The Road to Recovery.

It seems like I haven't blogged for ages, I've not been feeling to well over the last week or so and to me time seems to move really slow or really fast when I'm ill.This bug seems to be taking ages to shift but everyday seems to be over before I've got all my jobs done. This may be due to the fact that I seem to be on go slow mode as doing anything at high speed makes me nauseous and out of breath (just a virus don't worry!) These past few weeks I've had a few projects for other people to get through and I will share those with you at another time. I don't like to work on other folks projects when I can't give it 100% and feeling less than 100% ment not much work got done on these.

On the few days that I felt good enough to be working I did get a couple of jobs done . Just a quick run through.

Above is a picture of a mirror that a beautiful friend of mine gave me. This thing is huge and started life as a dressing room mirror at the Mango store in Saarbruchen. Mango were having a refurbishment and 'superwoman' ( see this post to learn about  Superwoman ,you will need to read to the end of the post to find her) managed to buy a whole shops worth of changing room mirrors!

My industrial sized mirror had a coat of Annie Sloan 'old white' and then a coat of 'Louis Blue' and then some harsh sanding.

The reflection of the rag lampshade that I made looks really nice when all lit up at night.

Our church is planning a coffee morning to raise some funds this weekend so i've been making a few last minute Mothersday gifts to sell. This is how they started out.

And this is how they look now.

Have just laundered the slipcover on the couch in our kitchen and have decided that I may have ago at making a new cover for it! Wish me luck with that!!

God Bless You xx

Vintage Aprons.

Spent the day today running between Pinterest and making aprons! Really need to get a grip on the whole pinterest addiction, you know its bad when you look at your most recent pinning session and it tells you that you pinned 1 hour ago, 2 hours ago and 3hours ago!!! 

There was a 75minute telephone conversation that went on somewhere in between all that pinning and laundry was done too. Have I managed to justify it yet! I don't think so!!

Eventually got round to my task for the day which was to make some aprons for the Shambags new line of  vintage home linens. They won't be for sale for a while yet as we are hoping to do some work on the site and come back all new and revived with not only tote bags but aprons,table runners,tea cosies and some fabric gift items. This does however mean that I need to spend more time in front of the sewing machine and not the computer.

Here are the first line of Aprons.  As they are made with original vintage fabrics they will be a limited amount made and once they have gone then they have gone.

Half Apron with a single pocket with frill.

As this fabric was quiet busy I didn't want to add to many frills.

Full Apron with extra wide waist straps.

Wide waist straps always make for a good solid bow.

A close up so you can  see how vibrant the colours are.

This would look fab in a traditional kitchen or look equally as good in a modern turquoise colour scheme ( all the rage on pinterest).

More apron making tomorrow.

God Bless You.xx

Another party invite over at Nuthatch!

Joining in with another Party today.  http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/2012/02/inspiration-around-blogland-welcome-to.html

Link parties.

My first time at link parties

Furniture feature Friday

and

Show and Tell Friday

Hope you enjoy looking at all the other blogs aswell.

God bless you.xx



Job Done!

Finally we have all the painting work done. Jasmine and I managed to get the stairs and landing done in one afternoon and without to many hiccups ( sorry Mr J there are a few blue spots on the carpet! Have you found them yet?).

The stairway has quiet a high ceiling and usually Mr J gets the big folding ladder/ scaffolding thingy out and does that bit but as he was away working Jasmine and I would have to come up with another way of getting to the high places. I was not willing to climb on the ladder and Jasmine just wasn't willing to fetch the ladder!

As you can see the professional decorators we are we always make sure things get covered and protected, NOT!

A nice close up of the 'Shepherd' cross stitch I did many years ago.

Now valspar being the generous paint company that they are (note free  stirring stick in last blog post) leave a little area on the lid of the paint can for you to put a little dab of paint on so you know what colour paint is in your can. As you can see we won't be needing this free gift from valspar,think we will be able to tell what colour is in the can.  thanks for the thought though.

Now back to those high places. We came up with the genius idea that if we frog taped the cutting in brush to the end of the broom handle we may be able to reach the coving at the top of the stair. This worked , not the best cutting in I've done but i will probably be the only one that ever notices it. Although all that visit after reading this are now going to be looking! After the cutting in we just attached the roller to the broom handle and we had the job done. Women's logic, no messing for ages getting the folding ladder thingy at the right angles and heights and then still having to stretch to get to the top.

Blinds back up and pictures back in place and everything just looks a lot fresher and ready for spring.

Oh silly me mentioning spring! This was how our journey to school looked last Friday. Beautiful while it lasted. Although I am now looking forward to those first days of spring when I can hang my washing out on the washing line.

Since we had a new colour on the walls in the entryway I felt we could do with an update on some of the pictures. Had seen a few ideas on pinterest that I thought I could make so printed out some word art but wasn't happy with them being printed on just plain coloured card and thought about printing them onto patterned scrap booking papers. only wanted to print a couple of picture so didn't really want to travel all the way to swindon to hobbycraft to get paper so thought I'd try printing on wallpaper. Now in England DIY stores allow you to take up to 1m of wallpaper for free to try at home to see if you like it before you commit to buying rolls of paper. Off to local DIY store to find some paper samples and came away with two samples of damask patterned paper one was a flat shiny paper and the other a raised flock paper. Had no idea if this would work but it was free so no harm in trying.

Cut the papers down to A4 size and into the printer they went. This was the flocked paper and a free printable from  http://eighteen25.blogspot.com/2011/05/filler-print.html

Sorry about the picture quality on this one. This was the shiny damask which you can see through each of the letters. This was a free printable from 

http://weheartit.com/entry/8765214 .
Wall painting has finished at Nuthatch for a while I think but furniture painting will be next on the agenda.

God Bless You. xx

1 Roller,1Brush and 2 Women!

I know I know we all thought the painting jobs were over! Since Jasmine is home from Uni I thought best use the opportunity and get a big job done.

 Our hallway and landings were all painted about 2 years ago and since we now have a dog they were looking a bit sorry for themselves, there's only so many times you can use the magic sponge on your walls before it starts to take the paint off.

Before

The colour was Farrow and Balls day room yellow. I loved the colour but it turns out that yellow is an acquired taste and not many people have quite acquired it yet.

When I decide to do a job I jump in with both feet, as you can see here no painting pieces of paper and looking at them for a week to decide what colour we want! Straight onto the wall with the testers. we tried Dulux 'First Dawn' and 'Mineral Mist'. Jasmine preferred the darker first dawn and Ariane like the lighter mineral mist. It then transpired that Aynsley liked Day room yellow!!!

Left them overnight to completely dry and decided that Mineral mist was the one we were going to go for.

Off I go to B&Q in Swindon to purchase said paint only to find they have started to do a full range of Valspar paint. Now being a blogger and a pinterest  and  Houzz addict I 'd heard a lot about Valspar and how good it was supposed to be. So once again jumped in with both feet and without even buying a tester decided I liked 'Merry England' so went ahead and bought a 5l can.

Only a little more expensive than Dulux but worth it just for the fact that you got your little stirring stick to go with it!

Knew our shoe cabinet was not going to look its best against 'Merry England' walls so got Jasmine to work on that with a little Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in old white.

Before

After

Loving the Merry England colour and how the shoe cabinet turned out. Great Job Jasmine.

Will be looking for some new handles for the cabinet as these really aren't in keeping with the look. Along with new light fitments to. Looking for small chandies I think.

From Yellow to blue in one afternoon.

The above picture really shows how random the camera I use is, no photo shop tricks here this is how the camera pick up the light in the shot. Pink,green and blue all in one shot. Random!

This is more of a true colour of the walls

Just the stairs and upstairs landings to paint tomorrow. Then maybe I can get my stairs gallery hung.

Of course Bonnie helped! Where from and how she got paint all over her muzzle I do not know!

God Bless You. xx

Paint Job 2

As mentioned in the previous post I was off to paint the family bathroom. Nothing to challenging there, I do all the decorating over at Nuthatch so a couple of hours and the job should be done, so I thought!!

Before.

Builders Magnolia.

This was the first shock of the day. Now I know you should never judge a can of paint by the colour swatch on the front of the can but this is what we did when we chose this colour. I was not really expecting this when I took the lid off. Very very dark. The accessories in this room are either dusky or dark purple hence why we chose this colour,but was looking for more of a dusky than a dark paint.

Still not sure about it when I did the first bit of painting either.

 Now normally I do all the cutting in meticulously by hand but having already painted a room the day before and working on my own today I knew that I was not going to have the strength in my right arm to get the straight lines that were needed for hand cutting in so decided to use some Frog Tape to get the super straight edges.  Now this stuff if amazing, you never get paint seapage under the tape so always get good crisp lines. I usually use it when I'm spraying frames (and can't be bothered with removing the pictures, lazy I know).  Well I happily taped up and set to painting.  Disaster strikes!!!

Note to self always fully read the labels on new products you are using!!! DO NOT put frog tape on your wallpaper as this is what will happen. Oh yes I had a fantastically straight cutting in line but as I ripped off the frog tape it took half a sheet of wallpaper with it. No going back or repairing that as we had only bought one roll of the paper so off it all had to come.

This is the first New build house that I have ever lived in so decorating techniques seem to be a little different than in older houses. When stripping wallpaper in other homes I've never had to worry about the plasterboard getting soaked or about gouging huge ravines in the plaster with the wallpaper removing tool. Obviously you wet the paper to remove it but this just seemed to also wet the plasterboard and any heavy handedness with the tool seemed to leave deep tracks wherever it went.  Mr J is going to freak when he sees this.  Anyhow a couple of hours of meticulously stripping paper and this is what I was left with. Some of the marks in the picture are water drips  and some are deep wounds!

After.

About eight hours after starting the job I got it finished . Once again the children didn't get fed till very late in the evening  and I'm still not sure if I even like the colour. Can't decide if the colour reminds me of a bedroom I had as a child back in the seventies or if it just looks like a changing rooms 1990 colour or if in fact it is a lovely colour that completely changes the room and I just need to get used to it. 

 Ariane thinks it lovely and was very impressed with the make do piece of art I made for over the bath  from some coloured card, some scrapbooking papers and a frame that has yet to be used in the gallery area that I have planned for our stairway. Since this area had a patterned wallpaper on it before it looked very bare as a solid colour so I needed to get something on there. Have an idea for making a word canvas so I can still use the frame in the gallery area. 

 Must add sort gallery area to my ever growing list of things to get done around the house.

 Two jobs ticked off the list one job added.

Typical! 

God Bless You.xx

Paint Job 1

This weeks jobs around the house included painting the bathrooms. Jasmines bathroom had been painted just before Christmas but the other two hadn't been painted since we moved in so were still builders magnolia.

Before.

We always seem to have an abundance of half used cans of paint in the garage so i knew we could mix a colour up to get our en suite done.  Our bedroom is painted in Farrow and Balls 'stoney ground' and I knew we had some of that left over so planned on using that. When I looked inside the can there was less than half left so knew I would have to mix it. As stoney ground is quite a dark colour this would not be a problem as I planned to mix with some white and this only slightly lightened it as you can see in the above picture. Unmixed paint above the door ,lightened paint on the side.

After.

The job took a little longer than anticipated as after mixing the paint I realised that the white paint had lots of little lumps of paint in. No matter how much I mixed the lumps would not disappear so it was a case of picking all the lumps of paint off the wall as they were rollered on!!!! There was no way that I was going to waste Farrow and ball paint!! 

Paint job 1 complete ,today's paint job is the family bathroom. While Mr J and I were at the DIY store yesterday to pick up a new roller we noticed that some of the paints were on offer. Brilliant this meant that I could get both paint jobs done in one week.  I wasn't quite sure what colour I wanted to do the family bathroom so it was nice to get Mt J's opinion . Mr J is very good and leaves all the decorating choices to me. Although he has said NO black wallpaper in the downstairs WC!! We have been looking at show homes over the last week or so and I saw this fantastic black bathroom in one of them .  However I do agree that it would not really look right with the rest of the decor in our house. 

This was the colour we chose for the family bathroom. Off to don my painting attire and get the job started.

God Bless You.xx