Jute Twine Crochet Basket

If you're having a cottage stile Sunday breakfast here's a cute basket for you:

Or you might like this look:

First I made this little crochet basket. No specific pattern - you just want it to be a round piece. 

Then I mixed 1 part white glue with 2 parts water, soaked the piece in it. I took a pyrex bowl, turned it upside down and pressed the piece over it. When dried, it looks like this:

I really wanted to use this beautiful little swallow from The Graphics Fairy (find it here), so I made it a simple little tag which actually adds theme to this basket.

Unfortunately, my printer is is running out of ink, so my tag looks faded but, on the other hand, it should look perfect when i add a bunch of lavender to the whole thing.

Here are a couple of other exercises with the same basket:

My beach memories look so good in it :)

Not bad, but the decision is made: this is my 'Valentine's Basket'.

I wish you all heaps of love this year!

Love,

DK

Updated Brick-a-Brack

I'm sure one can find cheap little cuties like these in every home.

Yes, they are cute :) The problem is - they look kind of cheapy. Because they are cheap.

So what could I do? White can fix everything. Or almost everything.

So I painted my little birdies white. Then I gave them several coats of varnish.

Now when I've done it, I think I should have actually given them a nice solid color - terracotta maybe - and then just  white-wash them. That way I could have put the texture into good use instead of trying to cover it with varnish.

But they still look good, ha?

Love,

DK

Medicine Box

Here is my new medicine box.

Yes, I'm into boxing staff. Especially now, at the beginning of the year.
I bought two of these boxes at Bunnings for just a few dollars some time ago.

One will be my sewing box (soon).
For this one, I was going to make it simple - just white with the red cross on the lid, but who can resist all the great graphics from The Graphics Fairy?
So here we are... :)

OK, that's it for now. I'm off to do more boxing and I promise I won't stop until everything is organised.

Love,
DK

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Button Box

Finally I managed to steal some time and make this button box :)

I found this beautiful label at Graphics Fairy (I guess everybody knows lovely Karen who is so generous and shares her great work daily). The label was made by Cathe Holden at Just Something I Made using Karen's image. You can find the project here.
This reminded me of my Grandmother's button collection, started by her mother. My mom still has it - several precious boxes, but I moved to another continent a couple of years ago, so I had to start from nothing.
Anyway, I have started my own personal button collection with this box. I hope Mom will share with me too... :)

Love,
DK




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 My Romantic Home

 The Shabby Nest

My (Re)purposed Life

Merry Christmas

Happy Father's Day

To all Australians: Happy, happy Father's Day.
I hope everybody's having lots of fun.

Just days ago, we have lost a family member who was a father of four. We are all still coming to terms with what happened, so I almost totally missed on this holiday.

I was going to devote a post or two to it. Maybe next year.
I hope many fathers got their cufflinks with initials made with scrabble blocks or key chains with family pictures. Those seem to have been popular for some time now but I still find them great gifts for Dad.

There are so many great things we can say about fathers and their role in our lives. I wish I had my father with me for longer. He died many years ago, but I still think a lot about him and how much he influenced my personal development by just who he was.
Also, we should never forget that there are so many 'second fathers' on the world who embraced the role although we're not their children really.
God bless them all!

As a gift to all the fathers who have to exercise heaps of patience with growing children, here is one from Mark Twain:


When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Lampshade Decoration

Here is an excersize on lamshade decoration.

I've had this little lamp shade for several months (I got it for next to nothing at 'Bunnings'). I almost forgot I had it and then I found this simple, but beautiful lamp base at 'Reject Shop' in a basket with 'rejected stuf' for $7.5 :)

I love how these two guys fit together and, in fact, this is already a beutiful little lamp for me.
However, I'd like to give it some personality and make it more of 'my lamp'.
So I thought we could go for an excersize and think of a few things that could be added here. I decided I would use only material I already have at hand and here are the outcomes:

These are wooden buttons with floral prints.

This is a rose made from my son's old polo shirt. If I chose to use roses, I might make them smaller and glue them all around the shade.

Here I tried using shells - and loved it!

Raffia will always give a simple, warm and rustic look to everything. I like that very much, but this lamp base calls for shabby chic to me.

The twine was pre-cut already for another project, but I just wanted to show you what you can achieve with this inexpensive material.
You can always go and repeat along the top line the same (or similar) thing you did on the bottom line, but I wouldn't recommend adding embellishments only on the top (looks kind of heavy).

So, these are only some options I could go with for this particular lamp. For another lamp, I'd probably go with pearls, glass beads, lace... Always try more than one variant (make sure you use some kind of temporary fixing)
My choice will probably be this one:

It looks grat in my room. I'm tempted though to add a little something - if I go for it, I'll let you know :)

Have a great week!

Love,
DK

Sharing at: The Shabby Nest