DIY Day!

I love a bit of DIY, my sisters would tell you that they run screaming as soon as they see me with a power tool or the words DIY are uttered, but that's because I can - and I admit this - be a complete cow when we're doing things. I think they'd also tell you that of the three of us, I'm the one you'd want doing the DIY, but I do get irritable.

Anyway, here are some DIY tricks and quick crafty projects I've been hoarding away on Pinterest for months, waiting for an opportunity to share them with you.

DIY Tricks:

Paint Can Trick...

Source: inmyownstyle.com via Emily on Pinterest

Use a rubber band to remove drips and save yourself from grotty, paint encrusted and unopenable paint tins.

Christmas Baubles Trick...

Source: re-nest.com via Emily on Pinterest

Use egg boxes to store delicate glass Christmas decorations, makes sense when you think about it.

Debris Catcher Trick...

Source: cache.gawkerassets.com via Emily on Pinterest

So, so simple and yet genius. Before you start drilling stick a folded post-it note under the hole and prevent all the dust and dirt falling from your newly drilled wall and onto your floor. Save yourself the extra clean-up.

DIY Treats:

What to do with empty tin cans...

Source: cfabbridesigns.com via Emily on Pinterest

Plant them up with grasses, herbs or lettuces...

Source: pinandpaper.blogspot.com via Emily on Pinterest

Then tell what your plants in the ground are by stamping the names on the lids and using old forks to keep the visible.

What to do with old corks...

Source: dailydanny.com via Emily on Pinterest

Collect together all the corks you remove from bottles of wine and arrange them in a large shadow box to create an upcycled bathmat. And, unless you're planning a mad binge, party or simply have an obsession with keeping corks, you could always go to your local and ask for any they have going.

What to do with your makeup...

Source: laurathoughts81.blogspot.com via Emily on Pinterest

Attach magnets to the underside of your eyeshadows and attach pill bottles to attach to a home made magnet board (a photo frame with the glass replaced with a sheet of metal, then covered with a sheet of fabric).

What to do with brown bottles...

Source: witandwhistle.com via Emily on Pinterest

Fill them with battery powered fairy lights and create a lovely little display in your house - I have a couple of these by my mirror filled with orange LEDs and White star lights and they are pretty through the brown glass.

What to do to decorate that boring wall...

Source: u-createcrafts.com via Emily on Pinterest

You can buy flowers this shape as of plastic wall decorations. Instead print off these flowers and save yourself some money, plus you can choose your colour and pattern to suit your home.

What to do with your old tatty teapots...

Source: wedding-diy.tumblr.com via Emily on Pinterest

Well, you could wait for the snow and fill them up to make my blog or you could upcycle old teapot which have see better days into hanging planters.

And that's it for now!

Like I said, I have been hoarding all of these on Pinterest, so, if you want to find the original source all of them are either mentioned below the images or linkable via my board, Craft is not a dirty word.

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Listening: Martha Reeves & The Vandellas - Nowhere To Run

Every cloud has a neon lining...

Photograph by Eric Laignel via Jennifer Nicole

Well hello everybody who thinks they're suffering from deja vu, don't panic, you're not. I finally found a version of the post Blogger deleted during their outage by subscribing to my own blog via Google Reader. Yep, I might like Bloglovin' but it was good old Google Reader that saved the day by keeping a full version of the RSS feed post on their records rather than a fragmented first few lines. Since no post has reappeared 11 days on, I'm guessing it's a loss, especially as no on has answered my question on the Google/Blogger help forum. Thanks guys.

Bright side is I get another chance to do a bit of editing.

Anyway, my original post was about how much I love these neon cloud lights, they were designed by Ghislaine Viñas. They were included as part of a 15,500 sq. ft interior design project for the home of New York Gallery owner Paige West. Viñas took the once crumbling building in Tribeca, New York and created a modern living space which is colourful, functional and wonderfully whimsical.

Bar the clouds I particularly like the sheep grazing in the library...

...because we all know what avid readers sheep are...

...and that all kids want to do in their Disney Western inspired bedroom is chop wood...

...that bad muppets get turned into giant, slightly random, blue feathered lighting systems...

...and jail strip wall treatments actually look kind of fabulous when teamed with green accessories.

Now, while I'm not sure I could live in house with a giant blue feathered light shade, if you're going to go kooky, you may as well go all out! And you should definitely have neon clouds adorning your bathroom where you can lie and relax and stare up at the clouds.

If you'd like to see more images of Viñas's Interior Design treatments for West's home go to Jennifer Nicole's blog or visit Ghislaine Viñas website.

via - Pinterest

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Listening: TLC - Unpretty

Monday Mood Board: Sunshine & Rain

Row 1:

Freshly Squeezed {15/52} by Sarah Ann Wright (via Pinterest),

Clouds Will Clear by Mike Bailey-Gates

Row 2:

Untitled by Stacey Van Berkel Haines via Dress, Design & Decor

Row 3:

Thunderstorm near Ais-Ais, Namibia by Paul Perton,

Rain Cloud Decal from Love Mae

Rain = inability to hang out washing = less washing = less folding = happy.

Except...we've had a moth problem at home...so there's extra washing to do and I have to clear out my wardrobe. Which isn't going to be fun. It lives in the spare room (no room in my room) and I haven't been able to get into it in a while. And I mean literally, there's been too much stuff in front of it for the doors to open!

Luckily there's nothing I wear a lot in there, but I do hope my nice - though rarely ever worn - dresses & winter coats are okay. I will be gutted if they're moth ridden!

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Listening: Bonnie Somerville - Winding Road

A Crocheted Woodland Wonderland...

Here are a few photos from our latest window display at work, I know I've been promising to post these for ages, so here they are finally! Apologies if they take ages to load up, there were a lot, so I decided to put them on Flickr and then use the coding to (hopefully) make everything load better. More likely it'll just take longer! To see these in more detail and the other photos I've taken of the window head over to my Flickr account: EmilyLucieDesigns.

All the crocheted daffodils were done by mum, I've crocheted the dandelions, knitted the crocuses and snowdrops and the primroses were a team effort. Louise is in charge of paper flowers, themes and keeping me sane as the crochet rots my mind and disfigures my left hand. Seriously, I'm getting crochet claw!

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Listening: Tom Waits - Rainbirds

Not On The Walls

When I was little I was given two books, one called "Emily's Paintbox" the other "Emily & the Purple Paint". Both you can probably deduce involve little girls called Emily who like paint and you just know that that can only spell trouble.

In Emily's Paintbox, Emily goes around painting everything! Walls, houses, trees, animals and then decides when everything else is done, to mix all the colours together and paint the sun black. And everything goes dark until it begins to rain.

In Emily and the Purple paint a similar plot line occurs. Emily doesn't want to go to nursery school, but is interested in the paint the other children are playing with. So mummy makes red, yellow and blue paint and Emily decides to mix them into a beautiful purple colour...then mummy turns her back for a little too long and a trail of incriminating hand, feet and nose prints lead to Emily who now can't get the purple off her nose.

The reason I bring these up is that the moral of the stories is that you shouldn't paint where you're not supposed to. So this Slastic Coat Rack allows us as adults to disregard the moral, as well as everything our mothers once told us not too when it comes to drawing on the walls. Designed by Ana Mir and Emili Padros for Made in Design, every time to deposit a piece of clothing or a bag onto the coat rack another series of pencil markings are made on the wall, the weight of the item obviously determining the spread of the design.

But if you have kids...wouldn't this encourage them to draw on the walls?

Just a thought.

via - Urban Taster

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Listening: Dario Marianelli - Come Back

On the 1st Day of Christmas...

...my blog gave to thee...

...a house to dunk into your tea.

These amazing teeny Tea Cup Gingerbread Houses are designed and made by Megan of Not Martha fame. Via her website she gives you recipes for her gingerbread dough, royal icing and patterns for her wall layouts, as well as step-by-steps as to how to put them together. And if you don't like gingerbread she's also made a sugar cookie alternative.

Aren't they spectacular?

I love these and I hope my crockery & tea/coffee obsessed readers will think they're fun.

Merry Christmas! Part two tomorrow...

Not Martha - Link

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Listening: Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

Christmas Window 2010

So here it is, finally after 9 months of jibbering on about knitting and planning etc and this is what it amounts too.

I decided just to edit the photographs I had from the night we installed the window, which is annoying because it was too dark to get really decent quality, but until I can get a chance to take some more I'm afraid these are it.

What do you think?

I knitted the base (5 metres of random knit using size 7, 9 and 10 needles), also the bows for the parcels (which I am considering making more to sell at some point), crackers were knitted both by hand and machine with the aid of my mum, my little sister Louise & both my grans...so it's been a real family effort.

Not that installing it was that fun. Nine to five without breakfast, lunch and only a couple of bottles of water and a migraine to aid us is not something I'd recommend.

Louise and I hung swags of cracker bunting all over the morning and lunch, after having taken a couple of hours to empty out our mushroom window out, and it only took ten minutes after everyone else returned from lunch that it looked, well, the only polite word is shoddy. I don't know whether it was the string or just the haphazard layering, but it didn't look good and after spending all this time knitting and planning the last thing we wanted was a bad window. So we cut them all off and arranged them hanging down in lengths going from cream, through the rainbow to red. Which is ten times better!

Over our first snowy weekend mum and I also wrapped old glasses in wool (another window coming with that in the future) and mum has knitted & embroidered a cat which, as I finish this post I am taking the odd minute to knit a collar for - or rather reknit, apparently the purple one I knitted wasn't right, and a golden ecru colour would be more fitting. Teach her to have a sleep when I was deciding the colour! Anyway, it should go in on Saturday.

Only regret is that we didn't have more shiny or glittery things, we'd intended to add some on the Tuesday after Snowmageddon began, but were scuppered, so mum's going to try and add some in today - if it comes to it I'm going in and spraying the whole bloody thing with spray glitter! Used to love that stuff!

It's a shame the windows in Carnoustie & Broughty Ferry won't get done now, but, Blair's the important one, and next year they'll get the cracker window in at least one of them.

And already have a few new window ideas and some ideas for next Christmas - hopefully some that won't take from March to accomplish.

Definitely insane for that one!

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Listening: Ellie Goulding - Starry Eyed

Sunday Sort of Light

Thanks to Forty Sixth at Grace's 'Sunday Sort of Light' I've been thinking about Sundays. A day which has become hectic at home full of DIY and gardening, cleaning and getting those odd-jobs done that you don't get enough time (or help with) during the week. Not really the day of rest most people expect.

So what would you do - age and embarrassment aside - on your ideal Sunday?

I miss Sundays from when I was a kid.

So mine involves building a fort...I haven't done that for years.

Now I want to build a fort and drink tea out of beautiful china cups, under swathes of fabric and fairy lights.

Hope you've had a lovely weekend and enjoyed the sunshine!

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Listening: Bombay Bicycle Club - Fairytale Lullaby

Perfectly Petit Hideaway

When I become a full blow hermit, I want to live in a teeny tiny cottage like this. How perfectly kitsch and twee and wonderful!

Sandra Foster turned this 9 by 14ft ex-hunting cabin the Catskills into her own perfect little piece of Victorian romanticism by doing the carpentry herself and using as much vintage, reclaimed windows, columns, flooring and furnishings as she could find. If you read the NY Times article below you'll see that this project is really a labour of love, not only in the effort to create such a space on a shoestring.

And to add to the magic of this little cottage, you even have to cross a stream on stepping stones to get to it.

It's definitely the stuff of fairy tales.

For more photos there is a slide show on the New York Times website along with an article written about the cottage from June 2010 interviewing Foster.

Slide show||Article

via

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Listening: Laura Veirs - Parisian Dream

A Type of Obsession...

AMradio - Etsy

I've become obsessed with the idea of buying a letter press drawer. My mum has one, she bought it with birthday money years ago and until we got new book shelves it hung in the hall covered in trinkets; tiny toys from when my sisters and I were kids, a tiny clock, large wooden beads off of an old necklace...it was a place were the little oddities of the house seemed to gather. And latterly when the books took its place, the drawer moved to my work space in the spare room and then propped up against the wall because my work space has moved and the wall it hung on has been plastered, painted and left for my sister to draw on.

I would 'borrow' my mums and put it in my room for all the odd things I can't seem to get rid of, but as well as the suitable amount of guilt I would feel from this action, I really, really want to find my own. So I'm scouring eBay and Etsy to see if I can find a nice one that will ship to the UK cheaply since most I've found seem to be in the States.

Just my luck huh? Maybe the Birthday fairy will find one for me!

Listening: John Martyn - Small Hours

A Stairwell Book...

I've always had a soft spot for book rooms in houses. Where you have to have your little set of stairs to get up to the top or ones that run around a rail. It's all a bit of theatre, but going from a kid who never read, I've gone to a proto-25 year old who's bedroom is primarily books. There is, however, little room for literature left in my room and it's therefore scattered all over the place, with no real rhythm or rhyme, so when I saw this concept, I was a little jealous.

The designer, Tom Sloan of Levitate Architects, has designed a space saving solution in a Victorian flat which marries a severe lack of space and the fashion for book rooms. This is done by lining the stairwell in bookshelves which project out on alternate shelves to make steps for the staircase.

"We created a ’secret’ staircase, hidden from the main reception room, to access a new loft bedroom lit by roof lights. Limited by space, we melded the idea of a staircase with our client’s desire for a library to form a ‘library staircase’ in which English oak stair treads and shelves are both completely lined with books." - Tom Sloan (Apartment Therapy)

This is the sort of thing I'd build in a house ever without a second floor, somewhere you could sit and peruse your books and hide away from the world, which wouldn't be dissimilar to the set of The Seven Year Itch. In the film Tom Ewell's character's apartment has had its stairs blocked off which would naturally lead to the upper floor of the house and Marilyn Monroe's apartment (thus creating two rental properties). The stairs have, however been left in-situ and have been lined with books creating the perfect place to hide and read. Not that Ewell's character does much reading.

I've always had a soft spot for stairs leading to nowhere, like these ones in Perth I photographed a few years ago:

I assume they used to lead somewhere, but I haven't got the foggiest, which is exactly why I like them.

via