Revamped Relics

Someone who follows my blog emailed me a flyer for this great event which is coming up soon, so I thought I would share it, in case any local people see this. It sounds like something I will definitely be keen to get to, possibly lining up at the door on opening day :) (retro fabric-aholic is a pretty accurate description of me, and I love me some up-cycling!)

At my house

This must be the first day I have had to myself for about 10 months. Having both kids in daycare at the same time is great. So what do I do with a day to myself?? Go thrifting of course!!

I had to go into town anyway to take back the wig hubby hired for his costume, so that gave me an excuse to visit the two op shops close to town. These are the goodies I bought home -

More vintage linen and doilies (because I obviously haven’t got enough already, only a whole suitcase full), a little crochet blanket, a retro print metal tray which will make a great magnetic notice board, an oval box which I will decoupage and use for storing some crafty supplies, a few bags of random craft stuff like lace, ribbon etc, some bits of fabric, a couple of cute dolls dresses (although these are more for me than little princess because she prefers her dolls to be naked and takes the clothes off them immediately if I put clothes on them), and a few vintage-ish books, two of which (raggedy anne and the cookie snatcher and Leo the lop) I remember owning as a child, the other one just had really cute pictures.

While we are on the subject of thrifting, here are some things I have found lately that I haven’t posted on here yet.

A pile of pillowcases, mostly vintage.

  More pillowcases, with gorgeous roses.

A lace edged under skirt for little princess, and also for me to copy to make more, because something like that has got to be fairly simple to make, right?

Some fabric/fabric items.

A vintage plastic tray and a bag of buttons.

And this very cool children’s book, great story, great pictures, great concept for a preschooler who loves balloons.

The rest of my day (all 1.5 hours of it before family gets home) will be spent planning some things to make for my swap partners. I can’t believe I have joined three swaps in a week, but they are all so fun I just couldn’t resist. I think the colour swap will be the easiest, but the one I have to send first is for the “here comes the sun” swap, and I have no idea what I am going to make for that. Better get thinking (which means blog surfing until I find something or have a brainwave).

Head over to Lou Lou’s to see what's happening at other houses today.

Funky Junk Friday

Imagine a huge room, full of objects discarded by people, fabric off cuts, half finished sewing projects, patterns, books, boxes, jars, tins, containers…… And it’s all free. This is the wonder that is “Funky Junk”. This is a place here in Tauranga where people can leave their unwanted “junk” and a place where others can find treasures. So every Thursday night I go to a craft night, which is right across from Funky Junk, and since I started going I have collected some great Junque. This is just like thrifting, only free, which is awesome.

These are some of my recent finds:

3 wooden lamp bases, which have had the wiring etc removed – these will probably be painted, and I have plans to possibly try to make one into the stand for a dress form (decorative).

A bunch of doilies – I just love doilies, one of the reasons I want to learn to crochet is so I can make them myself old-school style.

A metal “thing” which I think is some sort of pot stand – also needs a paint job and a little glass bowl or something to sit in it to hold crafty stuff like buttons (one day when I actually have space to display such things).

A cute little yellow glass bottle – just cause its cute.

Some retro little wooden dipping bowls – I have a set of salad bowls, chip bowls and salad servers to match.

A vintage blue tin with a gorgeous pattern on it – it’s gorgeous, what more do I need to say.

A little ceramic book thing – I want to paint it white, line the bottom with a bit of felt and make it a ring holder.

A metal candlestick – also needs a paint job, I can see the potential in anything.

The blue/green fabric under the lamps is a table runner (I think, at least that's what I plan to use it for), the other retro printed fabrics are placemats or napkins I think.

A cute little hand mirror with a floral design on the back.

A porcelain door knob (I know, that's pretty random) with a really cute floral design.

Little metal tins – there’s only a couple pictured, but I have quite a collection now, they will be altered and given as little gifts at some stage.

A lampshade form – again, potential.

A metal teapot – ummm, yeah, I’m just a bit obsessed with teapots and teacups at the moment, because of the party I am planning. I have found MANY teapots and teacups in funky junk, but they have been put away with the rest of the party stuff.

A whole bunch of wooden placemats – because you can never have too many ;-)

A basket – just because I liked the shape of it.

And more retro printed stuff and some other sewing related bits and pieces.

There’s plenty more where that came from, so I'm gonna try to make it a regular thing – Funky Junk Friday.

Linking up to Sophie's Flea Market Finds and Rhoda's Thrifty Treasures.

Latest Creations

Things have been pretty chaotic lately, with the long weekend and then having no power in our house for 3 days, so there hasn’t been a lot of crafting time. But I have managed to make a few things, and I have decided I really like hand sewing, it’s easy to do in front of the TV, and its therapeutic.

These are the completed placemats and coasters that I was altering last week. None of them sold at the market, but that's ok, because I plan to try to sell them on Felt when I get around to joining.

These are a couple of sock softies I made, the stripy one is a chicken and the other one was meant to be a cat or a rabbit, but my daughter thinks it looks like Totoro (a character in one of her movies) so that’s what she calls it.

This is another chicken, which hasn’t got a face yet because I haven’t got another triangle button so I am still trying to figure out how to make a beak.

  These are “tattered fabric roses” made using the tutorial here. The ones in the bottom corner have been glued to pegs and will be made into magnetic note holders for the fridge. The rest are probably destined to be brooches and embellishments for clothes.

This is the shelf in our lounge, which I have been trying to redecorate for a while now. So yesterday I finally finished it and we are pretty happy with how it looks. The background for the top 2 shelves are canvas boards that I “painted” with a teabag then glued on some images that I printed from the computer. Most of the images I used were from The Graphics Fairy.

This is a close-up of the top shelves. As you can see I LOVE buttons. They make a great “filler” in decorating just about anything.

Last night I bought home more junque to be transformed, so will be posting about that soon, watch this space……

This weeks project is...

This week I am on a mission to finally do something with some of the coasters and place mats I have been collecting from thrift stores over the last few months. As you can see from the photo, I have quite a collection. Some of the things I will be doing with them:

* Magnetic notepad holder.
* Magnetic clips for putting artwork etc on the fridge.
* Desk organiser with mini cork board.
* Post-it note holders.

So watch this space for photos of the finished product. I am making these to possibly sell at the Easter jazz festival.

Tomorrow is thrift store day. I almost always go to my local thrift store on a Tuesday. I can't help it. And I really don't need more junque. But you never know what new treasures may be waiting to be discovered. Some things I will be looking out for this time:
* Teapots - for my daughter's birthday party in June, we are having a mad hatters tea party.
* Glass salt shakers - I have seen a few altered salt shakers on some of the blogs I've been browsing and I want to give it a go. You can see them here and here. These are xmas ornaments, but I have other ideas.
* Knitting needles - to make these or these.
* Cheap Clothing that can be turned into cute outfits for my daughter for winter.
* Anything that I can add to our living room to update it a bit, because we are getting a bit tired of looking at the same vases/candles etc but all our home decor "stuff" is in storage.



This is my daughters favourite toy at the moment (and she took this photo herself) - A packet of red plastic plates that I bought for a project but they were too small. She loves lining them up. I often wonder why we bother getting her toys, when she would much rather play with simple things that we have around the house.

In the beginning....

I want to start off by saying that I have just recently decided it is time to conquer my fear of sewing, and finally make some of the things I've been putting off for years.

So last week I got my hand-me-down sewing machine out of storage, downloaded the instruction manual and gave myself a crash course in sewing 101. I mean, it's not like I have never sewn anything in my life, but after several failed projects in sewing class at school, I just kind of figured that was one of the skills that didn't come naturally to me, like driving and cooking.

Now having two kids and living on a fairly tight budget, I figured this would be a good time to be able to make things for my kids to wear, use and play with.

So, last week I successfully made a few softie baby rattles for my son and a mini crayon roll for my daughter, but this week my greatest accomplishment has been successfully making a dress that my daughter can actually wear!! And I wanted to share that HUGE accomplishment here (because I am so proud of myself!!)

So I found a project in Australian Homespun magazine, vol 11.2, for this gorgeous pinafore dress.



And I found this gorgeous woman's skirt (which is WAY too small for me) at my local thrift store.



And I immediately thought that skirt would make the cutest dress for my daughter, and that's how it began.

I didn't take photos of the process, because I was just obsessed with getting it finished before I lost interest and gave up. But I used the lace feature at the front of the skirt for the front of the dress, I tried to use as many of the original seams as possible, because there's no way my seams were gonna be anywhere near that good, and I used the lining as well. Towards the end I realised that buttonholes were required to do up the dress, and I freaked out a bit, because I have never sewn a buttonhole in my life, and even after reading through the sewing machine manual I still had no idea how to do it. I did a couple of practice runs on a scrap of fabric.



But, as you can see, they were disastrous. So I rummaged through my craft supplies and my junque supplies and finally found a couple of those little metal dome thingies (I don't know what they are called), that just needed to be hand sewn onto the dress, easy peasy.



There you have it, my first wearable creation!! And it fits and looks cute and it's just like I imagined. Can you tell I am just a little bit proud of myself ;-)