Travel post: Italian vintage in wonderful Tuscany

I was lucky enough to spend all of last week on holiday in beautiful Tuscany, Italy. If you've ever been there you will know how the area is steeped in history. Cities like Florence and Siena are like fabulous outdoor museums with churches and 'palazzos' around every corner (as well as gelaterias and equally mouth-watering bag and shoe shops).

I didn't have much time for treasure hunting (too busy eating, drinking and catching up with my mum and sister who joined us on the trip!), but did find a great little shop in sunny Siena I wanted to tell you about: Aloe & Wolf.

Hidden away in one of the charming side streets off Piazza del Campo, this little vintage shop is packed with the most fabulous treasures from the 50s, 60s and 70s - although mostly clothing rather than home decor. I am not a great vintage fashionista (I often find the clothes are sort of just not 'it'), but I tell you, Italian vintage clothing is something else! Glamourous, well fitting and great-looking.

The shop also sells handmade, 'upcycled' designer bags by 2Periodico, a lady in Rome, and guess what: I bought one. Re-using pages out of vintage fashion magazines, covering them with plastic and combining them with recycled pieces of soft Italian leather, these funky bags were just to much of a temptation...

If you need a great place to stay in Tuscany, I can thoroughly recommend Borgo San Benedetto, a country resort, hidden away to ensure rest and relaxation, but well placed between all the big and small tourist spots too. Lovely apartments, bed and breakfast, pool and a fabulous restaurant on site too. And yes, that cute guy on their homepage is real - I've seen him with my own two eyes ;-).

Borgo San Benedetto, apartments

Here are some other impressions of my lovely week.

Duomo, Siena

Piazza del Campo, Siena

Picturesque street in Siena

The yummy 'Panforte' cake

Palazzo del Campo, Siena

Me doing the relaxation part

Where East meets West...vintage kimonos and upcycled jeans

Today I had the luxury of a whole afternoon to myself, as hubby took baby out shopping, leaving the house in peace and quiet. Bliss! I took the opportunity to get the sewing machine out and decided to start a new series of patchwork pillows, as I needed to produce some more for my online shop. I have now created some with unusual fabric combinations; how about vintage kimono fabric and an old pair of jeans? Or denim, retro fabric and velvet? I even managed to include the back pocket of the jeans, making it a handy pillow to store your remote control ;-)

They're all for sale in my Etsy shop. 
Have a look! x

 

Feeling creative: pom poms, t-shirt yarn and a hula hoop rug

It must be that nesting instinct setting in now I'm about seven months pregnant, but I can't help feeling the incredible urge to make things. Sew, paint, recycle, upcycle, revamp, refurbish, you name it. I am still working my day job though, so I am just collecting lots of ideas in the meantime while still doing the 9-to-5!

Here are a few great ideas you may want to try yourself, whether expecting a baby like me, having a day off or looking for stuff to do with the kids in the holidays.

To cheer up any party or kids room, you could make a pom pom garland. Remember those? We used to make them in primary school all the time. Now it's time for the grown-up version! If a garland looks more like a week's work than something you're able to do in an afternoon, why not keep it simple and make a few to dispense from the ceiling? If you're really lazy you can of course just buy them from other creatives down at Etsy.

This tutorial from Craftaholics Anonymous (great name!) shows you how to make fluffy pom poms made from t-shirt yarn (you know, 'wool' made from old tees - see how to make your own yarn here). Very nice.

Another cool looking project is the 'hula hoop rug', woven from t-shirt yarn. I'd love to give this a try. Looks pretty easy, no? I am crazy about those chunky knitted rugs and poufs at the moment, but I have no idea how to knit them. This seems to be an easy way to create something similar. Not sure about the bold colours in the one pictured, but I'm sure you could turn it into something quite sophisticated by using greys, deep purples or reds instead. Here's the How-To

familyfun.go.com

Making a coat rack out of a wood pallet and some doilie DIY

I absolutely LOVE this. Doilies, those things your granny probably has millions of lying in her drawers, can be used in far more creative ways than as coasters or table cloths. Turn them into a gorgeous lamp shade! Visit the lovely Swedish blog www.dosfamily.com for the full How-To.

Then another wonderful, and quite simple, project you could finish on a Saturday: a coat rack made out of an old pallet. Give it a lick of paint, screw in a few hooks and - voila! Great idea. For the How-To (do you need one?) visit www.shelterness.com

Meet Peapod, Aberdeen's brand new upcycled furniture shop

Living in the North East of Scotland, I am missing independent, creative and inspiring shops, mainly in the furniture department. I clearly wasn't the only one. Two weeks ago Claire Milne, a mother of one (and another one on the way!), opened up her brand new shop 'Peapod' in Aberdeen, dedicated to giving used and unloved pieces of furniture a new life by lovingly restoring them, painting them and giving them a whole new 'funky' look. I headed down to meet with her.

"I just felt it was time to do something different in my life", says Claire, "after having been a fulltime mum for over a year. Opening up my own business felt like the right thing to do, doing what I love doing and being able to fit it around my family as well." When a competition called Retail Rocks sprung up earlier this year, offering a number of entrepreneurs the chance to start up their business in rent-free premises for a year, Claire grabbed the opportunity. She is now one of the winners, trying to breathe new life into Aberdeen's old neighbourhood of Torry, alongside a jewellery designer, a gallery, a hot dog cafe and a photo studio.

Peapod has a real vintage and romantic feel to it, with its pink painted walls, pastel coloured chairs, dresser and wardrobe and colourful bunting in the window. There are also plenty of pieces of furniture still in their original, shabby state, waiting for their turn to be done up. "We would like to give customers the freedom of telling us what colour and design they would like the furniture to be in", explains Claire. " They may be looking for something in particular, so we source it and we can then give it any look they wish." Claire tells me about the basement of the shop that is full of gorgeous, old furniture and there's even more. "There's loads at my parents' house, even their summer house in the garden is piled full of stuff!"
Other than just giving furniture a fresh lick of paint, Claire also has a love for the decoupage technique, which she applied to one of the chairs on the shop floor, covered in old comic book pictures. As I came in today, Claire was just busy doing another one, reusing sheet music from an old Beatles book. Great idea!

Claire has got help from her dad, a joiner ("my dad makes sure wonky chairs are safe to sit on again!"), and her husband, who is self-employed and is currently building an online shop for the Peapod business. And now, in addition to a lovely shop just been born, Claire is going to have a second baby in November. "It's going to be one busy year!" Claire laughs, "we'll just see how things go and make the best of it". I have much admiration for this busy bee and hope she'll do really well, adding a much needed touch of originality and a splash of paint to the grey city of Aberdeen.
If you're in the area, go and have a look. Or even better, finally get that unique and eclectic statement sideboard, chair or wardrobe you've been looking for for ages.

Peapod
28 Menzies Road, AB25 1SL Aberdeen, UK
peapodaberdeen@gmail.com
Peapod on Facebook

Restyled, re-worked, updated and saved from the trash: vintage sideboards

I love sideboards from the 1950s and 60s. Sleek, timeless and very stylish. They are often great as they are, given some TLC and a dash of Danish oil, but are sometimes even better with some creative adjustments. Caroline Key owns Trash Furnishing in Edinburgh and creates a unique collection of bespoke up-cycled furniture. She restores and re-works furniture and brings the pieces up-to-date with stencils or some paint. I love the way she turns a simple cupboard into something totally unique.

Another company who does this sort of work is a little bit further away from where I live, but anyone reading this living in Australia is lucky. These sleek and funky sideboards are restyled and sold by Retromodern in Adelaide. Totally customisable to your taste and very cool looking.

Have you ever saved a sideboard or other piece of furniture from the trash and restyled it?

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Repurposing furniture and other things

Hello everyone! It’s January 2011 and as most of us are broke after the December month I thought I write a post about repurposing or altering things you already own or can find for little money.

Looking at the overload of TV commercials from the home superstores it seems that the nation is obsessed with getting new furniture, buying new kitchens and bathrooms and basically getting their whole house done for springtime. I can't help but think people must still all want to keep up with the Joneses and subsequently put themselves into debt as a result, despite the difficult economic times we're in. Anyway, how about we don’t buy all those expensive new things but instead look at what we already own or can find for free or little money and how we can give it a new life?

This is a vintage sofa my mum once rescued from the marriage resistry office at the local Town Hall in Emmen, The Netherlands. Although not repurposed by physically changing it, I gave it a new purpose by placing it in my student room, and later moved it to my first apartment. When I moved again and the sofa turned out to be too large, I had it "adopted" by my good friend Mieke in Utrecht, who now loves it. Schools, local authority buildings and other offices sometimes get rid of furniture, shelving units and desks. Worth keeping an eye out for them...



I got inspired by this post on the Daily What and really wanted to share this with you. "The amazing transformed oven lounge". Not something you would DIY on a Saturday, but what a great idea!




I also came across this - I must admit slightly silly - idea of repurposing a water wing via Apartment Therapy. Still, it's very original!



Has anyone ever looked at the Ikea Hacker site? It's brilliant how people take a run-of-the-mill Ikea item and just make it into something else. Now this Billy bookcase is still a Billy bookcase, except the owner has 'hacked' it by turned it on its side and mounting it onto the wall making it 'float'. Cool!





Fruit crates are very versatile to reuse in the home. Here they've been mounted onto the kitchen wall to be used as open shelving, looking very nice. Found it on the great blog Poetic Home.




Another amazing project featured on Poetic Home is this huge desk made from repurposed books, created by Architectural students at Delft University of Technology. Could you imagine something similar for your own home in the shape of a smaller desk or coffee table?

My car (a lovely old Mazda Mx5 with pop-up head lights) had to go for its MOT today and failed on a rusty bottom (ooh, that doesn't sound right, does it, haha). We're getting it repaired - once again - but if ever it had to die, I would like it to be turned into a sofa, like Bel & Bel have done with a Seat 600. What a cracker.

I drive one in black - such a cool little car

What have you given a new life?

What to do with your old records? Make them into a roof!

Full article on www.dornob.com

How to make a wreath out of an old book

I came across this creative idea of recycling an old book on The Happy Home Blog and loved it. (Although I always have trouble getting rid of any of my books!). If you haven't got any books you want to use, go and pick one in the charity shop - plenty there!

Click here for the full How-To

Making furniture out of old pallets

Image: Ana White

I am a big fan of recycling, or in other words, making sure that something doesn't end up in the skip. I love seeing old wood being reused and the crates made by Ana Whyte are a beautiful example of this. She has the complete How-To on her website, so do have a look if you want to do this yourself.

The next example from www.folksy.com I really like, but... £180 for coffee table made from a reclaimed old pallet? (For US-based readers, that's $288 - yes, you are reading that correctly!). It doesn't look that difficult to screw four wheels under a pallet, give the thing a good varnish and get a cut-to-size piece of glass to put on top of it, does it? Although, glass can be expensive...maybe that's what has put the price up... ;-)

Image: mobius-living.co.uk

Hold on, I just came across this Studio5 website with some tutorials on it... Time to save some money, folks! Tutorial: How to make a coffee table out of a pallet

And another great looking coffee table here... And you know what? I've got the tutorial here just for you: pallet coffee table tutorial

You may be charging £180 for your own home-made creations soon!

This design is very nice too, an ottoman designed by BCK design from Canada. Looks very contemporary, beautiful and functional at the same time.

Image: Designspotter.com

The lovely Recicla e Decora blog also shows a great number of recycled pallet projects (although I can't understand the Portuguese text - I always enjoy the pictures!). What about this shoe rack...? I know, a bit basic...but an original idea.

Image: recicla e decora

One of my favourites is this rustic bench and a similar one was shown in the BBC gardening programme Gardeners World last Summer. I'm pleased to say there's a video tutorial for it on the BBC website. It's not the most glamorous looking thing, but hey, it's a pallet - what do you expect!

Image: treesandthings via GrowsonYou

Pallets are not just great for making tables and benches, London based Studiomama also makes lamps out of them.

Image: studiomama

That's it for today! But if you still can't get enough of pallets and the magic you can create with them, go and have a look on www.greenupgrader.com, for many more ideas and "The 8 best resources for Building with Pallets".

Time to dive into the skip, I think, and find some old planks...

Recycling vintage maps into notebooks, cufflinks and lampshades

What do you do with maps when they're worn, torn or out of date? Plenty of inspiration can be found on Etsy. I love Etsy and have bought many beautiful hand-made jewelry on there as well as a super cool guitar strap made out of an old tie. Why buy from the high street when you can buy from creative individuals around the globe making beautiful items just for you? Often items arrive with personal thank you cards and wrapped as gifts and you almost feel as if you've made a new friend somewhere in the world.

MrYen's notebook on Etsy

Today Etsy featured this gorgeous notebook made out of recycled maps and it's just beautiful. It really makes you want to start doing some serious travel-writing.

Cufflinks by WhiteDoveJewelry on Etsy

Vintage maps also have something romantic and poetic about them, don't you think? The fact that someone has used them to travel somewhere, the history of this person and the places on the map, the story of the journey.

I bought my husband a set of custom-made cufflinks for Christmas last year, with on one a map of where we met (The Hague) and on the other a map of where we were getting married (Greece). He wore them on our wedding last May.

Envelopes by PaperRoute

For those of you who still write real letters and have not gone totally digital, there's also a great set of envelopes made from maps.

Bunting by MonkeyPuzzle

Or what about some vintage map bunting?

Coasters by Susweedesigns

I could go on and on (is it me or does Etsy just seem to get bigger everyday?), but to finish it off... some coasters and a lovely set of wooden bowls.

Bowls by YanniCreations

Make your own lampshade!

Now to get those creative juices flowing... how to make a lampshade out of a vintage map! Chez Larsson has a great how-to on her blog.

You could start selling them on Etsy of course, but if you are going to give them away as a present, at least make sure they are offered in a matching gift bag! Have fun!  DIY gift bags