I love copper – I used copper pipe in my kitchen and I have edged the shelves in this cupboard / dresser with copper tape. .
The cupboard is in a corner of the living room so I removed the door, widened the shelves and have placed the table in front of it and will use it as a dresser.
The tape is actual copper with a sticky back. It is actually sold for gardeners to use in keeping slugs away from plants. Seemingly slugs will not walk over copper because the chemicals they extrude react with copper to give a slight electric shock, enough to keep the slugs at bay. It comes in a roll like any other tape.
And the fruit bowl that is prominent on the shelves – it belonged to my Grandmother. My Dad says that he and his siblings gave it to their Mum on her birthday when objects made from clear plastic where first available and fashionable. Which makes it older than I am by at least 10 years. It sat on my Grandmother’s sideboard, full of fruit, all the time I was growing up. It was an obvious item for me to ask for when my grandparents house was being distributed.
while looking for large wall decal I came across a number that are ‘blackboards’. The inverted commas are because they now seem to be called ‘wet wipe’ boards and you can buy pens to use instead of chalk.
These two etsy shops caught my eye
Signs by SJ has perpetual calendars and also labels for boxes etc
Bradens Grace has notice boards in various shapes as well as labels
by Simple Shapes, and they do a perpetual calendar too
And my last word on decals {for now} I love these by Ellynelly
but they are not making any at the moment while they move to Australia.
I think I need more walls so that I can use all of these decals as well as having furniture and art against walls.
Having shared the dandelion and urbanesque decals in my shortlist here are the trees that caught my eye to bring some oomph to my white bathroom. All of them allow choice of colour. [click image for link]
Way too many on this shortlist. Next I need to map out what else will be on that wall and how each shape will fit in the space. All of these have sizes in feet and inches which I can’t visualise so I also need to convert them to metric – all good brain gym.
I’m realising that decorating the house means a lot of time scouring through brochures and websites looking for the thing that I want or that grabs me.
I’ve also realised that some aspects of house decoration leave me cold. Really I cannot get excited about bathroom ‘furniture’ – as long as the basin, toilet and shower work then I’m happy. Perhaps part of the problem is that it is all white and I just do not get excited by white.
So I decided to liven up the bathroom by putting a large decal on one of the empty walls. Which meant several hours browsing various etsy shops and looking at an amazing range of ideas.
My favourites fall into three groups – trees; dandelion; urban [click image for link]
today I’m sharing the dandelions and the urban ones –
hard enough choosing between these – wait til you see the trees in the next post!
yes even though there is more than six months of this year left, I know what my main memorykeeping project will be next year. As soon as I saw the new ‘the monthly’ layered templates from Cathy Zielske (sold at Designer Digitals) I knew this was what I would use next year, and probably several years after – it answered questions I didn’t know I’d been asking.
Her concept is a set of page photo mosaic templates and one page for lots of journaling. I will create one each month and print the whole year as a photobook I tried it out for May to see how I felt using it – I felt good. (the pattern papers are by Cuddlebeez).
I love the design – I love everything Cathy Z – she is why I got into scrapbooking in 2006.
I like that each month I can choose how many pages I need for that month and that I can have one page covering two days and other pages cover several weeks.
I like that the scheme can incorporate 12 on the 12th or week in the life etc.
I like that I have a basic plan for recording the memories of the year that allows for some creative choice.
I will probably write on some of the photos, because I life the look.
I will use scrapbooking pages and minibooks too to record specific things and to allow for creative play.
One of the books in our Boxing Day bookpile was “The Book of Idle Pleasures” – descried on the back as “The book lists and reflects on 75 simple pastimes and proves that the best things in life really are free: lighting fires, skimming stones, catching falling leaves, whittling, staring out of the window, dreaming, doodling or taking a nap. "The Book of Idle Pleasures" is a celebration of pleasure for its own sake in a world of consumer overload.”
Each idea has a double spread with a lovely drawn illustration.
As soon as I saw it I thought “minialbum”. No specific ideas or format but I like the idea of focusing on those simple things that make me happy and don't cost much. I was dipping into it again at the weekend and thinking about which I agree with (dancing; slippers; popping bubblewrap) and which others I would add (laughing; paddling in the sea; markets; rainbows, cutting and gluing coloured card).
A mini-album with a photo on each page and short handwritten journaling would work well I think, probably no more than 20 items. I will keep the idea percolating.
What would you have on your list?
Deb at purple turtle had a giveaway last week of her fabulous chalkboards and I won !!!!! I loved these blocks when Deb first blogged a picture of them. Of all the giveaways that I have entered recently this was the one that I most wanted to win.
I will be buying a house soon and had decided to include word art in the decor but had thought of too many words that I might use and now I can use them all. I believe Deb will be selling these chalkboards – I’ll keep you posted.
