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.

new planter box

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How do you like my new planter box? I think its really cool.
This is what it looked like when I got it. 

Yeah, your eyes are seeing well. I haven’t done a thing to it other than bringing it home and plonking it on the porch. 
Well… I did put some plants in it. For now. Temporary plants. Two established succulents and 2 cuttings I got from a friend that I didn’t have in my collection which I’m trying to grow. And one is a white geranium I am also encouraging to grow. 
I am not a huge geranium lover – I only have one pink one which forms balls of flowers which are gorgeous, and a variegated pink pellargonium a friend gave me a cutting of recently. That’s been planted and is already doing well. Talk about low maintenance. But this new cutting is a white one with a double flower I fell in love with.
Looking for pics of the geranium I have and the geranium I think I got I came across some amazing photos!
I’m totally rethinking my stand on geraniums…
This is similar to the pink one I have. Its a pale pink ball of flowers:
According to the site I found this photo on, its a common geranium. But I thought it was uncommon and pretty enough to make me want a cutting. Growing up in Greece, I was used to seeing geraniums everywhere but I never thought they were very pretty.
Maybe its cause they always looked sun bleached and dry… Who knows? My mother loves them cause they take neglect in their stride. Maybe the greek ones are tougher. On the website I found the pink one above it said they didn’t survive heat. Tell that to the ones living in pots on greek islands! Mine can cope with the heat but the frost nearly killed it a couple of years ago. Its still recovering. I now keep it on the porch in winter.
I think this is the one I got a cutting of. Its called a Double Trailing Sybil White Pearl. Click on the pic to go to the page.
Here is another photo of a Sybil White Pearl… Drool.
Or it could be this one. The Pelargonium Apple Blossom. How pretty is this one!
And here is another pic. OMG its amazing! I think I’ve just become a geranium person.

But I digress. My new planter box. I love the 60s look. The inside is lined with a bit of galvanised iron so I don’t have to worry about water leaking out the bottom of pots and rotting the wood.

I’ve actually had this for over a month, but I only put plants in it last week. 
A girl gets busy.
z

taps and coat rack

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What’s on tap for today you ask?
Well, I tapped into my creative mind and came up with this recycled tap coat rack. You could say I tapped this old pine board into a coat rack.
Luckily I had all these things on tap in the workshop.
groan.
Ok, I’ll stop now. 

I love these old garden taps with their patina showing and all. Some are our own old garden taps and some I picked up from here or there, as I do.

I painted the board with chalkboard black paint so you can label the taps for each member of the family if you should so desire. 

Other than showing off my tap coat rack, I don’t have much else to say. You could say I’m all tapped out.
Turns out I had one more left.
z
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make an easy lightbox

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I’d like to share my dodgey easy lightbox. You know, for when you need to photograph something small and need to be able to do it without glare or shadows.

Well, I failed in that. But I think its the lighting rather than the box that’s to blame.

But first, lets explain the term ‘dodgey’ for those who don’t speak Australian. The Urban Dictionary defines it as:

Australian term.
1. Something or someone that is a bit suspicious, doesn’t seem quite right. Doesn’t seem the real deal.
2. Slack, broken, worthless or useless.
3. Not very appealing.
1. That car salesman seemed a bit dodgey.
2. This old car is pretty dodgey.
3. That band last night were pretty dodgey.
As you can see, dodgey is my middle name.
So, how to make your own lightbox?
Get a largish cardboard box. Cut out 3 squares – one on top and one on either side, but not the back or the bottom. Well, you could, but it’d be a waste of time.
Now the first time I did this I threw an old white sheet over the box as my light diffuser (yeah, I know technical terms!)
This time I got more professional. I cut out squares of white fabric and taped them onto the box. Real professional. I was going to use hot glue but tape was easier – ie it was there on the table next to me.
Note the overabundance of bits of tape in the picture. I used the box flaps to reinforce the sides and top, using tape to attach them. Classy.
Almost there. Get a large sheet of white paper. Glue or tape that to the top of the back, curl it where the back meets the bottom to create that no horizon look, then lay it down flat at the bottom.
Voila.
Now all you need is light. 
I collected all the spare lamps I had in the house. One tall reading lamp. Two smaller lamps. Ideally you want bendable lamps you can angle at the windows, and you need them to kind of match light-wise. Strength I mean. I didn’t have matching ones. Hence the uneven lighting in my images.
Whatever. It was better than taking photos with a flash.
That’s it. Your lightbox is ready for masterpiece photos.
Mind you, you really do need a tripod for taking photos, so if you have one get it out and set it up in front of the lightbox.
Surely you can do a better job than mine, but hey, I now have a lightbox, dodgey as it is, set up in my office for every time I want to take photos.
I’d say I’ve done well,
z
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birds not so welcome

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Its summer. We have a house with all sorts of nooks and crannies which birds find perfect for raising their young. Every spring and summer our roof is full of bird families being raised. 
Its not as nice as it sounds. Our deck and everything on it gets covered in bird poop, there is constant rustling in the roof and the birds nests are a fire hazard and attract rodents. Yuck.
This is one example of the easiest to reach spots. The light fittings on the back porch. Pretty huh?
Here are three of the many nests I removed from above these lights this spring. 

I actually had to remove them every couple of days. It took weeks for the birds who were nesting there to get tired of rebuilding and go elsewhere.

The story was not without casualties. One of the nests had two eggs in it.

Pretty little speckled blue eggs. And one of them broke when I pulled out the nest. sigh. Barney helped clean it up. He likes eggs.

I love the bird songs and I love watching them hop around the place. We have swallows and sparrows and blackbirds and many spotted pardalotes and my favourite, wrens.
I do not love the bird poop or the rustling overhead or the fact that they’re a fire hazard.
Better go patrol the lights again. Its been a week of quiet on that front and I bet someone else has moved in.
z

doll remake – the walking dead bratz dolls!

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I’m a big Walking Dead fan. Huge fan.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… zombies, brains, blood, gore…??? Well, I’d have said the same thing before I got hooked on the series. A friend gave me Season 1 and I had nothing better to watch one day…
That was the end of it. I’m addicted. I share this addiction with a few close friends and I do my best to spread the contagion around. My brother said no way to watching it. He’s now hanging out for each new episode of Season 7.
What can I say?
Anyway, this post isn’t about my TV habits. Its about my newest hobby. Passion if you like… Bratz dolls. 
REMADE Bratz dolls.
There’s a lady here in Tasmania who’s gotten famous worldwide with her Bratz remakes. She takes the extreme dolls and makes them into ‘normal’ kids.
As much as I admire the motivation behind her remakes, I think the dolls are boring. Plain. 
From an art perspective of course! 🙂
When I got my first Barbie a few months ago I began a downhill slide… I now have 5 Barbies. All early 60’s versions. One of them had missing hair plugs and another has a green face. I bought them thinking I would have a go at restoring them after seeing the amazing work some people do on dolls. More on the Barbies in the future.
Meanwhile I became obsessed with doll remakes and repair. I watched videos. I read blogs. I itched to make my own dolls. I found some Bratz in a local 2nd hand store and brought them home. One had her hair cropped off and that inspired me to make Carol from the Walking Dead. Another was a black girl so it was obvious she was Michonne. I chose these characters because I love them and find them inspiring.
My Carol doll already had cut off hair so after washing her and removing her face, I gave her a better haircut first up. Dolls who aren’t meant to have short hair aren’t rooted evenly all over their heads, so she had bald spots. I used tacky glue and tufts of hair to fill these in. 
When her face was dry I did my first ever face repaint using a photo of Carol for reference. I gave her stud earrings and then began to dress her.

I made all Carol’s clothes myself. Imperfectly. I’m not the best sewer when working on human sized clothing, imagine making stuff under 3 inches big!

When Wayne saw me ironing Carol’s shirt he about flipped. I don’t iron HIS shirts! 🙂 In my defense, I only had to plog the iron on top of the shirt as it lay flat…

Anyway, moving right along, I made Carol a singlet out of an old jumper, a shirt with seed beads for buttons, and cargo pants out of scraps of fabric. At this point I’m glad I keep all kinds of crap. I made my own patterns using some old Bratz clothes I pulled apart and a lot of guesswork. Naturally patterns are a fluid thing here… always changing cause I always seem to get something wrong! Still I’m loving doing it.

Carol has a trench knife (actually she has two, one is bigger than the other with a silver blade, the other is all black) and a gun. Her belt is made of a tiny strip of leather off an old jacket I bought years ago and never did anything with. The buckle is a rusty washer. The knife sheath is also made from the same leather.

Since Bratz feet and shoes are all one, I had to find a way to make Carol some boots. At the time I didn’t have any which suited, the best I could do were these high heeled sandals which I made into boots.

First I painted them, twice to get the shade right. Then I added laces… Talk about tiny work! I got slivers of leather, put bronze coloured crimps at each end and glued them in place. Voila. Lace up boots. I even scuffed them up a bit.

Here is the before and after photo.

Michonne was a much bigger remake.

With Michonne I had to remove all the doll’s hair, repaint the face, then give her dredlocks. I did this by wet felting squares of black and different shades of brown wool. I then cut those up and worked them into dreds. I glued those onto the doll’s head one layer at a time, making a head band out of a scrap of fabric.

Michonne’s jeans are original Bratz clothes but the rest of her outfit I made myself. The leather jacket and belt are both made from the same leather jacket. Details were painted on the jacket. The belt has silver studs which I just realized aren’t visible in the photos…
Since I couldn’t give her gloves I gave her a wristband – a Monster High accessory I adapted. Her boots were a wierd tan brown so I painted them black with silver details to look like biker boots.

The hardest bit of Michonne is her katana sword. I’ve made 3 of them so far. The first was air dry clay didn’t take the paint well – so it crackled… Nice effect in itself, but on a sword? The second was all polymer clay and I broke it while trying to straighten it. The third is a mix of hammered wire and polymer clay. That was looking really promising till I broke the handle yesterday while try to pose her with it in her hand. I’ll be making another one today, with more wire in it to keep it strong.
Both the katana and the sheath need painting for Michonne to be finished. Then I’ll list them both on ebay. I’m hoping they’ll make someone happy this Christmas.

I’ve been going through some stuff recently and I’ve spent a lot of time just wasting time, feeling down. That’s the reason I decided to stop blogging. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep going with it at the time. But then I thought I wouldn’t let something else stop me doing something I enjoy.

This new hobby has been great for me as its something that I enjoy doing and has been making me feel so much better. I love being creative but when I’m down I can’t find the motivation to do anything. Doing dolls, even in bits and spurts as I’ve been doing these girls, is a small way to get me up and doing stuff.

So does the garden. And my dogs. And grooming dogs. Those are things which make me feel good about myself, so I’m doing them as much as I can. I was told I needed to look after myself and make myself happy. Doing a radio show on Sundays where I play music I love, making art, DIY stuff, the garden and dogs are what make me feel good inside.

And I’m a show off so I’m showing off what I make!

z

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spanakopita the way mom makes it

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I don’t cook much. I used to enjoy cooking, but I got tired of doing it all the time. Now I only cook when the mood takes me. These last couple of weeks that I’ve been off work I’ve been cooking more than usual as I figure I owe it to Wayne. He works hard, long hours, and he deserves to come home to a cooked dinner… Though meat and two veg isn’t my type of dinner.
Whatever.
On Sunday I decided it was time to make a spanakopita again. I hadn’t made one for months! Maybe even a year!
Its really easy, except the rolling out dough bit… I’m useless at that as you can see by the top of it in the pic… 
I’ve had a fear of pastry all my life, since the time I made pizza dough that you could use to panel beat a car with. But this pastry is easy peasy. Even I can do it. And its so tasty!
Anyway, I thought I’d share the love and post the recipe so you can try it yourselves. The pastry recipe I got from a greek lady in Hobart, the filling is what mom taught me years ago.

Pastry
2 cups plain flour
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups boiling hot water (the recipe I got was typically greek – it said 1 glass of water! Glass, what’s a glass? A tall glass? A wine glass? A tumber?)
1/2 cup olive oil (or 3/4, again I had to translate the glass thing… 1/2 a glass of olive oil is roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cups apparently… at least by my numerically challenged calculations)
Place all ingredients in a food processor and turn it on. It’ll knead itself. Let it cool a while before turning out onto a floured surface.
Filling
500g frozen spinach (or the equivalent in fresh spinach which I’m too lazy to use)
1-2 leeks
dill. Plenty of it. I use those small tubes from the supermarket and use the whole thing. 
2-3 eggs
feta cheese cut into cubes. (same applies: plenty of it)
I defrost the spinach, strain and squeeze the excess water out of it and put it in a bowl. Chop up and lightly brown the leek in a frying pan, let it cool a bit and add it to the bowl. Squeeze in the dill (or chop it up and add it if you’re one of those annoying ‘all fresh’ kind of people). Cut up and add the feta. Gently beat the eggs and add them. Mix it all together. 
Line your baking tray with baking paper. If you’re good enough to roll out half the pastry into one big sheet you can then deposit into the baking tray without it breaking, stretching or folding onto itself, then go ahead and do it that way – show-off.
If you’re like me (useless), put half the pastry in the middle of the tray and then use your fingers to spread it out till it covers the entire surface and even up the sides a little bit.
Spread the filling all over it.
Then comes the fun part… roll out the pastry and put it on top. If you can do it in one piece then, wow, you win a cigar. If not, do what I do and just roll out bits and pieces and do a patchwork top. Your stomach won’t care.
Bake it in a moderate oven till its nice golden brown on top.

Enjoy.
Its great hot, warm and cold. I keep mine in the fridge and just grab a bit for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
No wonder I haven’t made it for that long. I made it once a week for a while and OD-ed on it.
z

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i’m baaaack!

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Yes, I’m back. A lot has happened around here since I last posted, but I feel in a better place to share our life, news and my projects once again.
For starters, I’d like to share the old bike I rescued from a trip to the tip. It will eventually sit in the garden but till then I’ve leaned it up against the porch railing and started off some plants will which one day, hopefully, explode into colour and drape all over it.
I had a couple of rusty baskets, one of which was an actual bike basket for the handlebars. I lined them with plastic after poking some holes in for drainage, and filled them with potting mix. I then plonked in some plants.
I found this pitiful looking little plant at a garage sale – the daisies are so pretty I had to have it despite its one foot in the grave appearance.

Its looking like its going to the big garden in the sky right now so I may go ahead and move it to the embankment. Daisies obviously love it there, which is great, as I love the embankment covered in daisies.
When pulling weeds I dug up and added some alysum. Love that stuff. It grows anywhere – my kind of plant – and looks like clouds of white fluff.

The front basket got a gaura which was growing in a pot – it was a cutting… well, a broken branch from one of the established plants. I added a bit of catmint for its trailing propteries. Both of those are doing well, though the gaura will need to be moved as its way too big for a bike basket.

The garden is looking amazing right now with all the spring flowers. I’ve been sharing tons of photos of it on Facebook but might do a separate post on the blog about it soon.
Things on the farm are great. We have 6 ducklings in Stalag 13. The ducklings were easy to catch though I did throw myself on the ground in a most undignified way in their pursuit. The mother took us all day to catch. In the end we set up a dog crate and trapped her in it. I don’t think she’s forgiven us yet, but the ducklings are still alive! Unlike poor Little Herman IIs ducklings which disappeared in a matter of 3 days.
Sharing Stalag 13 with the duck family is a chicken. She hatched 3 babies who unfortunately got out of the dog house she’s using as a nesting box, then couldn’t get back in and froze to death over night. We were so upset. We’ve raised chickens in there before and that never happened before. Its always something. We now have a ramp so it won’t happen again. The hen is still sitting. She had 2 of her own eggs and I gave her 2 from another of the girls. Fingers crossed. More chickens would be welcome, though no more roosters. The older rooster is being hounded to death by his much bigger son. Its sad. Other than letting them sort it out I don’t know what to do. Chopping one rooster’s head off was suggested, but… um… no.
We have 5 goslings as well. Doris, the younger of our geese, hatched them out yesterday. Since then its been lovely to watch the group walking around the paddocks – Doris with her babies, surrounded by the boys guarding her. 
Annabelle, the older goose, is still sitting on her nest. They should hatch soon. Hank has made it his life’s work to guard Annabelle. We always know which boy is Hank, he has a squinty eye so he always looks like he’s watching you like a mafia boss. He’s also the one out front every time we step out into the paddock warning us to behave or else.
The youngest goose doesn’t have a name as we really can’t tell him apart from Jethro, the other original goose. It’s hard to tell pure white boys apart… At least the girls have different markings.
The horses are all in great condition thanks to all the feed in the paddocks. Wally is his usual cranky self, Dancer is as sweet as ever and she and Cass continue to dislike eachother. Little Chipmunk foundered again so he’s back in the starvation paddock. He’s not too impressed. We allow him into the casita (my workshop!) to get out of the weather and out of the mud when its been raining a lot. Now he’s bored he’s beginning to do naughty things. The other day he emptied the bag of rubbish all over the floor. I was not too impressed.
There’s been no progress on the new grooming room, but hopefully I’ll be taking all the rubbish/plaster to the tip soon and I can begin working on the walls. Which reminds me… where is the electrician? Hm… He was meant to come last week.
On a more personal note, I’ve taken time off work and am spending my days building up my home grooming business, painting, gardening, and playing with dolls.
Yes. You read that well. Dolls.
Ok, not playing as such, but remaking.
I’ll share in another post once I’m ready to show the world what I’ve been doing. Lets just say its a new hobby for me and I’m loving it.
So there you have it. For now. See you again soon.
z

one of those days

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Just a quick post to let you know that I’m taking a break from blogging for a while. It might be a week (you’re thinking “whats new there?”), might be longer.

Chances are it’ll be a bit longer.

Not sure.

I’ll let you know.

I promise that if I decide to stop blogging I’ll post to say goodbye.

z

unbelievable

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Does anyone remember when my wallet was stolen and my credit cards drummed up to over $1,000 in about three hours? That happened on February 25, 2015.
Well, the fun didn’t stop there it seems.
The thieves also created an Optus phone account. Somehow. Using my driver’s license probably. I got a letter in the mail last night from a collection agence(!!!) saying I owed $1,186!!!!
I called the agency this morning and found out that the account was created in March 2015 and was cancelled March 2016 without a single bill being paid.
But what I don’t get is this:
In all this time, where were the bills and reminders going?
In all this time, why did they not disconnect the phone if no one was making payments? 
What address did the thief give for the account cause I sure didn’t receive ANY bills, letters or communication from Optus at all.
Which brings up another point: if the collection agency found me at my address, what was Optus doing all this time?
So now here I am, once again trying to sort out a mess not of my making.
I’m so angry. I mean, what do you do when someone steals your drivers license? You can cancel your credit cards. You get a new license issued, but what can you do about the old one still out there in some scumbag’s possession? Who knows what else is still lurking out there waiting to bite me in the proverbial?
Seriously. What do you do about this? I’m going to the police station tomorrow. They already caught and charged the scum with credit card fraud. They’ll be interested to know they can now charge them with identity theft too.
I got a letter asking if I wanted to go to their court hearing and/or sue them or whatever. I didn’t. Now I do.
Yeah. I’m angry. And its my blog so I can vent if I want to.
Meanwhile its pouring again.
Time to get onto FB and onto the Garage Sale site and cancel my garage sale. The sponge that is our land won’t dry out.
z

water and keeping your head above it

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So far there hasn’t been much in the way of more rain. It has been raining in the hills around us, but not down around our property. I took the dogs out for a look yesterday and took some photos.

They loved it. Running through all that mud and water. Luckily it was more like sand than mud so they didn’t get too dirty.
All this sand is washed down from the sandstone hills behind us. It fills the creek and the creek overflows.

This is the creek, still running madly. It’ll be days before the flow slows down even if it stops raining now. You can see where its been overflowing.

When we first moved here we spent time and $$$ fixing up the ford, putting in a huge pipe so that the creek could run through under the road.

That was money well spent!

The chickens are enjoying the muddy ground. They’re out scratching for worms happily. We have 3 chickens now and two roosters. The smaller rooster on the left is our original rooster, the huge one in the forground is a home bred boy, born last year. We had 2 x 3 eggs hatch but only have 2 survivors out of the 6 chicks. This big boy and one black hen.

He is pretty impressive!

The poodles keep a watchful eye on everything… note the dirty legs. Eh. They had fun.

Pretty Dancer keeps an eye on the dogs too. She doesn’t want them eating her hay.

The weather has been quite nice today, mostly cloudy but enough sun to make it lovely. However there’s more rain predicted for the week ahead.
The only thing about this that really worries me is that we’re 99% going to have to cancel the garage sale. I’ve been so looking forward to it, and I’ve worked so hard to get it organised… but reality is that even if we didn’t get a drop of rain between now and October 22, if we got sunny days with light winds every day, the paddocks would still be too wet to drive on.
Our place is not ideal for a ‘normal’ garage sale. For one thing we don’t have a garage we can have a sale in. All our sheds are full of stuff that we’re not selling so that won’t work. Rule #1 of garage sales is: hide/cover anything you’re not selling to avoid confusion.
We need to have our sale outside. You’d think our driveway would work for that, but no. Its not big enough set up a sale and still allow room for cars to drive in, park, turn around and drive out. And if the ground is still wet, we can’t even open the gates so people could drive out the back to turn.
We had planned to have the sale in the small paddock outside the casita. We have 2 small horse yards there, a large gum tree for shade, fences to hang things on and plenty of space for tables and larger items. We planned to open the bottom paddock gate so people could drive in, park and turn around…. No chance of that now. First person to drive in would get bogged. 
I haven’t cancelled it yet. I’m still hoping. But I think that come next weekend, unless some miracle happens, I will have to face facts and cancel it.
Postpone it really. We will have a garage sale, but probably in summer when the ground is rock hard and dry from lack of water.
Safer that way.
sigh.
z