Category Archives: DIY

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

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


cocktail {forks} anyone?

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I just love this one!
When Wayne knocked down the old stable in the back paddock, he re-used as much of the wood as he could to rebuild the stable. The unsuitable bits were piled into a heap to be burned.
At least that was the plan. You know how it is, time goes by, things get put off… The pile is still there. Partly cause its either too dry (fire restrictions) or too wet, or perhaps its cause I won’t allow Wayne to burn it.
That pile has a ton of interesting old bits of wood in it! 
A few weeks ago I went out and brought about 10 large pieces of wood in, to the casita, to dry out so I can make stuff with it.
Wayne saw me sneaking in with the wheelbarrow and I swear, he sounded just like Homer Simpson.
“Oh No! I knew I should have burned it! Don’t take it all inside!”
Not all of it! Just a bit at a time!
Anyway, I’ve had this box of cocktail forks for years. Never used them, just had them cause they’d come in handy one day… 
I had a chunk of wood I liked and wanted to put hooks on it for keys. I didn’t have enough matching hooks so I started thinking what I could use.
Viola! Cocktail forks. A bit of bending and you have key hooks!
I mixed up some flat white paint with some blue artists paint, a bit of black and a bit of unsanded grout to create a colour I liked. I brushed it onto the wood without worrying about full coverage. I wanted the old wood to show.
When the paint was dry I drilled holes into the bottom of the block, filled them with liquid nails and glued the forks in.
I then drew the keys on with pencil and painted them using black artist acrylic.
I drilled holes in the top and used wire as a hanger, hung it on the wall and had a look. Hm. Something was missing… I went and got the two barbed wire hearts Wayne had made and added them to the top.
Much better!
A different colour wall would have been good, but this was the only spot I could use given its too dark to photograph outside! 
z

incredibly hard to photograph

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Have you ever tried to photograph a suncatcher? Let me tell you, its not easy. You have to find a background which allows the crystals or beads to show up, allows you to see detail, the right light to show off the sparkle… plus they have to be hanging up.

I tried photographing them flat in the lightbox. Nope. They just don’t look right lying flat. I tried photographing them against one of our timber walls, that was too distracting.

Finally, I climbed up onto a chair, put a nail in the deck frame and hung a hook from it.

I now have somewhere to hang stuff to photograph. I hung the suncatcher there. It worked better than the previous options. The sky and trees on the distant hill are a nice backdrop.

So here is the first of the suncatchers.

This suncatcher was made by Wayne, he bent the wires to make the intricate shapes. I then added the glass beads to make it sparkle. These are wire wrapped beads, all in different colours.

Wayne really is good with wire and metal. I did a little wire work today and punched a small hole in my finger. Fun.

The photos really don’t do it justice but they’re better than my previous attempts!

z

retro look tins

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While ‘indulging’ myself I managed to take some photos of some stuff I finished and haven’t had a chance to share. First is this retro tin project.
A while ago I saw an image on Pinterest which I just loved.  It was a collection of tin cans with vintage evaporated milk labels on them used for storage. I just loved it.
I had tin cans. Doesn’t everyone? I searched online but couldn’t find any evaporated milk labels I could print out. I did find some jam and vegetable labels…
I resized the images in Photoshop so they would fit on the tins, cut them and used craft glue to glue them on.

They needed wire handles to hang them with, so I asked Wayne to help. I was going to make something simple but Wayne is a bit fancier than I am. He made me these handles.

I drilled the holes for him before gluing the paper onto the tins.

 
I used a strip of pine left over from my kitchen table make-over for the tins to hang off. I didn’t have any huge nail-like spikes like in the image, but I did have 5 matching hooks – though they weren’t all the same colour. I liked that. A bit more interesting.

The timber strip is fixed to the door with a screw on each end (its not meant to hold great weight so that’s enough).

The finished product is great. I’ve used it to hold my drawing supplies – pencils, water colour brushes etc.
I have been using the old door on our timber shed as my ‘hanging place’ when photographing things for the blog. Its the perfect setting – an old door with peeling paint. Gorgeous.
Not too bad I think.
I wish I had more room in our house. I’d love one of these in the kitchen to hold the smaller utensils. But there’s no room. sigh…
z

PS: These tins are now for sale in my etsy shop and they’ve been featured in 2 Treasuries so far. I’ve also entered them in the Knick of Time’s Tuesday Vintage Style Link Party. Go check it out.

its just how it is

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Its been a really busy weekend. And a tiring week before that where I found myself falling asleep by 9pm rather than work on anything. That’s partly why I haven’t blogged for a few days. And I’ve started to feel guilty about not blogging regularly! I’ve put this added pressure on myself to blog about my day, the small (or big) things I’ve done or made. That in turn leads to pressure to actually DO or MAKE things to blog about. Its a vicious circle.

And its not like I haven’t got enough on my plate as it is.

Another reason I haven’t blogged much is that sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I mean, I generally love talking about myself, my life and the stuff I do. Its just that sometimes I’m tired or not in a good mood, and what I write isn’t interesting or amusing, just flat and boring. So I apologize for the boring blogs I’ve written when I’ve forced myself to write out of a feeling of obligation to ‘blog’.

Blog: a versatile word for the 21st century. It can be a verb (I blog, do you blog?) or a noun (I read his blog.)

See, I’ve been reading lots of blogs over the last few months and I let myself become infected with the ‘grow your blog’ bug. There are some incredibly talented women out there doing amazing stuff with furniture, paint and all kinds of things and blogging about it. They have busy blogs with lots of followers and host link parties and, and, and…

I started to think “hey, I could be like that.” After all, I make stuff and play with furniture and paint. I’ve rennovated. Am constantly rennovating as a matter of fact.

So I started to push myself to do more, blog more, share more of my adventures. With everything else I do in my day to day life, another load of  ‘gotta do’ wasn’t putting me in my happy place. I realised that I blog cause I like to talk about myself and my life in a fun, upbeat way. Plus I like to show off, an added bonus.

Make blogging into a job though, and the fun’s gone. I’ve never been good at doing things over and over again and maintaining enthusiasm for them. Which is why I make one or two of anything and move on.

It was the same with everything I’ve done in my life. I learned to ride, got good. Moved on. I learned to dance, got good, won some competitions, moved on. I learned to roller blade, conquered that, moved on.  I never quit, I get good, then I go onto other things.

Get the picture? I’ll do anything that interests me. I’ll learn and work on it till I do it well, then I’ll find something else to work on. Maybe its why I can’t seem to make mega bucks selling a product. At least with paintings, even if I’m doing 5 poodles or 6 dobermans in a row, each painting is new and different. Each painting is an original.

I guess that’s why I’ve been planning to open an esty shop for my recycled/re-used items. Every time I make something it will be different cause I work with things I find.

I sure can ramble can’t I? I think my point is that I’m not going to worry about growing my blog and keeping up with the blog superstars. I’ll blog when I want, about what I want (and I don’t care if that’s not grammatically correct!) and I won’t worry about how many people read it.

Anyway, this last week I had a moment where I could not help myself. I’ve been thinking about how I could use an old metal object I found in a tip shop a while ago. I think its from old fashioned weight scales but I’m not sure. Whatever it is was originally, I thought it would work as a kitchen tool hanging rack.

I’d been thinking of moving the spice cabinet and putting the hanging rack near the stove, but I hadn’t had time to do it over last weekend. I thought I’d do it this weekend but during the week I was overcome by that feeling where I just have to do it now.

Do you ever get that feeling? Where you look at something and sensible you says “do it on the weekend” but the impulsive you starts pushing couches around the living room at 10pm at night?

Maybe its only me…


I fixed the rack thingy to the bottom of the top cabinets and used wire hooks Wayne had made to hang a few older utensils. It looked quite nice.

Yep. It looked nice. But this is my kitchen and I need to cook in it. I don’t have enough space to just hang items on display. So, although it looked nice with all the old green and metal utensils, this is what it really looks like.

I hung the oven mitts back where they usually live, on the hook beside the stove. I moved the slice of timber chopping block I made under the hanging rack. I put all our wooden spoons in an old dripping pot I found at a 2nd hand store a few weeks ago. And I hung our plastic utensils from the rack.

We have too many utensils. I think I need to go through my cupboards and drawers and get rid of things we no longer want or never use. We have too much STUFF.

So, there’s another spot in the kitchen that’s had a ‘Zefi’ touch. I need to rip the whole kitchen out and redo it.

z