Extreme (or maybe more quick and dirty) Makeover: Kitchen

The kitchen was right up there as being one of the worst rooms in the house. It was a mix of Little House on the Prairie and Little Shop of Horrors. Dirty pine covered everything, making it feel dark and oppressive. While we realise we eventually need to give it a serious overhaul, we have decided we will do this when we are on the way out so that we don't have time to put our hot burny pans on the brand new surfaces. (Ahem, not that this is a, er, regular occurrence or anything.) And in the meantime we got to create this rough, fun, vintage look just with a can of white emulsion and some sandpaper. It has created the perfect canvas for some of our lovely car boot finds and has really lightened the whole space up- and all done in a couple of hours. This is my kind of makeover...

BEFORE:

AFTER:
We took the slat door off the end cupboard to create a magical little cubby hole for some knickknacks...

This is some of my Jessie Tait crockery- I am a little bit addicted to its loveliness- and you can find bits everywhere. This makes me a collector, eh?

The distressed look on the cupboards was done with just a lick or two of white paint, then I just took some sand paper to the edges and corners to pull out some of those nice curves. I'd wear gloves in the future though...

Sadly not many of the other rooms are going to have this fast a turn around, we have to, like, strip wall paper, and plaster up wonky bits and stuff like that. Bummer eh. I'm all about quick fixes/ botch jobs. He he.

Three little birds sat by my doorstep

A month ago I heard about an art exhibition being held at my work's atrium, for employees to display their artsy skills to their colleagues. How fabulous, Count me in with bells on. I am really rubbish at getting on with my crafty shenanigans when I'm purposeless, but when there is a "thing" like this I get a huge surge of juicy energy.

Over the last year I have found a proper love for collage on old wood. I used to live with a crowd of people in a big old house in Oxford Circus that had an attic full of old rotting wooden planks. (We had to move out because of fire issues but we still sort of commune there a bit.) When I decided to display at Art Week I clambered up to the attic to choose a few choice cuts but to my dismay saw that I had used up the stores!

I did manage to forage some white tiles though and have tried to do something a little similar...

They are based on the Bob Marley tune about three little birds telling him not to worry but to be happy. I think there is some potential, but do miss the multi-layered look that I can normally create on wood because you have more space. You have to be a bit more deliberate with these tiny tiles. I'm also a bit cross about the varnish yellowing. I am a big fan of varnishing, it gives papery things their mojo, kind of like how laminating did in the early 2000's. But tiles are much less forgiving then wood when it goes wrong. (Husband Tim had to take charge of the varnishing so as to not intoxicate our unborn!)



This is the first stage- tiles, gel pens, old magazine paper, scissors and glue!



Second stage avec old sewing pattern paper (love this stuff) and bits of cotton threads.


This is them pimped with varnish so the sewing paper goes see through but still adding texture, and mounted on wood. Not too happy with the finished result but feel like there is some future between me and white tiles.