More candlesticks

These candlesticks are really addictive so here are some more that I have made lately.
They will be decorating my staircase until they find new owners. (My wall is a work in progress, I want it filed with a lot of random stuff so that it becomes a collage)

One is in blue and white with an chinese theme.

This one is also in blue and white with a touch of greyish beige. 

This one is a little more colorful burgundy red and green with the white. 

I like this trio in my staircase so I don't mind if they dont sell :)

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.

Purses of reused material

Judging by the activity on my blog you might think not much creative work has been done by me lately. Luckily, that is not the case, I've just been to busy to get the things i have done online.

I'll start off by showing you some purses in various sizes suitable for many things.

 They are made for many different tings such as tablecloths, pillowcases, old tapestry, ribbons and more.The flat one has a strap that can be attached so that it can be used as a wrist clutch.

The two biggest ones are big enough to carry shampoo bottles and are lined with oilcloth so that they can be easily cleaned if something got spilled inside them. 

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

New dominos

These are my latest dominoes. All of them are already in my shop, but now they can be used both as a pendant and a key chain.

I have also been getting a lot of questions about where to get the supplies to make the cake-stands I showed you here and. So I have added the information for those that are interested.

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

Domino pendants

Christmas was very busy this year. I attended 5 Christmas fairs and even if it was a lot of fun it was a few to many. In preparation to these fairs I made a few new domino pendants. Some of them sold and the rest is going into my shop as soon as I have time to get individual photos of them.

Christmas cones

Its been a few busy weeks, but things are finally slowing down. I attended 4 Christmas fairs this year and one of them lasted for 5 days so I didn't have time to do much else.

Something that's both fun and easy to make are there cones. I prefer to make mine of fabric so that they'll last longer. I used some old christmas tablecloths with stains on them and combined that with some new fabrics. I cut the pieces out avoiding the stains, decorated some of them with lace and sew it all together. I tried finding a proper tutorial online to show you but the closest thing was this
Maybe I'll make one myself next year.

What was left after the markets I filled with candy and gave to friends and colleagues wishing them a happy Christmas. 

http://www.myrepurposedlife.net

Cartoon wallets

This year first fair is fast approaching and I have very few things left to sell so I feel a little stressed at the moment. 

 I decided to start by topping of my stock of cartoon wallets and first out is a very popular Norwegian cartoon, Nemi.  Combined with Calvin and Hobbes these wallets are always the first to go.

 I might be adding one or two to my Epla shop, but most of what I’ll be making the next month will go directly to one of the 5 fairs I have signed up for.

The wallet  is simmilat to the milk carton wallet you can see all over the net.Its big enough for you cards, has two rooms and closes with a push button.

http://www.myrepurposedlife.net

New pendants

It’s been a long time since I made some domino pendants but yesterday I was finally able to update my shops here and here.
All of my pendants are one of a kind. I use magazine clippings, scrapping paper, lace, rub ons, napkins and whatever else I can find to create these small unique collages

If you don’t live in Norway I recommend Pipler. There the prices are in $ and international postage has been added to the products. But I have to warn you, Norwegian postage prices are very high and so is the cost of supplies so I’m not able to compete with sellers that offer similar products on Etsy. (This is why I don’t have any products in my Etsy shop at the moment)

Later this week I’ll be adding these. They are made from a different type of game piece decorated with magazine clippings.

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/

http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

China plate clock

I’m continuing my task of repurposing old china. I got some clock movements in the post yesterday and even if I’m still waiting for the right drill bit I had to give it a try. I have a very nice plate that cannot be used in one of the cake stands because of a small chip in one of the corners. It’s from the 30s and I could not bring myself to cut it into jewelry so I decided to make a clock.

The drill bits that I use for the cake stands are 1-2 mm to small so it took me a long time to get the hole big enough (serves me right for not having the patience to wait for the right tools.) After that it was just to follow the instructions for the clock movements and put it all together. I am very happy with how it turned out and can’t wait to turn a few of my other plates into clocks as well

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/

http://www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Tea cup flowers

On one of my weekly trips to the local charity shop I came across a 6 sets of super cute tea cups with saucers. They are not old, but who can say no to roses and polka dots, so home with me they came.

Now what… I don’t like tea and I don’t drink coffee. So what else could I do but drill holes in the bottom and turn them into flower pots.

We have had some really strange weather this Easter. Snow and temperatures below 0c are strange even for Norway. But these cute little flower arrangements sure gave me a feeling of spring and a hope for warmer days to come.

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/

Rainbow colored storage

I really don’t like my hallway, and I haven’t liked if for as long as I have lived in this house.

I meant to paint it white many years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter. (Who will be 13 in a few months…)  I bought the paint and her father did the painting. What I didn’t know was that they had given me the wrong color, and my daughter’s dad just thought it was the way it was meant to be (He knew better than to argue with a pregnant woman :)

So for thirteen years I have lived with this horrible hallway and want nothing more than to do a proper makeover. But its small, cramp with a tilted ceiling, nocks and crannies and I don’t know enough about renovating to be able to pull it off by myself. So I have decided to go for the next best thing, camouflage. On one end I have started on a floor to ceiling picture wall that I’ll show when it has come a little further along.

But downstairs I decided to go for a mix match of colors. Just before Christmas I got some big cans form a very nice lady (thanks :) but had to wait for warmer weather before I could spray paint them. After the paint I drilled a hole in the bottom before screwing them up on the wall.

The picture next to them I made a few years ago by gluing one and one Hama bead onto wood. A very time consuming project (Which is why I only made this one) but I like it very much and think it goes well with my rainbow cans.

http://savvysouthernstyle.blogspot.com/

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