Lovely art with multi-flowered sheep

This is to get you in the mood for Easter! I love these limited edition silk screen prints, they're so cute. They are by a Scottish artist called David Blyth and the prints have been produced in Peacock Visual Arts' workshops in Aberdeen. He's made ten different, very colourful prints with sheep on it and they're also available on ceramic plates (so you can eat your lamb off a lamb ;-). The prints are around £400 each (dimensions 100mm wide x 700mm tall), the plates £50. If you want to see the rest of the prints, have a look here...

A table made of vintage plates

I came across this table from Imu Design, a so-called prototype named 'Plate U'... and isn't it brilliant? I mean, I'm not sure how practical it is (imagine having an animated gossipy chat with your best friend while holding a glass in your hand and then you decide to put down your glass on the table while keeping your eyes on your friend, not looking where the actual holes in the table are... that sort of thing), but it's cool. The frame is made of steel, the plates are "hand-picked" as the designers describe it themselves and I assume they found them in charity shops or on the local flea market.

Yes! More before and afters!

Dining room / kitchen


Before


After


Before


After (with steel handles, tile paint, retro tile stickers and a stick-on blackboard). Still the same kitchen, but we can live with it for now!

It was all very yellow - walls, curtains, tiles, kitchen - when we first moved in and that combined with dark stained wooden windows and doors was just not our cup of tea! Not surprisingly we also got rid of those silly lights dangling oddly from the ceiling (how naff is that?). We initially wanted to get a new kitchen straight away, but with a whole house that needed updating, we decided to wait and just spice it up a little for the time being.

Anyway, I came up with a steel blue/grey colour scheme which works quite well with the colour of the kitchen units. The wooden door knobs were replaced by brushed steel ones. The sticky vinyl flooring in 1980s pattern was swapped for slate-grey laminate. The pendant lights above the table are from Kartell and are the only thing fancy and expensive in this room! The farmhouse chairs came from my parents, the Danish 1960s ones are vintage G-plan chairs (got them for free off Freecycle). The table is made by my dad.

Living room

I also promised to show a before & after of our fire place which was just not looking that great when we first moved in. We wanted to rip the whole thing out and replace it, but my dad suggested painting it in glossy black. We also had the walls and ceiling replastered, the floor boards sanded and varnished and we painted the windows white. The result is quite dramatic, especially with the red wall. Sometimes it all feels a bit too red and overwhelming though, so I may try a different colour on the wall again in the future. But for now, it works.

Before (with my Glenn who seems quite happy about the idea of ripping the ugly fire place out - and everything else)


After


After

Wall sticker (indoor forest!)

Oooh if only I had lots of wall space... I love these stickers. They just look so cool and sophisticated, especially in this nice clean white room with bare floor boards. Who needs art when you can buy a sticker?! (says the marketing manager for an art gallery!! - sssjt don't tell the boss). Have a look on Single Stone Studio's shop on etsy - they have a large collection of gorgeous vynil wall graphics and ship them all over the world.
Right. I'm off to find an empty wall in my house...I'll be back.

Flea market and carboot sale finds

With my blog I am trying to promote 'junking up your home' with weird and wonderful finds, so I decided to share a few pictures of some of my own junk with you today.... These pictures are of my fire place in the lounge (an ideal place to display little treasures).

On Sundays there's always a carboot sale in Inverurie, a town near to where I live in Scotland, and I once found these two heavy weight silver candle holders for the grand total of £2 and was a very happy girl.

The yellow and green things hanging from it are decorative key rings from Marrakech. I bought loads of them last year while on holiday and they spice up any door or drawer handle (or candle holder!). The very ornate frame is a big round mirror hanging above our fire place. We got it from an antique/junk shop in Sauchen, Aberdeenshire.

The old, battered 1920s wooden box decorated with Japanese illustrations I recently found for £1 in a bargain box in an antiques shop in Cowbridge, South Wales. My partner's parents thought I was mad buying something that was already broken but I just smiled and decided not to try to explain it...

The eastern european (or middle-eastern?) decorative copper mini-karaf - or oil pot, whatever - has been in my family for a long time. This sounds like it's a real family piece and extremely important but it's not worth much if anything at all and the truth is, I just like the Aladin-like style of it!

The two tea lights I once found in a nice home decor shop next to Harrods in London (and it was the only thing I could afford ;-).

By the way, the fire surround used to be ugly dark brown but my dad suggested painting it in glossy black and that was great advice! (I will post a before-and-after shot of this soon)

Bureau Makeover

I posted this picture some time ago, of an old flaky dark brown bureau that I found on Freecycle and was giving a fresh lick of blue paint. Well, I'm glad to say it's finished! I'm still planning to line the drawers with some nice vintage wall paper but I can always do that later. The bureau is now proudly sitting in our study and matches my favourite blue print (by Glasgow artist Kenny Hunter).

Paint an ugly dresser in one minute

And since he's working like a mad man, I think he should do the rest of his room too ;-)