Candlesitcks from repurposed china

I dont have my own workwshop so I have to use my livingroom or kitchen when I have a project going. But my china jewelery created a lot of dust when I cut the plates so I need to be outside for that. Norway is either very cold or very wet during the winter months so no more jewelery will be made until spring. That made me thing if there were other ways to upcycle cina and in a way tht wasnt as messy. Then I remembered some candlesticks from Anthropologi that I saw a few years back. I googled a little and found the picture again.

Inspired by this I started by going on a treasure hunt at my lokal thrift shops.

Then I spent a lot of tme trying out different combinations and when that was done I had to assemble the whole thing. I realised that the candlestick would become very heavy so just gluing would not be enough. So off to my local hardware store I went to get a metal pole to put i the middle for stabilisation.

Then I had to drill holes trough all the parts, cut the matall to desired lenght and then finish off with some glue.

My first attemt looks like this:

Its 60 cm tall in white and silver. Sadly I realised that noe of the parts had a little crack in it after assembly so I will keep this candlestick for my self.

The next two are a little shorter and they were given away as christmas presents.

Repurposed ties

I've had some old and colerful ties laying around for ages. I have tried several things with them but nothing really worked befor I got my hands on some flex frames. They were just the right size so I could turn the ties into small coin purses.

I love the bold and colerful pattens from the 70s

But after making these purses I have learnt to love the less colerful and more tradidional brown stripes as well.

To open you just squeeze the two sides togheter.

Repurposed paint swaps

Last summer I had various paint projects around the hose, and projects like tat generate a lot of pain samples. They looked very decorative all piled up and colorful so I decided that i wanted to try to give them a new purpose.

To get some ideas I decided to look to google for inspiration. And to my surprise a lot of different ideas appeared.  I knew there were a lot of creative people out there but that one could do so many different things with those small bits of paper really surprised me.

I decided to make these small notebooks. They were really simle to make and I used recycled paper cut to size inside. (Bills and formal letters always have half a blank side that I cut of an collected for a while for this project.)
If I stamp my contact information on the back they can be given out as useful businesscards. 

 

Under you'll find a list of some of the things I found on my search. Click the images to go to the wanted page.

     

  

http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net
http://www.myrepurposedlife.com

Stool redo

Still in hospital, the needle in my arm has been replaced with a new one and all the bacterias in my body has been killed except for the ones actually making me sick. But it feels like things are changing so I’m hoping I’ll be able to go home soon.

The last of the projects from my “playing with colors” weekend is this stool. As I do with most of my projects, I forgot to take a before picture. But it had its original silver colored legs and the seat had some sort of fake fur on it. Not really ugly, but very, very boring.

I took some scraps of fabrics and sewed them together to make the seat cover. The legs I covered with strips of fabric that I just twirled around. That bit I was not too sure of so I just fastened the fabric with double sided tape. Think I’ll end up removing it ant spray paint the legs in pink or turquoise instead, but for now I’ll leave it to see if it grows on me.

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/

http://www.myrepurposedlife.net 

Cake stands

 I really like decorative ceramics plates so when I go to my local second hand shop I tend to bring one or more home with me. Some of them are in daily use as what they were intended to be used for but luckily we don’t break a lot of plates in this house, so my pile of plates that looks nice but are not needed keeps growing. So I decided to try to find new uses for them and so far they have become pendants, clocks and cake stands. Some of the cake stands were sold on a craft fair a few weeks ago, but the rest you can see here.

Drilling the holes was not easy, especially because the recommended drill bit that turns up when you google the topic is just crap. It’s shaped like an arrow and does only last for 2-3 holes so I started looking for something better. After searching for “diamond tip cake stand” this type of drill bit appeared:

It is more expensive, and at first, not easy to use, but after a few broken plates (that resulted in more jewelry that I will show you later) I got the hang of it. So now I have a life time supply of 2/3 tire cake stands that will go up for sale in my Epla and Pipler shop as soon as I get to take individual pictures of each one

My personal favorite was sold at the fair, but my second favorite is this stand of German flowery plates.

Probably because it reminds me of summer :)

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/
http://myrepurposedlife.net

More repurposed china

Yesterday I went for a browse in my local charity shops, and the cats of the day were these plates.  All different shapes and colors, but very decorative in their own way.

 If everything goes to plan they will be turned innto something like this.

And if they break during the drilling process they’ll become jewelry.
I got several question about what tools I use to cut the ceramics, so I thought I’d let you in on the “secret”. I use my beloved Dremel, with various diamond tip drill bits. It’s a messy and time consuming job best done outside (Important: use safety glasses) but I find the end result well worth it.

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/ http://www.sew-much-ado.com/  http://lilluna.com/  http://thetrendytreehouse.blogspot.com  http://www.gingersnapcrafts.com/  http://www.houseofhepworths.com  http://www.momontimeout.com  http://www.happyhourprojects.com/  http://sassysites.blogspot.com/  http://www.504main.com/  http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Ceramics pendants

I found this great plate from the 60/70s in my local secondhand store. I just loved the pattern but sadly, when I brought it home, it split in half.  I just could not bring myself to just throw it out so I decided to try to cut out the patterned pieces and make them into pattern. It was actually harder than it looked, but after a few trial and errors I got the hang of it. The result is these 6 pendants that will come with me to the spring market at Tou scene on the 11^th of Mars.

Wine crate shelves

Just before Christmas I got my hands on some wooden wine crates. They are brand new so the wood doesn’t have a nice aged patina, but I knew right away that I could turn them into a storage unit.  

I have an empty space (God forbid... right... :) in a corner behind the door that I have wanted to make into something useful for a long time and these crates were perfect. 

I played around a little before settling with the layout you see in the pictures.I didn’t want to paint the crates because I have a feeling that this corner won’t be their final resting place.

But because the wood was so new it needed“something” so I cut some scrapping paper to size and covered the back with that.

I didn’t have to buy anything to complete this project so I’m very happy to have new display shelves for free J

Denim covered stool

I bought this stool about a year ago because its feet match the feet of some fantastically comfortable 70s leather chairs I have.  I knew right away that I wanted to make a denim cover for it so I started sewing patches together in no particular order. You might think it should have been possible to finish this in a day, not difficult, not complicated, no reason for it to take any longer… right… oh how I wish it had been like that…

It was about 6 months from start to finish and I don’t even have a good excuse. But I guess the most important thing is that it actually got finished and that I now have a stool in my living room that I don’t embarrass me anymore J

It was about 6 months from start to finish and I don’t even have a good excuse. But I guess the most important thing is that it actually got finished and that I now have a stool in my living room that I don’t embarrass me anymore J

 

Lampeshade makeover

Beads, I have tons of beads and I don’t know why. Threading them has never been my thing, and if I need a necklace I’m more than happy to pay for one already made. But despite of this I have masses of beads in every color and shape available.

So, inspired by my resent wish to get rid of most of my fabric leftover pile, I decided that it would be a good thing to get these pearls out into the light (literarily)

A few years ago I covered a lampshade in old doilies. It’s been hanging in my living room since, but it never grew on me. So now it was time take it apart and start over.  

(For some reason it looks a lot better in this picture than it did when I sat on my sofa looking at it...)

What I did with the doilies you’ll see en my next post, but the lampshade was decorated with fabric scraps, beads, paper doves and other stuff I had laying around.

The idea for the project was found here

   



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