he trusts me to sit still. He has a point. If I hadn’t been sick, I would have hung out the clothes and pooper-scooped… and started another 5 projects.

Having to pause and catch my breath every few minutes kinda put a damper on that.

I also have to now rethink my standard reply to doctor questionnaires. The question “Do you have asthma?” used to elicit the reply “I used to when I was a kid, but I’ve rarely had it since.”

The new answer is “Yes. I have asthma.”

Getting to sleep lately has been a challenge. First there was the biblical flood filling my lungs if I so much as lay back by 5 degrees.

Then there’s the entire bagpipe band taking up residence in my chest.

Not only was their playing loud, but I could feel them crashing around in my chest!

My mom was the one who knicknamed my asthma my ‘bagpipes’. She’d say “your bagpipes are back” and give me a back rub and urge me to rest.

I first got asthma when I was 7 years old, living in Griffith NSW. No one knows where it came from. No one in our family ever had it. Sure, papou (mom’s father) had bronchitis all his life, but asthma? That’s an Australian thing… Guess I made my choice back then, huh?

When it did hit, with no prior warning, it hit hard. That first spring I was laid up for 2 weeks. I couldn’t move at all. Every single movement would cause a constriction and make breathing harder. All I was able to do was sit up in bed and wheeze.

That’s when I made my first little old lady friend. Her name was Aunty Edna and she was not my aunty. She was the sweetest old lady, I barely remember her, just the memory of a very proper elderly lady with blue rinse hair set to perfection, always dressed well, with lace hankies. She was the only one who could calm me down when I got really upset.

Come to think of it, I don’t even know where she came from or where she went after I got better. The only time I remember her in my life was at my bedside.

Anyway, I’m finally on the road to recovery, though I’ve been warned not to rush things. A few people Wayne’s son works with went back to work too soon and were back in bed.

Flu Take Two is not something I want!

z

another suncatcher

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Among the many things lying on my coffee table at the moment is a suitcase with my beading tools and my bead boxes.
Somewhere along the line, I decided I’d try my hand at making jewelry so I bought the teeniest pliers, skinny wires and beads. I did make a few necklaces (which turned out great btw ) and took them with me to Greece a couple of years ago as gifts.
Then I lost interest in jewelry.
Been there, done that is my motto.
Then I found these gorgeous huge chandelier crystals at a tip shop. There weren’t many, so I grabbed what they had. I thought they’d make great suncatchers.
With Wayne bending wire and making shapes, then me blinging them up, I think they come up quite well.
Originally the plan was to take them to a local shop and see if they’d sell. I might still do that, but for now I just have a build-up of suncatchers in the house, where they don’t catch much sun. I may even try listing them in my shop if when I get around to it.
I’m sick today and feeling rather flat. A sore throat and pounding head will do that to a person. Not to mention the dripping tap in my nose that needs a new washer. 
I once had the wierdest dream where I sneezed my guts out of my nose. Really.
They were white and long. Like spaghetti. Strange.
I wanna be home under a warm blanket with a mug of hot chicken noodle soup with tons of lemon…
Why exactly is chicken soup the right soup when you’re sick? Who made that the law?
I grew up on a diet of chicken noodle soup when I was sick like jewish kids the world over, and we’re not even jewish. Given mom came from an island with a fisherman father, why didn’t she give us fish soup when we were sick?
Last night I couldn’t sleep. You know that feeling, when you have a sore throat and think “Whatever you do, don’t swallow, it’ll hurt!” and then the first thing you do is swallow? Then cringe. And think, “Ok, that was a mistake. Just. Don’t. Do. It. Again.”
Then you do.
z

heart(y) welcome

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I’ve always loved those gorgeous wreaths I see on doors on the blogs I follow. I’m not a wreath kind of person really, but I was inspired.
In my scavenge hunt in the wood pile in the back paddock a couple of weeks ago I found 4 rusty old wire coat hangers. They were gorgeous! All bent out of shape but perfect.
When is rusty metal not perfect?
I took the old coat hangers to the living room where I sat them on the coffee table. The coffee table which is my second office and cluttered with an assortment of projects in various stages from conception to completion.
Do people actually use coffee tables to put coffee on? Mine is only used for its pre-destined purpose when I’m expecting visitors.
One thing mom did instill in me despite my rebellion, was the need to present a clean/neat home to visitors. Like a good greek girl.
I’ll never forget… of all the things mom made me wash, scrub and clean, the garbage bin was one I just could not understand. I mean, its a bin. By definition, its dirty. You put rubbish in it. Why would you want to clean it? 
Mom’s favourite sayings when it came to me and my lack of cleaning skills: “What? Doesn’t that belong to us?”
Years later, in my own flat, with my very own bin, I caught myself washing it out in the bathtub.
Don’t tell my mother. She’ll know she was right.
So I’m houseproud. Despite the vomit stains on the carpet (to which collection Montana added another stain this morning at 4am. I was shot out of bed like the projectile did from her stomach). 
She was very considerate. She vomitted right outside the bedroom door so I wouldn’t have to strain my ears to hear her hawking…
So, despite the vomit stains on the carpet, the burns around the fireplace from escaping burning debris (who makes a hearth that’s only 6in wide???) and the fact that we have salmon coloured carpet, I clean, tidy, vacuum and put away the 1024 chewed dog toys before visitors arrive.
(If we never had visitors the house would probably only get vacuumed once a year. Whether it needed it or not.)
I hate vacuuming. When we were kids, my brother and I had household chores. I did the dishes, the hanging out laundry, the bringing in laundry, the ironing, the dusting, the folding of clean clothes and the cleaning of the bathrooms. Peter did the vacuuming.
Does anyone see a pattern of ‘greek mother’s golden egg’? 
As a girl, I had to learn to keep home for my eventual (and elusive) family.
As a boy all Peter had to do was produce an heir to carry on the family name.
Since we were an enlightened family, my mom gave a nod to the whole SNAG thing by asking Peter to vacuum. 
Woop-dee-do.
SNAG: (noun)
a. a sausage on an aussie BBQ, usually charred to the texture of charcoal
b. a Sensitive New Age Guy – a man who puts the toilet seat down and who’s culinary skills extend beyond ‘spag bol’ (aka spaghetti bolognese to those who prefer using all syllables in a word).
I love my home. I want it to look good, comfy, welcoming. I like to make it look good in the eyes of strangers. Or friends who rarely visit. Friends who visit often have to take us as we are: with mud tracks in the kitchen, dog hair in the office and decapitated toys on the couch.
One day, when I replace the carpet, I’ll sweep and mop regularly and the house will always be clean. Right now its almost like that carpet and I are at war. I’m glare at it, daring it to do its worst. Waiting… biding my time to launch an attack…

Anyway, I was talking about this beautiful heart wreath I made for our (as yet unpainted) front door.
When I reclaimed the coat hangers I bent them all into heart shapes. Lovely!
I then tramped through long grass and mud to some willow trees down by the railway track on the road to town and collected some willow branches. Never having done this before I wasn’t sure whether I needed brown or green sticks. I chose brown cause they’d look right with the rust. I think green would have been better.
(Remember that for next time.)
I then made a tassel from some jute string. I’d seen one on Pinterest (yeah yeah yeah) and figured “I can do that!”
So I did.
I added some beads to finish it off and attached it to the wreath.
It needed something more. I added a few other decorations. And spent ages putting seed beads on the skinniest wire ever.
What sick b$%*&@d invented seed beads? sheesh.
I had to add a hanger to it so it would sit flush with the door (the coat hanger having its own hook facing the wrong way and I never thought of twisting it sideways).
Still, I rather like my extra little wire hearts on the top.
So there you have it. Simple wire heart(s) to welcome you to our home.
Please ignore the mess inside.
Reminder to self: bury a few coat hangers in the paddock to harvest next year.
z

my new esty shop

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If you’ve read my last blog (or two) you already know I’ve been busy setting up an Esty shop. Its been interesting….

For instance, it took me days to set the shop up, then hours to list the first items. I hope I’ll get better at this as time goes by. My aim is to write descriptions that are interesting and fun to read, not just a boring list of materials and measurements.

Something that shows the character of the piece I’m listing, and the character of the people who made it.

Its hard to make things to sell. I’ve never been good at it. I’ve always made things for myself, for my home or for friends.

I’m the type of person who would rather give something away than sell it. I’ve built up enough good karma in my life to not come back as a bug in my next life.

But reality is that karma doesn’t put food in the horse feeders, so I have to be practical and actually exchange items for money most of the time.

(Not all the time! That takes the fun out of it!)

I would love to keep all the stuff I make. I love making things out of discarded bits and pieces.

I love every piece of junk I use to make something. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have risked tetanus and broken nails going through boxes of rusty screws in junk shops.

So, when I make something, its made from a collection of items I’ve hand picked cause they spoke to me.

I have acute hearing, and perhaps an ear-brain translation problem, but when I’m rifling through a drawer of rusty nuts and broken hardware, I’ll hear a little voice saying ‘Me! Take me!’ and I’ll look and find an interesting hook or a rusty hinge with my name on it.

Speaking of my name on it… The other day I was at a tip shop and I saw something that spoke to me. It was most likely the bottom of an old cupboard. It had a drawer in it, cracks in the side and no top. Most people would see junk.

To me it glowed in a white light, an aura of potential emmanating from it like smog.

I got the guy to put my name on it so I could go back and get it later in the day.

I have plans for that bit of rubbish. Mud room or porch, new top, coat of paint and some glue on the cracks…

I’m gonna need a bigger boat…

There is only so much room in this house. And its already got too much stuff in it as it is.

Something has to give. Things that don’t fit or don’t suit have to go.

Thus the shop.

So please visit the shop and have a look. Its pretty sparse right now but I’ll be adding things as often as I can till I have a respectable inventory in there.

Perhaps I’ll even learn how to use Etsy properly!

glitter, sparkle and rust

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Ever since I saw this photo on Pinterest I’ve been hanging out to make something similar.
I had to find the ‘hanger’ for it, then I had to find the right stuff to hang off it. The photo on Pinterest didn’t lead to any kind of blog with more photos so I was on my own.
I had a couple of these old timber hand sanders (you staple sandpaper to them and use them like a belt sander only without the benefit of electricity, just elbow grease.
I hadn’t decided what to make out of the sanders, but I did think they’d make a good hanger for the ‘dangle’.
Really, what would you call it? Its not a suncatcher. The crystals do catch the sun, but the rust doesn’t… Its not a wind chime, it doesn’t chime at all. It might thunk and clunk but musical it ain’t.
One of the small hardware stores I liked to visit now and then was closing down so I bought a few meters of silver chain. I’d never seen this type of chain before – I’d seen chunkier chains or those horrible toilet chains, but never this type.
I did find it in another hardware store the week after buying mine, it was in a packet not by the meter, and it was called ‘watch-makers’ chain.
Or something like that. It had something to do with watches anyway…
I looked through my boxes in my workshop and picked out items I wanted to hang on my ‘dangle’.
I had a beautiful sugar spoon. Some springs. Some rusty washers. Some crystals.
An old house number. Some barbed wire Wayne had made into pendants of sorts (if you don’t mind being spiked by your jewelry).
An old bolt. A little pie tin or metal cupcake pan. A broken watch. Some keys. Some beads. A rusty coat hanger I found in the paddock which I bent into a heart.
I put eye hooks onto the bottom of the sander. I cut the chain into varying lengths and used pliers to open links to join it to the eyes and to the objects. Some objects I used large jump rings I’d taken off some cheap necklaces.
I’ve hung it on the deck from the hook I put up last weekend to photograph the suncatchers.
Eventually I’ll move it to the other side of the deck to catch the morning sun. For now I love seeing it when I come home.
Old and new. Silver and rust. A mix of glitter, sparkle and rust.
I’ve started collecting more objects to make another one for my etsy shop.
I spent hours the other day opening an Etsy shop and listing items. Took me about 4 hours to list 3 items. I better get better at this!
z

curly wirly wire

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When I was out feeding the horses the other day I came across what I thought was some rusty wire. 
Being the ‘never let a rusty thing get away’ kind of person I am, I picked it up and took it into the house where I promptly tried to make something with it – and discovered it was copper!
So I gave it to Wayne. He loves copper wire.
Left to his own devices, with a bit of wire, some pliers and a warped mind, he make this crazy curly bendy thing out of it. Lovely, but it was just a crazy curly bendy bit of wire.
I took one look at it and handed him a little bottle from the collection of old bottles I dug out of my back yard in Fentonbury when I first moved in there. This one looks like it might have held ink in it originally, but then again, who knows. It could have been a tiny bottle of gin for all I know.
I asked Wayne to attach his crazy curly bendy wire to the bottle to make it into a sort of vase with a crazy curly bendy wire attachment. 
I added a few crystals for a bit of bling, and voila!
Another gorgeous object with no apparent use but very pretty to look at.
I was thinking you could put a tiny bunch of flowers in the bottle. Or a single larger flower.
Seeing as its winter here and the frosts have all but killed all my plants, I didn’t have any flowers to put into it for the photos.
So what I did was hang it from the hook on the porch and take photos of it against the sky.
I think its gorgeous! I love the randomness of it, the pink tone of the wire and the pinkish crystals.
Wayne has so much free expression in his work. I’m so much more controlled and restrained in everything I do. I wish I had his freedom.
Though not when it expresses itself in his cooking. The slow cooked stew he made where he added red wine and yogurt will go down in history as the ugliest meal in the history of culinary failures. It was bright purple.
A lesson was learned: Free is good in some places. Not others.
 I’ve had to work hard freeing up my painting. For years I’ve tried to loosen up when I paint. 
My work is very descriptive and realistic. I long for the freedom of the impressionists who described things in such a way that left so much more to the imagination. They painted light as it bounced off their subjects instead of the subjects themselves.
I think my fascination with white on white in my own paintings is partly due to my wanting to free myself up and paint light. 
Of course, part of it is that I paint white poodles cause I own white poodles….
But I love white on white. If I didn’t share my home with 4 dogs and Wayne, I’d be redecorating in shades of white. As it is, the salmon carpet is already taking a battering!
When I applied to art school the main focus of my portfolio was etchings of eggs. Simple white shapes. It was all about the play of light and shadow. And painting white poodles, especially those in show coats, is all about that too.

Once again I’ve strayed off topic. I’m working on being freer with the things I do. And working with Wayne on projects like this bottle/vase/crazy curly wire thing is so much fun!

z