Stamp making

I've been playing around with erasers and carving tools, see?

For this I used a regular, if not perhaps a bit too small, eraser from Staedtler and some cheapo carving tools from our local arts & craft supplier.

I've got my eyes on the following though; Speedball carving tools available from Amazon. Click here for all the Speedball products on Amazon. Other e-stores that stock Speedball cutters are scrapbook.com and  gobstock.com. Instead of the small erasers which work just fine, but not quite the size I'd like my stamps to be,  I'd like the super, duper Staedtler Mastercarve Artist carving blocks.  They come in all sizes and thicknessess; only problem is that I haven't been able to find any on-line. Suggestions anyone? Do they even manufacture these still?

I'm quite excited about this craft and can see how it will keep me busy over the coming winter months.

Happy weekend!

Goodbye Christmas

Well, the home-made advent calendar has been raided of it's treasures and it's almost time to pack up the Christmas decorations. Our biggest gift this year was to have The Captain home for Christmas. Below are a few pictures of my home-made Christmas decorations. The advent calendar was a total up-cycled project; one that I'll give a bit of a "twist" for next year.

Happy day!

Fimo clay tealight holder tutorial

Okay, so when I saw this, I thought it just too cute not to share!

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I saw it on the Hearthandmadeuk website and you can just follow the link to see how it's made. I absolutely adore it!

Happy day!

Gift ideas

I stumbled upon this blog entry of total art soul and was inspired to make a few last-minute gifts with stuff I have around the house. I'm that "do-it-at-the-last-minute" kind of girl sometimes, which is terrible, actually (hahaha).

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I have to get out of my lazy holiday mode and get started; will share with you what I've made.

Happy day!

Three tiered cake stand

It was Cheetah's teacher's birthday the other day, and since I was class rep for the year, I "had" to arranged for a gift for her. I saw these beautiful plates at Woolworths and decided to get some to make a cake stand.

From Woolworths

Ta da!

It's so pretty, I want to make one for myself too.

Happy day!

Door make-over

I picked up this old door from a junk yard (my favourite place to find "treasures") for about 20.00 ZAR and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. 

I removed the handles and hinges and gave it a good sanding. The solid panel at the bottom got three coats of chalkboard paint  and at the same time I brushed a few strokes of the same paint all around for special effect later.

Masking tape and newspaper blocked off the panels for the frame to be painted.

Voilà! What do you think?

paint swatches from here

I'm not quite sure if I want to leave the glass panel as is, or give it a coat of magnetic paint in a lovely pastel shade. I love all of these colours above, but will I find something similar in magnetic? I'll keep you posted!

Happy day!

Up-cycled frame

Remember the old picture frame that I gave a makeover and wrote about here?

I am putting it to real good use now that we have pretty flowers in abundance. Being on the wall beside our front door, it creates such a lovely, colourful welcome to guests and myself.

I have been busy with another make-over project which you can read about here on Monday..

Happy weekend!

DIY cake stand

When I saw this post on DIY Cake Stands on my favourite everyday blog Chez Larsson, I knew I had to make one (or several) of these for myself.  I realised too, that this would be an ideal Christmas gifts for my lady friends. Then there's also the idea that I'm stealing from Chez Larsson, to have one of these near our entry door for keys, change and such.  I am still a bit concerned about what the porcelain/ceramic plates will do when I drill them, so I went to a thrift shop and bought saucers and plates for dirt cheap; just in case they decide to crack up on me. I still have to drill these, but I'll keep you updated on that.

My first try was with enamel plates. Now, enamel is a big huge weakness amongst my family and friends, including myself. It worked out amazingly well, and now I only have to decide who the lucky recipient of this stand well be...

I bought the hardware for the stands on eBay (dirt cheap) and the enamel plates at a junk yard and thrift shop.

Happy day!

DIY decor for Halloween

When our kids did trick-or-treating the other evening for Halloween, I was rushing around to make some last minute decorations to add to the atmosphere a bit. With some orange fabric and green felt, I managed to make a (little bit weird looking, but that's part of it, no?) pumpkin to put outside with all the other freaky stuff.

A couple of antelope skulls, old food tins painted black (for candle holders), the pumpkin and a witches hat over the back of the chair... It  looked pretty awesome, especially when I lit the candles after sunset. The skulls we found in the veld in the Karoo a while back and it was the perfect opportunity to put them to good use.

Happy day!

Make-over

I bought this old "bar-stool" at our local second-hand furniture store for about ZAR 60.00 and it sat in a room for AGES before I finally got down to doing something with it, sooo.....

from this......

to this......

I'm real happy with the way it turned out!

Happy day!

Directions!

pic from here 

I saw these very cute signs on Pinterest here and since I've decided that we'll be  having a playful and fun garden and outdoor space this summer, I decided to make some signs of my own.

So, from some old, odd pieces of wood that had been squirrelled away (by yours truly) and this....

...........to this!

Happy day!

Fire lighters

With all the woodworking The Captain does in his spare time, he's  forever looking for a way to get rid of use all the sawdust that he gathers from him projects. He read somewhere about making fire-lighters with sawdust, candle wax and egg cartons and since we're still having cold evenings and making a fire every night to keep warm, I decided to give it a try. Glad to finally have another use for my egg cartons (besides the seed bombs I wrote about here), and of course, all the little bits of wax left over from the candles that I love to burn so much, this is what I did; 

You will need:

 a few handfuls of sawdust

 egg cartons

 leftover bits of candle

 Method:

1. Put the wax in a heat proof dish and melt it over a pan of boiling water
2. Stir in enough sawdust to absorb the melted wax
3. Immediately scoop the mixture into the hollows of the egg cartons and press down firmly
4. Allow to set and ................

 ready for use

 I break them up and use two at a time...

they burn so well, and you don't have that nasty smell that one can get with store bought fire-lighters

Weddings - Escort cards

I have spend some time on  "Google" looking for ideas for Escort cards for weddings and came up with this.....

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(have no clue where I found this one)

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You have NO IDEA how many lovely images I have seen, but these ones above are of my favourites. I am so glad that I won't have to make a choice like this; there are just too many fabulous ideas to choose from (sigh!).....  Hope you enjoy.

Happy day!