fun day at the market and another baking tin caddy

Posted on November 23, 2013 by zefiart

Its been a long ~~week~~ day. Today a friend and I had a market stall in the Shabby Chic Market. I enjoy meeting people, selling stuff and spending some of my hard earned cash at other seller’s tables!

Its always fun to do a market but getting ready for them is a killer.

I don’t do them very often. I have more than enough on my plate as it is. A market means more time spent making things to sell and less time spent on cleaning the house, washing dishes or doing laundry.

Come to think of it, I should do more markets…

I’m sleep deprived.

I’ve been up late every night in order to get a few things finished and guess what? I haven’t finished them all.

And guess what else?

I’m doing another market next weekend!

What’s that saying? “No rest for the wicked”… or is it “Glutton for punishment”?

On the positive side, I came home to a cooked dinner, washed dishes and clean washing. Wayne is a gem!

Anyway, thought I’d share another baking tin storage caddy. I made 3 but only photographed two. I shared one last week but this is my favourite. It didn’t sell today and I think it might be a sign.

I’m seriously considering using it at the sink to hold dish washing liquid, hand soap and sponges in the kitchen.

I’ve taken photos of some of my projects which I’ll be sharing soon but I apologise in advance for the quality of some of the photos… The weather was ‘ordinary’ yesterday so I had to take most of the photos indoors with lousy lighting. Not even Photoshop can fix some of those photos….

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tiered tin caddy

Posted on November 17, 2013 by zefiart

I’ve always loved those cute desk caddys I’ve seen made out of old baking tins.

I have tons of baking tins. I’ve been collecting them for ages. I have them in all shapes and sizes. Same with ice trays. And colanders.

I collect them to put plants in, and I will be doing that too. I have plans…

Meanwhile I decided I’d make myself a tierd baking tray caddy. I went with 2 tiers. Its just the right size for holding all kinds of goodies. On my desk, the top holding tins with pens and other drawing stuff, the bottom holding the other bits and pieces we all collect on our desks.

I think one at the kitchen sink would be good, holding dishwashing liquid and sponges. Maybe in the bathroom to hold the moisturizer, watches, whatever.

When I have a nicer kitchen with room to put one of them… I have plans for that kitchen too.

Right now the plan is to bring in a tarp to throw over all the dirty dishes in the sink so I don’t have to look at them…

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the new toothbrush holder

Posted on October 6, 2013 by zefiart

You know I hate our bathroom, right?

Its small. Its cramped. It has an unforgivably common vanity. A gold rimmed mirror. White and gold taps. (gag). A gold rimmed standard shower cubicle. A square edged clawfoot tub*. Ugly white and gold plastic towel ‘knobs’. No storage space, and less space to move.

Oh, and not to mention laminate tile sheeting.

Lovely.

One of the worse culprits was the hideous toothbrush holder in mouldy gold and white plastic.

Gorgeous.

I can’t afford to redo the bathroom right now. Though I’d dearly love to. In fact I was planning to, at the very least, remove the clawfoot tub* so there’s room to put in a cute cabinet or two and turn around when you’re drying your hair… but you can’t even get the clawfoot tub out of there without ripping out the shower and vanity!

sigh…

Meanwhile I do the tiny things which make it easier for me to go in there without throwing up.

Like getting rid of the ugly toothbrush holder and replacing it with something kinda nifty.

Like this spiritless spirit level I found at a tip shop. You can’t really see it in the photos but the test tubes and the beaker are painted in cream and white – the bottom cream, the top a white stripe.

I had wanted to do a more dramatic ombre type of thing but in the end I didn’t think I could get a nice effect on the plastic test tubes if I didn’t use spray paint. As it was, I discovered that ‘low tack’ orange masking tape ain’t low tack enough. You can just see the bits of orange pigment/glue left behind.

I figure once the paint has ‘cured’ long enough I can try wiping the residue off with some eucalyptus oil.

Can you guess why I wanted to paint the bottom of the jar and tubes? Yup. You got it. To hide the gunge that always accumulates at the bottom of a toothbrush holder.

And the reason I didn’t paint up as high on the beaker? Cause I liked the numbers showing.

I also whitewashed the spirit level so it wasn’t brown. Nothing I could do about the gold fitting though. I have to live with those. At least I painted the silver clamps white so it wouldn’t clash too much.

One day, when I have a bathroom I actually like, I might change the colours on the test tubes. Till then, this is way better than the ugly thing I tossed unceremoniously in the bin.

* I am thinking the clawfoot tub might work nicely as a cooling outdoor bath in summer. Somewhere. Maybe… I’ve always thought it would be great but never had the guts to actually do it.

NOTE: This project turned out to be a fail. The test tubes gather water which becomes mucky and stagnant and stinks. I replaced them with large gauge syringes and it works much better!

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paper storage

Posted on October 5, 2013 by zefiart

Its been a while since I last made something for the house.

Well… I made the LP side table, but I made that a couple of weeks ago. I’ve just been so busy with other stuff. But yesterday I got a bee in my bonnet and started 4 projects. I’ve finished two of them but can only share one today as I don’t have photos of the other one yet.

This is my new paper storage solution! I was inspired by this on Pinterest. I had an old stool with its top broken off and I’ve been meaning to make this little beauty for quite a while.

All I did was clean it up, I liked the chippy paint look. Then I got some burlap, some of the small cotton bags which came in the lot of flour bags I bought a while ago which I made cushions and kitchen curtains out of, my staple gun and got to work.

That’s the manual staple gun… not the air powered one. Love that sucker, but really for a job this small ‘Zefi powered’ was enough.

Now, of course, I’ve got my left thumb all wrapped up again. In vet wrap. Yep. Love the stuff. Turns out its just as good for humans as for pets! I really was sick of the physio wrapping my thumb in sticky stuff that took the first five layers of skin with it when it came off.

I love this vet wrap stuff so much I’ve just bought 3 more rolls of it on ebay. I always used to have vet wrap for the dogs and for wrapping poodle ears on show days, but I’m down to the dregs of my last roll. A 10cm dark blue roll. Since I have to cut it in half to strap up my thumb I’ve ordered the 5cm rolls in pink, purple and red.

Cool!

Meanwhile, back to the matter at hand….

I turned the stool upside down cause I liked the feet being on top. I sewed the cotton bags to the burlap, then stapled the burlap to the sides of the stool.

Lastly I put a bit of masonite underneath, fitted some small castors and voila.

I now have somewhere to put my rolls of paper instead of shoving them willy-nilly into a crate under the desk and scramble to catch them every time I knock the crate and they spill out, unravelling all over the floor.

And I didn’t just make stuff. I did some tidying and sorting as well. I don’t know if I mentioned this, but when the poodles went possum hunting while I was away, they did some major redecorating in the small shed I use for garden storage, the ride on mower, brushcutter and the overflow of stuff I will ‘get to one day’ and can’t fit in my workshop.

Today I tackled that and cleaned it out. Threw out a couple of mouse infested suitcases. Sorted boxes and crates from wire baskets and metal boxes. Stacked my old frames neatly. Found things I’d forgotten I had. Re-acquainted myself with the amount of projects I have, waiting to be tackled.

I actually love having piles of stuff everywhere. When I’m looking for that ‘something’ for a particular project, I just go looking through the sheds. Its like going tip shopping but free!

I started looking for more chickens (since one hen ain’t gonna provide the eggs we need) and geese for Wayne. I can find chickens on gumtree… but very few geese! Who knew they’d be so hard to find!

I’ve also started getting my gear ready for my first attempt at running a workshop on making stuff from found objects. My office looks, once again, like a herd of wildebeest lived in here for a week. Not harmoniously either.

However, I’m not feeling too bad about it. I heard on TV a week or so ago that the more creative a person is, the messier their desk is.

I am INCREDIBLY creative. My mess flows over my desk, pools on the floor and spreads out onto the coffee table in the living room. With splashes in the kitchen, on bookcases and even the deck.

In my ‘bee in bonnet’ mood today, I also got a haircut (short short short!), bought some embroidery thread and picked up my cow painting from the gallery. I love it but I seriously don’t have enough room for that much work in this house. Not enough walls. I need to sell it… or…

I’m gonna need a bigger house!

Anyway, I feel great having actually done a few new things around here! I really am happiest when I’m doing stuff for the house.

Wayne is already dreading my upcoming living room makeover… first the living room… then the whole house!

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its a record!

Posted on October 4, 2013 by zefiart

I figured it was about time to share another project I made for the house instead of all the arty farty stuff I’ve been doing lately.

When Merrill moved to Victoria, she left behind a ton of vinyl LPs which belonged to her mother. As usual my reply to “Do you want these?” was “Yeah. I can do something with those.”

I had no idea what, though I did have visions of melting LPs in the oven to make bowls, cutting them to make LP mosaic’s… and tons of other things.

One thing I never considered was making a side table out of one! Then I saw this photo and I knew I had to do it!

I had the LPs, after all. (Thanks Merrill’s mom).

I had the perfect little base. I think it was originally intented to hold a pot or something. When I found it it was just metal legs.

Whatever.

A ~~bit~~ lot of Liquid Nails and couple of wedges to level it later, here is my LP side table!

Ok. These photos are uninspiring, I just plonked it in front of the little bookcase I put burlap on and snapped away. I could have dressed it up, moved furniture to create a cosy corner, staged the shot… but hey. I was busy! Give me a break!

At least I vacuumed our disgusting carpet.

Which is going this summer!!! See, we need a new wood heater. That means we’ll be needing a new (bigger) hearth so there’ll be carpet lifting involved anyway. May as well go the whole hog and lift carpet from the entire room!

What we’ll find is that about 1/3rd of the living room has old floorboards like the ones in the photos below (yeah, I was shamed into trying to take prettier photos) and that 2/3rds is chipboard flooring.

So, come summer holidays I have a huge job ahead of me. Not only do I have to find the right wood heater for us, but I have to remove a huge living room full of carpet (which will be recycled around the sheds and garden!), I also have to find a new flooring solution.

Ideas are welcome.

Naturally the best alternative is to put down proper floorboards where the chipboard is, remove the vinyl from the bathroom and kitchen and finish the lot.

That’d be nice but expensive.

I could put down more vinyl, good for a house with dogs, easy to clean, yada yada. There are some excellent designs around these days.

Or I could just go the cheap and labour intensive route and paint/stain the floors myself…

I guess I’ll decide once I get the carpet lifted and the new heater in.

Meanwhile my new LP side table’s been holding paint brushes while I was working on my latest paintings. The plan is to move it next to my armchair so it can hold my coffee cup or my scissors while I work on sewing projects in front of the tv.

‘Cause, doesn’t everyone need a handy little side table to hold scissors?

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back at art school (sort of)

Posted on September 21, 2013 by zefiart

Wayne and I are back at art school!

A few weeks ago we started a course on Art From Trash at the Tasmanian College of the Arts.

Till I went into the art school I had no idea just how much I’ve missed being in a space like that. The smell of oil paint and ink, the messy, creative, interesting, fun and just plain wierdness of an art school…

Ah. Memories.

The course has been great fun. Its about changing the way we look at things and how we express them through our art. Its about experimenting with our own work and not being afraid to step outside our comfort zone.

I’m loving being back in a creative space like that, where art is all around you. The art school is in a beautiful old building on the waterfront in Hobart, one of my favourite places in Tasmania.

This week we had to present a minimum of 3 pieces of work and our journals to be evaluated. Next we have to give a presentation on our work and we’re finished. I have to tell you, I was really stressed about what work I would do for the course and was blocked because of my depression due to my hands being sore.

In the end I stuck with my recycling and re-purposing theme, but with a slight twist. To make it ‘arty-er’ of course! I made my pieces from trash but I also made them slightly autobiographical.

When the course started we were asked to pick three words which relate to our work and our interests. My words were Everyday, Surprising, and Remade. My interest always being in taking common objects and remaking them into something functional in a fun way.

In order to step outside my comfort zone however, I had to take my words and step a bit further into the ‘art’ abyss. I’m not sure I quite succeeded, but I tried to make things which had no real function, rather made a statement.

The Dead Art Basket was one piece, and really, it failed in the no function department. It was born out of frustration and gloominess about my work. Its a basket made using ruined brushes, an old pie tin as a base, plastic rings off molasses buckets and wire. Inside the basket I tore up pieces of my work which I never finished because I hated.

This is how I presented the basket at the gallery for evaluation.

Next cab off the rank was something which is a big part of my life: dogs. I made a dog figure using wire, dog hair which I felted, some possum fur I found in the woodshed and some dryer lint to add different texture and colour. I called this Hair of the Dog.

I decided to leave the wire exposed in places to show the structure of the dog instead of making him more realistic. He’s kind of the Frankenstein of dogs isn’t he? His tail wags too.

This is him in the gallery. On a dirty plinth.

Last is That Won’t Hold Water, a humorous little piece composed of an old water bag and a retro net shopping bag. The old water bag was in the garage and I saw the net bag in a tip shop and couldn’t pass it by. I had no idea what to do with it at the time.

There’s meaning to this piece as well… I mean there’s a connection to the piece and my life at the moment.

Here it is in the gallery. Ignore the sticky tape attachment to the wall. Its not a REAL exhibition, just an exercise in setting out our work in order to showcase it and convey a message so I didn’t want to punch holes in the wall.

My three pieces were all presented simply and rather starkly on white. I kept it simple. The common thread with mine was that everything except the wire and glue was rescued from, or destined for, the trash. Plus a bit of whimsy.

I’ll share Wayne’s creations another time. He was a smarty pants. He presented FIVE pieces.

Teachers pet!

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revamped footstool

Posted on August 30, 2013 by zefiart

Yes, yes. I know its been a long time between posts. To be honest I’ve just been too wrapped up in my own little world to want to get online, much less blog.

But here I am… sharing a project from work.

Some of you already know I work as a disability support worker as my ‘real job’ to support my art habit. I’m lucky enough to be able to do some creative work in that role with some of the guys I work with.

For instance, this repurposed footstool is a project I’ve been working on with some young men in one of those programs.

The aim of the program is to find, fix up and revamp items found in tip shops in order to develop the guy’s skills and produce something which can be sold to buy materials for the next project.

This footstool had been hanging around in the store room for a long time. It was just crying out to be reborn into something pretty…

We went looking for bits of dowel, finials and knobs. We drilled holes, attached knobs and stained dowel. We painted it a nice light blue colour, then sanded, repainted and re-sanded…

The lowly footstool was reborn into a cute, handy little kitchen shelf.

Or bathroom shelf.

Or craftroom shelf.

I took it home to dress it up and photograph it cause the guys really do want to sell it. They’re proud of it and rightly so. I think it looks terrific!

The rods come out so you can put rolls of paper on them instead of hanging tea towels or pots and pans. Its both useful and pretty.

We’ve entered it in the Kingborough Salvaged Art competition and I’m posting it on Facebook. It is definitely for sale. We’ll be selling it through a silent auction.

If you’re interested in buying this one-of-a-kind piece of recycled art, please contact me on zefiart@gmail.com and put in your bid. I’ll be keeping track of all bids and at the end of the competition, on October 6th, I’ll announce the winner on Facebook and by private email.

The money raised through the sale of this masterpiece will be used to create MORE masterpieces in the future!

Go on! Make a bid!

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art from trash – my new bag

Posted on August 16, 2013 by zefiart

I am never happy with bags.

Handbags are just too small.

Or they hold too much and become too heavy.

I used to use backpacks. They make sense… After all its better to carry the weight of your life on your back than on one shoulder. With the amount of crap I carry in my bag its amazing I don’t lean to one side permanently.

But somewhere along the line I decided I needed to start using handbags. Or rather, shoulder bags.

Then I got my big diary…

It wouldn’t fit into any of my handbags/shoulder bags so I started using canvas shopping bags as my work bags.

They’re ok, but they have no pockets, no inner dividers, nothing to hold things in place… I was constantly losing pens, car keys and my mobile phone.

I was sick and tired of it.

So I made my own shoulder bag.

I got this bee in my bonnet about it one night last week. I looked through the cupboard in my office, found some upholstery fabric samples which might work then started thinking of ways I could use the fabric to make a bag.

I was limited by the size of the samples. I didn’t want to make a patchwork carpetbag looking thing so I didn’t want to mix and match too many fabrics.

In the end I only used one sample for the body of the bag, though I turned the fabric inside out on the sides just for contrast.

I’d never done this before but it wasn’t that hard. I just had to work out the size and design, then cut.

Or cut and then make it work.

The living room was back to normal again.

Normal means a coffee table full of crafting stuff. That’s more normal than clean and tidy round here.

One thing I wanted was a pocket to hold things securely. I wanted a divider inside the bag so that I could put the diary in that part and it wouldn’t fall and lean..

I cut one piece of fabric which I stitched in when I put the bag together, it forms a divider ‘pocket’ at the back of the bag for the diary. I added a couple of fabric loops to hold pens inside that pocket too!

I re-used one of my canvas bags for the strap, flap and inner pocket. I just cut or picked off the bits I wanted from the old bag. I put the small zipped pocket inside on the divider, and put the straps on the sides of the bag.

I reinforced the sides where the straps join and I put in some stiff fabric under the bottom of the bag to help it hold its shape.

Lastly I needed to pretty up the flap/front of the bag…

I was inspired by this image on Pinterest:

I used scaps of burlap and another fabric (using both sides) and some blue cotton yarn for the stitches. I opted to leave out the beads. Knowing me they’d be flying off left, right and center.

Ok, it looks nothing like my inspiration, but I still think its pretty ok. And it’ll hold my diary and TWO pens!

I’ve decided to enter it into the Salvaged Art Competition being held in Kingston next month. Why not? Its all recycled!

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my big diary

Posted on August 16, 2013 by zefiart

This year I decided I needed a bigger diary than I’ve had for the last 100 years.

Up till now I’ve had a Filofax and various variations on the good ol’ A5 sized 6 ring binder diary. It fits into a handbag, its easy to flip through, its portable.

But there are only 2 choices: week at a glance where the amount of space you get for each day is tiny enough that if you could fit everything you needed to do in a day in there, then you really don’t need a diary. Or you can go with day to a page which is better, but if you’re like me and need to be able to picture the whole week ahead of you so you can stress, then flipping pages back and forth just ain’t gonna cut it.

So this year I bought myself a plain, boring A4 diary. Nothing fancy. Just the diary. No pen holders, no business card holders, nothing.

I bought a compendium and put the diary inside – then I had a big bulky heavy briefcase of a diary to carry around, but I had a place to put a notepad, business cards, even a zippered section for money. No pen holder though….

The compendium wouldn’t fit into any of my ‘handbags’ so I started using canvas shopping bags as my work bags. Not ideal.

After I got back from Greece I decided it was time for the compendium to go. I was tired of carrying such a huge thing around… I would manage with just the diary. The plain boring old blue cover diary…

No I wouldn’t. I would fix the diary so it wouldn’t be plain and boring! I did a decoupage kind of thing on it. I used dictionary pages with images printed on them, wrapping paper of different types, some scrapbooking embellishments I had for some reason, and some printed out definitions. These were all leftover bits from previous decoupage projects.

I added a ribbon to it as a ‘closer’ but I didn’t make it long enough so its almost totally useless. I think I’ll go and add a velcro closer as I did to one of my notebooks. That’s working great.

It still lacks a pen loop, but I’ve made up an elastic circle I slip over the diary to keep it closed. It has a little loop in it which holds a pen so it works for now.

Maybe I’ll think of something better for next year.

one last paros project – shabby photo frame

Posted on August 4, 2013 by zefiart

This is one of the smaller projects I worked on while on holiday in Greece. I had a huge collection of old buttons (I really wish I had them here!), a large collection of old doilies, ribbons, lace…

Then there were the other odds and ends my aunt Marisa found for me. One of which was this little heart shaped basket.

She said “Do you want this? Can you do something with it?”

I said, “Sure, I can do something with it.”

My standard reply.

Never say no to ‘stuff’… it will always come in handy one day.

In order to prevent becoming a hoarder featured on one of those awful reality tv shows “Buried Under A Ton Of Crap” however, you have to actually USE the stuff you’re given/collect to make more stuff which you can either sell, give away or display prominently in places like your kitchen, toilet or garage.

I decided the little basket would make the best photo frame for Marouso’s bedroom… she has a little alcove in there which is bare and desperately needed something pretty. So between working on the light fitting for Zefi and some small hearts like these for my aunt, I started putting together this little baby.

I used some old buttons, some still on the card, some old curtain lace, a bit of rusty wire and a bead… plus a little bow and icon pin from a christening. You can’t see it well, but at greek christenings they hand these little pins out as a memorial. My aunt had (of course) a collection of them.

Zefi, I’m sure you’re reading this… you promised you’ll collect me some!

Next step was a photo… Marouso had a few really nice ones she’d taken with her kitten, and I had a great one I’d taken of her and her ‘titini’… a bodyless stuffed toy cat which she’s had since she was a baby. Its sort of like Linus’ security blanket. No one knows what ‘titini’ actually means, its what she called it back when she couldn’t talk. For all we know it means “Get that stupid cat toy out of my cot right now!”

Marouso and her ‘titini’.

I had a play with the photos on picmonkey.com – I don’t have Photoshop on the netbook so I had no other way of altering the images. I wanted to go with an old fashioned black and white look but when I got them printed I decided to go with the photo above.