One of my projects last week was to make new a very tatty lampshade.
I have a collection of used stamps and I have loads that I have accumulated that are no use in my collection, so the new project began.
After the laborious job of soaking the stamps of the paper of the envelopes, it was a fun and satisfying thing to do.
What do you think?
Now for the job of restoring the lamp base! 🙂
I Hope you all had a fabulous Christmas, we did. We spend the last few days doing some home improvements which were long over due.
Improving our working environment started in October and then came to a halt because of work commitments, so it was all hands on deck to finish what we had started!
We had these shelves made from shelving we bought with us from our old house, so we decided to re-use it to save money.
They are so fab!
Over the fire place we’ve hung some outsider art bought from Barrington Farm which is a centre for adults with learning difficulties here in Norfolk.
We now have a comfortable and improved working environment that we are happy with! 🙂
Wishing you all a very happy and simple New Year 🙂
You might remember me posting about buying this lamp for 50p in a post entitled ‘Fakenham market finds’ a while ago.
Well, I’ve been determined to do something with the shade for a while and I finally got out my art pens and did something this week.
I am very pleased with how it turned out! 🙂
We’ve been quite busy over the last week, one of the things we’ve been doing is decorating the upstairs guest toilet. As you may well know, decorating is not always easy on a budget, but this is how we did it.
1.5ltr of Dulux paint in ‘Mojito’ £14.50 for the walls.
Left over Focus Satin wood in ‘icing sugar for the shelf which was amongst discarded stuff in the garage and left over matt emulsion in ‘icing sugar’ for the ceiling.
The curtain is a single sixties bed sheet I bought from a charity shop because I liked the pattern. (which I’ve had for ages) We used a curtain pole we took from another room which is now going to have a blind and we already had some curtain clips which I bought from Fakenham market a couple of years ago.
The mirror was already in the toilet and the soap dish was bought from Fakenham market for £4.50.
The carpet was given to us by my Dad and his wife (left over from doing their stairs) and the carpet tape cost us £4.50.
We used some of my own artwork to finish it off.
So to decorate our now beautiful guest toilet we spent a total of £23.50
We have been decorating the kitchen, and I do like open shelves to have nice things displayed on them. I have one over the place where we make tha tea and have some teas displayed on it and our frequently used mugs. These shelves were on the wall when we arrive at the house and are from one of those packs you make up yourself, they were useful but certainly not decorative. We have painted our walls pale duck egg (a Homebase colour) and I have decorated my shelves to complement the new decour.
We took the shelfs off the wall and I painted them with the emusion we painted the walls with, not in the rule books but doest cost anything and looks good. I did use a base coat first of ordinary white emulsion to help the coverage. Then as you can see below I had a bit of a play around with my acylic paints to work out the colours I might like to use for the design I wanted to put on them. If you don’t have acylic paint it’s very cheap to buy or use craft paint. Use the same paints to put the pattern on the shelves aswell.
This is a close up of the pattern I chose to do, I wanted something very simple. If your not confident in designing a pattern of your own, look through some magazines for something you can copy.
This is what the completed shelves look like. I am so pleased with them, it’s definately a worthwhile transformation!
What do you think?
An Artist's House 
