Corridor Dressing

Ever since we moved into our flat a full five years ago, the corridor has been a sad and empty place. We painted it white  which was a definite improvement on the lemon and jade walls/metallic silver woodwork combo that was there before but having done that we left it. Each time I walked down it I made a mental note to find some lovely colourful finery to adorn the blank walls and then other rooms stepped in, shouted louder and assumed priority.

But it was such a perfect blank canvas eventually I just couldn't ignore it and decided it was time to dress it up.

By happy accident I had over time acquired a few prints and pictures with a red theme running through them and they have formed a cheerful little collection on one of the walls:

My mother bought me the Ballet Russes poster at the V&A exhibition of the same name. The Leyland Buses postcard (in the smallest frame) was sent to me from the North by my lovely friend Helen - Leyland is her home town. The bigger London bus screen print is actually the poster for a Flight of the Conchords gig we went to - it is very rare that I buy show merchandise but this one appealed to me and reminds me of a night involving much, much laughter. The Rob Ryan limited edition laser cut for the V&A was a Christmas present from my parents. The gorgeous fox painting is from Mir Dinara on Etsy, found via The Seventy Tree and was the final piece of the puzzle. I thought this area was finished but then spotted the gorgeous Papermash banners on Tea For Joy and the Joie De Vivre one is now winging its way to me to act as the crowning glory.

I had also wanted to do something with the wall space above our bedroom door. Books are everywhere in our flat - Mr Crafty devours them and usually has about three on the go and both of us feel strongly about buying solid paper books and holding onto them. Our dream house of the future has a library but we have no such luxury in our two bedroom flat. As the two bookcases in our sitting room were bursting at their metaphorical seams we decided to use the space for a bookcase to hold Mr Crafty's collection of classics:






He loves the display of reading matter, I love the fact they make a rainbow!

I have a funny relationship with books in that I love reading, almost more than anything, but if my head is very full of day to day stuff I sometimes find it hard to pick up a book. It's as if I forget how much I enjoy it. When I do make a start on a good book then it is all that I think about but I can go for months without reading anything. So I made this banner from scraps of Liberty fabrics to remind me to pick up a book! I adapted the design from the Nice banner in Applique Your Way by Kayte Terry.

Finally, back in 2009 we bought a pine dresser from EBay. It looked like this when we bought it:

Since then it has been standing in the corridor looking very out of place but providing useful storage for all my cake making equipment. It was always my intention to paint it and I finally got round to it. It now looks like this:





I added the slate grey painted numbers on the drawers and doors which I hope you can just about see in the picture for a bit of interest. It blends in a lot better now although it is going to need retouching soon as it has become one of Milly and Jeff's favourite scratching posts.

I now sometimes find myself pausing in the corridor. It has it's own cheery identity instead of being a blank space to simply pass through. We haven't done a huge amount but what we have done makes me smile. Hope it makes you smile too.

Our Parker Knoll wingback in its new clothes

We bought two Parker Knoll wingbacks for £10 from eBay - bargain. My intention was to reupholster them immediately. 4.5 years later and one is finally done!

Stupidly I didn't take a before shot and the other one is currently in progress and stripped back to its bones but I am sure you can imagine a dated and shabby wingback with no problems.

It now looks like this:




The upholstery job isn't perfect but as a first attempt with no prior knowledge or experience I am pretty pleased with it. I basically removed the staples (no small task) and took all the pieces of fabric off, labelled them so I knew what order they went in, used them as patterns to cut pieces from the new fabric and then stapled it all back on in reverse order - simple no? Actually it was relatively simple but very time consuming and no small task. I also used metal back tacking rather than trying to sew the back on which saved a bit of effort but is quite hard to use if you want it to look perfectly smooth (mine doesn't). I also made all the piping using an online tutorial which I now can't find but there are quite a few versions on google. Oh and I painted the feet white to match the white piping.

I now need to assemble the energy to finish number two! I have another lovely Graham and Green Gypsy Caravan cushion waiting to take up residence on it once it is finished.

Where did that year go?

Contrary to appearances I didn't fall down a big hole! I can't believe a year has gone by since I last posted. I have had a fair amount to deal with in the real world and somehow the days just turned into months so to those of you that are still with me - thank you!!!!

My time"away" has not been unproductive and I have plenty of projects to share with you shortly. In the meantime I would like to take this opportunity to introduce two rather special new members of the family. Meet Milly and Jeff who fill our days with much laughter:

More later but it sure feels nice to be back!

Marrakech Express

I am just back from a wonderful week in Marrakech. I have always wanted to visit Morocco and with the British weather reaching an all time low in February, Mr Crafty and I decided it was time for a spur of the moment trip.

The city is as wonderful and crazy as everyone says it is but boy do those Moroccans know how to make things look beautiful. There are jewel like colours everywhere and even the most ordinary of homes are made extraordinary with the use of beautiful mosaic tiles and decorative tassels galore.

One of my favourite places was the Majorelle Gardens which was created by Jacques Majorelle, a French Painter, and was latterly owned by Yves Saint Laurent. The garden sings with colour and is a oasis of peace in a frantic city. The cafe also serves a dreamy orange blossom ice-cream.

The fountain at the Majorelle Gardens

One of the many beautiful avenues at the Majorelle Gardens

We were lucky enough to stay in the wonderful Riad Zolah which was our sanctuary from the busy streets when we needed it.

The courtyard at the Riad Zolah with it's rose petal filled marble pool

Our lovely room complete with complimentary babouches (leather slippers)

But no trip to Morocco would be complete without trying some haggling in the labyrinthine souks:

These pictures don't begin to convey the magic, colour and chaos but I got a little reticent about taking too many photos for fear of making myself a target for the very persistent shopkeepers. We did come home with some booty though:

The one thing I really wanted to bring back with me was a pouffe. I have been admiring the ones from Graham and Green for a while but was always put off by the price tag. We got this lovely leather one for a quarter of the price and if our haggling had been better we could have probably bartered it down even more.

These tassels were everywhere and I couldn't resist bringing a pair back to bring a bit of the 1001 Nights to our South East London sitting room.

When we move to our "forever house" (which is where we hope our next move will take us whenever the time comes) I am definitely going back to Marrakech for some serious interiors shopping!

Our Kitchen

Well I have been promising to do this for ages but here, finally, are the pictures of our kitchen in its (almost) finished state.

I don't have any photos of how the kitchen was when we first moved in. Basically the whole flat was painted jade green and lemon yellow with silver woodwork which may well have been the height of fashion in the early nineties but would have been quite something to try and live with so the first thing we did was to give everything a coat of brilliant white paint just to make it a bit more bearable.

The walls were originally yellow and the chimney breast was jade green but this is how our units used to look with the walls already white (there is a lot of mess in these photos as we were just embarking on doing the room up!)

We haven't made any alterations to the layout so this has been very much a facelift on a budget rather than a complete renovation but I am so pleased with the results:

Our Freecycle Danish chairs have found a temporary home
in here but will be replaced by our eBay bargain G-Plan chairs once I have done them up.

We still need to get the door on the washing machine
- one of the many finishing touches still to do!


I love these hanging plant pots from Rockett St George that I was given for Christmas.
We never had much room on the worktop for fresh herbs but now we have our own hanging herb garden!

As I say we have only given everything a facelift but it feels like a completely new room and it has been done on an absolute shoe-string. My favourite things are:

• The Ikea Docksta table which we got from Freecycle. This was serendipity at work as we were going to budget to buy one the very next month from Ikea.
  
• The lovely engineered oak flooring which was second hand from eBay (this meant Mr Crafty had his work cut out getting all the old glue off but we saved hundreds and it looks a darn sight better than the old vinyl complete with cigarette burns that we inherited from the previous occupants).
• The worktop made from reclaimed oak by Lidster and Son and sourced via eBay.
• The Cole and Son Cow Parsley wallpaper bought half price on eBay.
• Our metro tiles - half of which again were an eBay buy and the rest we bought new to match.
• The blackboard cupboard - currently covered in messages from the friends we had to stay at new year - I am loathed to rub these off!!
• The dresser unit which I used to hate but I now love thanks to removing the cornicing to give it cleaner lines, the colour (Farrow and Ball's Blackened) , the shaker handles (another eBay buy) and the wallpaper lining inside the cupboard.
  
• The hanging herb garden (as above)
  

We still have the odd bit off filling to do and the cupboard door needs to go on the washing machine once we have the right hinges. I am also amassing plates and pictures to go on the wall over the radiator by the table but for all intents and purposes it is job done.

Hope you like the pics!

Welcome to 2010!

A very Happy New Year to everyone!! I hope a very merry festive season was had by all. We had a very lovely time Chez Crafty seeing the new year in with good friends and of course it wouldn't have been a party without bunting would it?

My resolution is to finally finish some of the projects I started in 2009. I have chairs to paint, other chairs to upolster, plates to source and hang, blinds to make etc. It will be great to finally get some "afters" on here after all the "befores".

One thing that really is finished (aside from a few teensy little finishing touches) is the kitchen and as soon as I can take some decent photos I will put them up on here (it deserves a little better treatment than a quick snap with the Blackberry after all the hard work that has gone into it!)

Meg Gets Crafty in Print

Many, many thanks to the very lovely Huma of Her Little Place for featuring this blog in her article on Do-it-Yourself Christmas Presents in Sunday's Observer. It was a great pleasure to have the chance to speak about two of my favourite things; Christmas and crafts and very exciting to see Meg Gets Crafty in print.

Her Little Place has had had a fabulous makeover recently (although it was pretty darn fabulous before) and is brimming with lovely ideas so, if you haven't already done so, I would definitely recommend a visit.

In other news our kitchen is so close to being finished I can almost taste it! Our beautiful yellow Cole & Son Cow Parsley wallpaper is now up on the chimney breast and the floor is nearly complete. I wondered if we were really going to be able to stick to our plan of finishing before Christmas but it really looks like we might well get there! So that should mean some photos for you all very soon. It's been at the expense of Mr Crafty's poor hands which are now covered in blood blisters, cuts and scrapes from working on the floor but it looks so pretty I hope he will agree that it is worth all our hard labour in the end!

Finally I haven't forgotten my blog award from Zoe at Conversation Pieces and the promised post on personality traits will be on its way shortly.

Almost there...

I am so excited I can barely contain myself! After what seems like eons of thinking about our kitchen facelift, planning colours, chosing worktops etc., the end is finally in sight.

Our gorgeous worktop handmade from reclaimed wood arrived just over a week ago. Lidster and Son did an absolutely stunning job on it. Even though it has been joined, sanded and oiled you can really see the age of the wood and all the various markings which chart its history. I love it!

The above photo is a sneak peek of it in situ along with our new tiles. We are mid way through wallpapering the chimney breast and Mr C has a few days off to lay the engineered oak floor we bought second hand from eBay. It won't be too long before I have some before and afters for you!

P.S The lovely Zoe at Conversation Pieces has awarded me the fantastically titled Shoulda Been a Stripper award!! A post on seven personality traits is to follow....

Me Old China

Well things are moving on with our kitchen. Our reclaimed worktop is being delivered this weekend and then with any luck we have people coming in next week to fit it and do the tiling. Mr Crafty is going to fit the floor and wallpaper the chimney breast. So with any luck it should be finished by Christmas and my mind has naturally turned towards finishing touches.

There is one very empty bit of wall. A poster would be the most obvious thing to fill it but I have seen a lot of lovely displays made with china plates in magazines recently and am thinking of something similar. Given that both my grandfathers worked in the pottery industry it seems rather appropriate. Perhaps something along these lines:

Photo sourced from Glassford Hill Girl Blog

Photo sourced from E How

Photo sourced from www.countryliving.com

I better get down to a car boot sale to start collecting!

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Picture from www.goodhousekeeping.com

Sorry for my extended absence. It wasn't planned but rather a lot has been going on recently including a family member being taken into hospital and I have been running around like a blue arsed fly with every intention to post and not a second to spare to actually do so!

While I have been away the seasons have changed spectacularly. My last post was about my camping trip. We were using suncream and seeking out the shade that weekend. Now I am looking out of the window onto trees with yellow leaves and a bright chilly Autum day.

This is my favourite time of year full of magic and festivity. Halloween is just around the corner with bonfire night hot on its heels and (dare I say it this early) the promise of Christmas is beginning to get me all excited. It's a time for making preserves and hearty soups, for lighting candles at night, for wrapping up warm and kicking up leaves with fur lined boots.

It also means that we are on a race against time to get our kitchen finished before Christmas. We have finished painting the units and have ordered reclaimed oak worktops from Lidster and Son in Devon. We have a new sink and tap, oak flooring, new tiles and wallpaper all waiting in the wings. What we don't have is time so we have a local handyman coming round to quote for doing the rest of the work which means with any luck I should have some proper before and after pics to post. Very exciting!

Wings of Desire

I have mentioned my love of anything featuring our feathered friends before, although I know I am not alone among bloggers. Right now I am seriously coveting these cushions by peekboutique on Etsy. They are homegrown in blighty (Brighton to be precise) and the cheery colours make my heart sing like a bird.

Garage Booty

We recently cleared my parents garage out for them and whilst the majority of what was in there went to Freecycle or the recycling centre, there were a few gems that have now joined the queue of furniture to be revamped in our flat. My favourite two pieces are below, but I also kept an old child's school desk that used to be mine (the sort with an ink well and a flip up lid), a wooden sledge, a 1930s wooden toy theatre and a little wooden child's chair. These have gone in the attic in the hope that one day there will be a Crafty junior to make use of them!

I love the shape of this desk:

I think I am going to paint it cobalt blue and give it some new pretty handles. It will fit in just beautifully in our sitting room as a home for our laptop.

And this was my grandmother's trolley:


She used to keep her sewing machine on it and threads etc. and I may just do the same. I think this will probably end up yellow and I will probably use some wallpaper on it as well.

Goodness knows when I will find the time to finish them but I am really looking forward to seeing them revamped. I grew up with both of them so it will be lovely to have them in my own home.

Little fireplace update

A while back I posted about my discontent with my fireplace and the lovely Eden Rose suggested that perhaps a turquoise glass vase might be the ticket. I wholeheartedly agreed and have been keeping my eyes on eBay for one I liked to come along. I was delighted when I managed to bag this fella for a mere £6.

I really think he makes all the difference along with my new white candlestick - found in the bargain corner in Paperchase for £3.

Pretty Pictures All In A Row

Some of you may remember my post about the fantastic prints at Advice to Sink in Slowly. I bought a couple of my favourite prints a while back and have been waiting to get them up on the wall but wasn't sure where to display them.

I have seen a few picture ledges featured on design blogs recently and really liked the effect so when I saw Ikea did a white rail as part of their Ribba range I snapped it up.

I have also been coveting the butterfly prints at Rockett St George for a while so decided to snap one up as a centrepiece for the rail. This is the finished display - our blank walls are at last looking a little more interesting!

Progress

We have been doing a bit more work on our kitchen cabinets and I am really excited about the progress. About a third of our cabinets are now painted and resplendent with new handles. It makes such a difference already. I can't wait to get on and finish them (and do the tiling, wallpaper the chimney breast, install the new worktop and flooring, ho hum...)

This is what all our cabinets used to look like (beech effect melamine):

This is what they look like painted with melamine primer and two coats of Farrow and Ball's Blackened Estate Eggshell and fitted with new shaker style handles bought v cheaply on eBay:

The photo's not great (still working out how to get the most out of my Blackberry camera) but I hope you can get a sense of the difference. Can't wait until it's finally time to post before and afters of the whole room.

Of Kitchens, Chairs and Lemonade

After a productive Sunday testing out some melamine primer on one of our kitchen cabinet doors and scoring four Danish style teak chairs on freecycle (more of them soon) I logged on to find out that I had been given not one but two Lemonade awards from two of my favourite bloggers Eden Rose and Conversation Pieces. Thanks so much ladies!! I only started this blog in Feb so I feel like a relative young'un in blogging terms so I am truly touched to recieve these. I will be back with my nominees before too long.

eBay rocks!

Just back from one of our regular excursions to pick up yet another eBay purchase and this one was a corker I must say. We managed to get ourself 22 square metres of really good quality engineered oak flooring for an absolute steal. It was down on the seller's floor for a couple of years but his wife fancied a change of wood so it all came up again. It's in near perfect condition and we can sand the odd scratch down and re-oil if necessary. We've saved around £700 and our kitchen will have a lovely oak floor instead of the awful wood effect vinyl complete with cigarette burn that we inherited from the previous owner - hurrah!

I'm hoping this weekend that we can do a test run on one of our cabinet doors to see how they take to being painted. I am hoping to turn some very dull beech effect doors into something vaguely resembling these with the help of some hardcore primer and Farrow and Ball's "Blackened" Eggshell:

Photo from Farrow and Ball

Possibly a tall order but I'm going to give it my best shot. I'll let you know how I get on...

DIY Art

Our little hall has been really taking shape recently but the with the white walls and white floor it was looking a little bare. We didn't have any budget for pictures and so I decided to get a bit creative. I got some old ikea frames we had lying around and painted them white. I then got a selection of different coloured pieces of pastel paper from Paperchase and used some as backgrounds overlaid with bird shapes cut from contrasting colours. Given that this was a quick fix I am rather pleased with the results.

I wish I could show a proper view of the whole hall but as I said before it is very wee and as a result it is almost impossible to take a photo on our basic digital camera that takes in all the elements. These are my best efforts:

Bookcase

I mentioned a while back that the projects were stacking up. Well, this weekend finally saw the completion of one. There was a time when, if I needed a new piece of furniture, I would have thought nothing about popping down to Ikea. The problem is you end up with something mass produced, non environmentally friendly and of questionable quality and longevity. As a result I am much more likely these days to try and find a pre-loved item on eBay and then revamp it to suit my taste. If you pick your projects right you end up with solid good quality pieces that you can give your own personal twist.

I bought this bookcase a while ago on eBay for more or less the price of an Ikea unit with a view to giving it a makeover (photo from eBay):

It now looks like this:


You can tell I have been overdosing on Living Etc by the fact I have arranged the books by colour rather than something sensible such as genre or author. Mr Crafty finds this very illogical as he is an avid reader and collector of books and now it's harder to find the book you want but it gives me a little glow every time I look at it.

I also got these lovely handles from John Lewis because I wanted a splash of colour against the Farrow and Ball All White Eggshell:

Kitchen Mood Board

I am just in the process of teaching myself photoshop and decided to practice on a mood board for the kitchen facelift we are planning for the end of the summer. I am very excited by the potential of photoshop but frustrated by my less than basic knowledge. Here is my first attempt but I can't wait to be a pro.