Post Organiser

Look at this post organiser!! Look how untidy.

If you're interested, here's how I made it. I'm sure it would be lovely if it were prettier.

But I never got round to making it look pretty. This was supposed to be a temporary measure for when we'd just moved in and were still sorting things out. But it's still there. The thing that really annoys me about it is that we still have pretty things hidden away in boxes because there's no shelf space to display them.

So, I've decided - away with the toast rack post organiser! Time to replace it with a sleeker, space-saver wall hanging one.

I started with some envelopes and I cut a piece out of the back of each one. The I slotted them inside each other and taped together at the back.

I punched a couple of holes in the top envelope and tied a length of string through. Then I just hung it from the picture rail.

 

And now the post is out of the way and I've got my shelf back for all my elephants and a couple of other things.

Achieved!!

Lampshade makeovers

See this light. See what's wrong with it? Now, consider the fact that we've lived in this house for seven months. Still not finished getting the place sorted, obviously, hence no light-shade.

But we struck some luck the other day. We found these, just outside on the street. Someone had obviously left them out for the bin men, who neglected to take them. So we did.

Once we got them inside and looked at them, we figured out why they'd been thrown away. Not having a clue how to clean them, I decided to tear the covers off and re-cover them myself.

For the first one I took out my fabric scraps and I selected this blue stuff. It's quite a dark colour, but it's shiny too, and thin so it won't be too shadowy.

I made a pattern on some baking paper by tracing around one of the segments in my frame. If you're going to copy me on this, you want to trace on the outside of the section, not inside it, so you can wrap the pieces around the wire.

I pinned my pattern to the fabric and cut out a piece for each section in the frame.

Then I got some all purpose glue and stuck the pieces in place. I did four alternating ones first, and glued them around the wire.

Then I did the other four so they were folded at the outside edge (to make it look neat).

I glued the bottom edge last and it turned out I hadn't quite cut my pieces big enough so parts of the frame were still showing at the bottom.

No matter, I've found something to cover it up with.

For my second shade I wanted to do something different. I did a little Internet hunt for ideas and came across this (picture is a link). It's quite an interesting technique using starch, which means you can make multiple shades from one mould.

I didn't follow their tutorial though; I just thought I could stretch something over my frame and glue it in place, so I set out to find something that would look pretty when stretched. I found this lovely scarf in the 99p store. It's one of those that's like a tunnel, which is why I chose it.

I put the tunnel scarf over my frame like so, and glued it to the bottom of the frame.

Once that had dried (about ten minutes) I stretched the scarf upwards as much as I could and I snipped the top off. Then I glued it around the top of the frame.

After that had dried I trimmed it a little closer and glued it again to make it neat.

Voila! Two brand new lampshades.

Puffy Paint Experiments

So I was stumbling the craft blogs one day when I came across this tutorial for puffy paints. And I thought that could be a really fun technique for decorating a larger craft. But after months and months I've still not thought of anything to do with it. So I thought I could just try it on a scrap piece of card and see what ideas it gave me.

So here goes. This is just an experiment, so I'm only making a little bit. One tablespoon self raising flour, one tablespoon salt, enough water to make a paste (about 2 teaspoons). And a drop of food colouring. I had orange, so that's what I made. If you're going to do this, I recommend using liquid food colouring instead of the silly gel stuff I'm using. I had to keep adding more and more colouring, but with liquid, you actually can just use a drop.

So, here goes. I painted a smiley face onto the card and microwaved for 10 seconds.

It doesn't look much different, except that it's dry now. I tried another experiment. I painted a line on each of 2 pieces of card but just microwaved one so I'd get a before and after effect.

The one on the left is the one that's been microwaved. Methinks it may have risen marginally. But I still can't think of anything I could use it for. The thought occurs that if we used sugar instead of salt, we could put this stuff on biscuits. So I baked some gingerbread hearts (well it is Valentine's Day).

I made up my sugar puffy paint and added some red food dye that I'd managed to get hold of. It turned out kinda purple thought (the camera is lying to you here). I think that's because it wasn't quite as white as the salt one. I'll deal with sorting out colours another time I think.

I wasn't sure whether to bake my puffy paint or microwave it, so I decided to do both. I took the biscuits out of the oven a few minutes before they were quite ready and applied the sugar mix to half of them. I baked all the gingerbread for another 5 minutes. They came out kinda shiny, and the sugar stuff had risen nicely.

After they'd cooled I painted the remaining cookies and microwaved them for 10 seconds. Then I decided that wasn't long enough and did them for a bit longer. And the microwaved sugar paste burst, so it seems baking is the better option.

The baked and microwaved ones taste exactly the same, and have the same soft, squidgey texture. The microwaved ones just don't look very good. Unless you're making halloween cookies, then bursting sugar paste could look pretty cool. I think this is something I'll work on again until I get the recipe right.