pretty washing powder containers (and printables)

Posted on May 29, 2017 by zefiart

soaplabels1

I don’t actually have a laundry. I have a washing machine in the shed, next to the hydrobath.

One day I’ll have a laundry… a pretty laundry. An actual clean room where I’ll be able to fold clothes and not worry about them getting dirtier in the laundry than when I wore them to groom dogs, paint walls or pull weeds on my knees.

Till then I try to make things prettier in little ways… like by putting labels on the jars I store my washing detergent in.

soaplabels2

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never liked keeping my washing detergent in the box it comes in. I use old coffee jars cause they’re nice and big and seal well to keep the detergent from clumping.

Problem is, they look boring as plain glass jars.

So I look for vintage ads or packaging I can print out to glue onto my jars. These are the newest jars.

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I’d much rather look at these little babies than a box of detergent any day. It makes me smile when I put on a load to wash – and lets be frank: anything that makes you smile while doing the washing is a good thing.

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So, if you want to make your own pretty washing powder jars and want to use the images I found you can right click on the pics below to save them to your computer. You’ll have to resize them to fit the jars you’re using.

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Here’s a bonus image. I love it but it was the wrong shape for the jars I used, too tall and thin by the time I’d shrunk it. Great image though.

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Have fun!

display box for barbie

Posted on May 28, 2017 by zefiart

I’m still finding my way on WordPress… Its seems that the spaces between paragraphs I see when I write a post disappear when its published. Given I like my white space I have to find a way to keep it!

Meanwhile, I thought I’d share an idea I have to display my barbies (since I bought a few). A small collection – remember, over 2 of anything is a collection, though a collection of 3 items is a pretty pitiful collection… Whatever. I have 3 vintage barbies in great condition and one green faced one I’m restoring. More about her in the future.

For now, I’ve finally started on the first display box for one of my barbies. The idea is to fix up and ‘furnish’ each box as a room, put in the barbie and accessories, then put on a perspex front to keep her safe.

Naturally, since I’m going to mount these boxes on the wall, I can’t go deep, so real furniture and real rooms are out of the question. I mean, I’d have loved to make them into a kind of dollhouse – using larger drawers for each room then mounting them on the wall in a stack, but I just don’t have that much room. For now I’m just using smaller, shallower boxes.

All I’ve done on the first box so far is put in the background. I used scrapbooking paper for this cause I wanted it to look like wallpaper. So here is Barbie with her poodle… (forgive the photo – bad lighting in the office, good pics when the project is finished).

Now I have to decide what I’m going to ‘furnish’ the room with. My idea is to use images I find and print out, then decoupage them into the background.

First idea – a dresser and a painting for a bedroom look:

Next idea, a couch for a living room look:

Only that looks a bit bare. I need a large picture on the wall, or a few small ones… its not quite right.

Lastly, a TV, which I kinda like, though I dread cutting out that antenna!

This is the smallest box of the three I’m planning and as such doesn’t have room for any real accessories. I’ll add a floor but not sure if I want to add sides.

So which one do you like best?

old window window chalkboard #2

Posted on May 28, 2017 by zefiart

(This was originally published on my Blogger blog, but for some reason when I moved to WP it came across as a draft only. I’m republishing it now as it was featured on Your Funky Junk!)

Time just flies when you’re having fun busy. Don’t know how it is with everyone else, but working from home sure doesn’t mean I have more free time. If anything, it means I have more to do than ever.

I mean, there’s the grooming, which is work and must come first. Then there’s caring for the house jobs, garden and animals. Often the house and garden don’t get their share of care. And then there’s crafting and DIY-ing and just plain making stuff. Sometimes that gets pushed aside as well in favour of work or rest.

Still, I’m managing to do a bit here and there between the bigger jobs like renovating the chook shed and making the new roosting box for Stalag 13. Here is one such small project… the second of the old king billy pine window frames made into chalkboards.

This gorgeous window frame was given a shelf at the bottom – new pine aged with steel wool and vinegar.

Its got a chalk holder as well, this time a sliding door pull I found at a tip shop, sitting down into the shelf.

This frame had much less paint on it so I left it more natural, giving it a couple of coats of polyurethane to seal and protect it and to bring out the grain of the wood.

I really am seriously considering keeping all my chalkboards and covering a wall with them. I think it’d be fantastic. If I had a big wall in the living room or kitchen… which I don’t. Too many doors and windows… the price you pay when your house isn’t big enough for the stuff you make.

… Maybe I can remove a door or two… we don’t need all our doors, surely…

Featrued at:

the problem with plans – and sneaky previews

Posted on May 27, 2017 by zefiart

plandefinition

I was talking to a friend this morning and the topic of plans came up. You know. Plans are those things you make only to change them along the way. Or fail to follow through with entirely.

I don’t know why this is… I mean, surely, you make plans cause you want to get the things you plan to do done, right? Obviously. But it never seems to work that way. At least not in my life.

I make plans all the time: I plan the days I’ll groom (my job), the days I’ll do some gardening, the days I’ll work on dolls or other projects. I’ll also plan to do housework – well, that one is doomed right from the start. I never get past the planning stage of that one unless I’m expecting visitors.

So, why plan when it seems that by the very act of planning I pretty much guarantee not achieving what I planned.

Maybe making plans tempts fate, maybe I just jinx myself.

todolist

Plans are different to To Do Lists. A To Do List is a list of things you’d like to get done in a day, week, month, lifetime. A plan is something something more concrete… it has a timeframe, usually… for instance, today I planned to garden. Then I slept in till 9.30am. Took 2 hours to feed animals, have breakfast and drink 2 cups of coffee. Then I went to the local market to buy fresh bread.

Gardening? Its way too late to consider that now!

I think I may forgo making plans entirely. I’ll stick to To Do Lists and Suggested Things I’d Like To Do This Week/Day/Month/Lifetime…

Seriously, you know how I mentioned I’d love an entire wall of chalkboards? It’d be one way to keep my To Do Lists front and center.

Anyway. Moving right along.

What have I been doing that’s kept me so busy that I haven’t posted for a few days? It sure as heck wasn’t gardening.

Yet somehow, some things are doing well despite me. Like my camelia, loving its new spot on the porch and blooming!

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Ditto the pink geranium which is looking lovely!

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I’ve been playing with dolls again! I started on 6 new dolls all at the same time, I finished repainting them and now I’m on costumes. They take longer. But I got in the zone the last few days and lose myself in it.

Here are some sneak previews – more pics to come when they’re finished and I’m ready to list them in my shop.

Can you guess who they are?

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Answer: Cersei, Joffrey, Jon Snow, Tyrion and Ygritte from Game of Thrones!

Bad photos, I know, they were taken in my office using my mobile phone – the good pics will be taken when they’re all finished.

What fun it is to remake dolls. I saw there are tiny irons for doing craft/doll type stuff. I want one. Can’t afford to spend money on that right now, but its on the Things I Want to Own One Day list.

comments…

Posted on May 23, 2017 by zefiart

I was told by a reader that they couldn’t leave a comment cause they were asked to sign in or something. That’s really wierd. I’ve just checked my settings and they are as I left them: anyone can comment, no requirement to log in anywhere.

Very strange.

I’m confused.

…Still.

This is becoming a permanent state of being.

Let me know if you find any other issues and I’ll try to fix them. Don’t hold your breath though.

(grin)

my last blogger post

Posted on May 22, 2017 by zefiart

I decided to bite the bullet. This will be the last post I do on Blogger. I’m not going to delete the blog, just begin putting new posts on my WordPress site.

It has to happen sometime… I may as well jump in.

I haven’t finished tweaking my WP site but I figure I’ll learn as I go. And you’ll forgive me if things stuff up… right?

Up till now I only blogged for fun. Now, while I’m still blogging for fun, I’m also trying to get more exposure for some of the things I do – like the doll repaints I’m selling in my Etsy shop. Its a whole big world out there and I’m really lost in it. There is just so much out there and I don’t know where to start or where to go!

I’ve been on ebay the longest, I think that was the first thing I did when I got online: buy stuff on ebay! I love ebay!

Then I built a website for my art, then for my poodles, then morphed that into a hub leading to all my web pages and ‘stuff’…

I’m on Facebook of course. I resisted for ages and then one day my cousin Zefi asked me to join cause she was tired of people contacting her thinking she was me. I use it all the time now, both to keep in touch with friends, to share stuff, buy stuff and keep in touch with the local community and hobby groups I belong to.

I’m on Pinterest. That was easy… I love the way it acts as a kind of library for ideas as well as a source for research. A great place to find inspiration.

I opened a CafePress shop and sold quite a few of my poodle design Tshirts. I don’t do much with the shop any more, but I still sell stuff through there which is nice.

Then I opened an Etsy shop which I did nothing with for years…

I joined Instagram last week. It seemed the right thing to do. I’m still trying to figure it out..

I started trying to setting up my Google+ page or whatever that’s called. I’m no where close to figuring out how that works or what its for… sharing pics like Instagram? Sharing posts like a blog?

If none of those links work… well, welcome to my world. And to think I’m not completely ignorant when it comes to computers. Sheesh…

I’m not on Twitter. Yet. Or SnapChat. Or whatever newfangled app is out there now.

I’m so confused. I mean, how on earth do you keep track of (or tame!) all these pages????

I can barely keep up with what I have and I always thought I had a pretty big online presence.

Seriously.

I’d love some advice from other bloggers on how you keep track of, stay on top of and organise all those different pages, apps and profiles online! I realise that its part of ‘the job’ of being a blogger and seller, but I find that I start doing a bit of online work and three hours later I’m still here, still going…

Anyway… I’m going to jump right in, with both feet. I’m not even going to hold my nose. Oh, ok, I’ll probably hold my nose… I guess not deleting my Blogger blog (ie this one!) is a way of holding on to some kind of security while I plunge into the great unknown…

From now on my new blog address will be; https://junk4joy.com.au/

My next posts will be shared from there.

Please by patient when blips happen, as they’re bound to do. I’m not sure how to make sure it all runs smoothly. I think anyone who used to follow my blog will have to ‘re-follow’ the WP blog. I’m not entirely happy with the layout and widgets of the new blog yet so there may be (most likely will be) changes made to the live blog. Just grin and bear it.

very distressed turquoise coffee table

Posted on May 18, 2017 by zefiart

I had planned to post every day this week. Well, more often than once a week anyway. But, as most plans, that one went astray. Not cause I didn’t have things to share, just that for one reason or another I got busy. Or forgot. Or was just too plain tired.

So, without further ado, here is my very distressed coffee table.

What’s it distressed about you might ask. Well… it started life as a brown coffee table. Then it was painted white with a little distressing. Then a puppy or two chewed on its corners. It was stuck in the shed for ages. It was used as a step stool while I built my new grooming room. Then it was shunted into a corner of the shed again… Not much of a good life for a coffee table. You’d be very distressed too!

At some stage I decided I really missed having a coffee table in front of the couch. All this time I’d been using a footstool with a timber tray on it when I wanted to put something in front of the couch. But without a coffee table to fill up with crafty stuff I was being lazy every evening.

Surely you understand that!

So, I went shopping my sheds to find a coffee table for the living room. I can’t say for sure this is it, but this was a quick small table that would fit my needs …for now.

First I had to fix the puppy tooth damage. Then I had to choose a colour. I wasn’t sure what I wanted so I went with a colour I had – which I’d used in the guest room. Plus I’d just bought myself a throw from Kmart in that colour…

After painting it turquoise I wasn’t sure I liked it. Too much is sometimes too much… so I hit it with the sander. I took a lot more off on the top than on the sides and I’m loving the look.

Its like a work of art. Or like a work surface. Pity I’ll cover it with work…

I’m still finding my style for this house, so its a bit all over the place. So much to do. Still. But for now, I have a coffee table I can fill with craft odd and ends to work on while I watch TV.

That’s gotta be good.

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moving. sort of.

Posted on May 14, 2017 by zefiart

I decided it was time (after over 7 years of blogging) to move to a more professional platform. WordPress.

Great idea. In theory.

I’ve also joined Instagram in my bid to be more professional.

Mind you, I don’t consider myself a professional blogger, I blog cause I’m a show off who likes to brag about all the wonderful things I make and do. Ok, fine. I love to share and hopefully inspire others to have a go. I’m not kidding myself that I change lives or speak great wisdoms. Let’s face it.

I just love sharing things I do and seeing what others do. It motivates me to surround myself with creative people.

So, I decided it was time to take the leap. I bought a domain name. I joined WordPress. I paid to create a blog. Then I found I have to also pay to point it to my domain. Ok fair enough… Tick that. I had to set it up manually. Tick that too. Its not working yet, but hopefully I’ve done it all right…

If it works I’ll migrate the site over to there later.

Now if I can find my brain I can get to work again.

How on earth do I move the entire blog over? CAN I move the entire blog over? Is it even possible to do that or do I lose all my past posts like I did when Shine went offline and I had to start over on Blogger?

I’m so confused.

HELP.

plants for sale

Posted on May 13, 2017 by zefiart

Nothing wrong with diversifying, right? I mean, I groom dogs for a living and I make stuff and I garden. And my garden produces flowers and flowers produce seeds and I end up with more plants and more seeds. Its the circle of life.

As Neil once said on The Young Ones, “we sow the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed, and after that, we sow the seed, nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed…”

Except for the eating part. I don’t eat my flowers. I admire them. Then collect seeds, sow seeds, grow seeds, you get the picture. As a result I have baby plants growing. I can’t use them all, so I normally sell them at markets here and there.

Well, I decided that instead of having my plant nursery along the back of the casita where no one sees them, I’d put some out the front of the new grooming room so my customers can see them. That way, if anyone sees something they like they can buy it while I give ‘rover’ a new do.

I made the cute little sign using a timber offcut and acrylic paint. The large basket they’re sitting in is a galvanised bakery basket I’ve had for a few years. I put some metal legs on it and for the last 2-3 years we’ve lined it with burlap and used it to hold carrots for the horses in winter.