Ruby Slippers

In my opinion, every girl needs a pair of classic red heels in her wardrobe. However my favourite Old Faithful red heels have been looking a little worse for wear lately - so much so that I had already mentally said goodbye to them and had put them with other old items in wardrobe ready to donate to the op shop/chuck. 

That was until, I saw this rather brilliant tutorial on how to fix ruined heels, and had a little brainwave of my own to breath fabulous new life into Old Faithfuls. I went one step further that the tutorial, and instead of just painting glitter on the heels of the shoe, I did the whole thing. Admittedly, my red shoes were a lot more worse for wear than the original shoes in the tutorial, and who doesn't secretly want a pair of red ruby slippers, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?

Before:

After:

Creating ruby slippers/fixing my Old Faithfuls was actually easier than you think. All you need is:

• glitter (to match your shoe colour)
• glue (I used Mod Podge)
• paintbrush
• paper plate

Simply mix your glitter with the glue and paint on! It's actually that easy. Give your shoes a few coats, and try to keep the glitter glue as even as possible to avoid lumps and bumps. Mine did turn out a little bumpy but that was only because my heals were so hacked up to start with. Don't stress too much, because on your feet, no one will notice any little imperfections.

Ta-da! Now I have my very own ruby slippers. Now if I click my heels together three times and wish for my hearts desire do you think it will come true? Who knows, but Dorothy was certainly right about one thing: there's no place like home AND ruby slippers are super cute!
xo

In the Bedroom: Part 1

 

In a mad fit of pre spring cleaning I have been reorganising my bedroom and giving it some big touch ups over the last few weeks. My travel inspired bedside table is just the beginning in the series of what I have created in the only room in the house that is all mine, (although credit to my lovely housemates, they pretty much let me decorate how I wish!)

I was inspired by this picture to create my bedside table, and the best thing about this project is that I already had all the materials in my house, just begging to be used! The red suitcase I have had since I first moved to Brisbane in 2007 and have carted it from house to house in the numerous times I have moved over the years. It was originally salvaged for a prop for a friend's play and she was kind enough to bequeath it to me when the play was over, thanks Phil. 

The bottom two suitcases are spoils of the op shop mission Nikki and I took to Ipswich a few months ago. I spotted them as soon as we walked in, and just as I suspected they were a total bargain! Best of all the green one is still sporting an ancient airline tag (from the old days of Ansett) for Brisbane, which makes the suitcase even more special.

And finally, I topped it off with a picture of a vintage map with the quote "Wherever you go, go with all your heart" which was created by my lovely friend Amy. I bought the frame for $1 at a cent sale at a school one Saturday morning, and painted it white with a bit of left over paint I had lying around. The lamp was from an op shop, the photo frame from a garage sale, (the picture is my Mum and Nana out for a day of shopping circa 1960), the alarm clock is Ikea and the little jar is DIY moisturiser. 

Overall I am pretty pleased with my travel bedside table, and it gave new life and a new use for things that I just had lying around waiting for the perfect spot in my house.

xo

Wardrobe Door Makeover

Before:

After:

One day in an uncharacteristic bout of fitness enthusiasm I was out on a walk. After an hour of powering along the Brisbane River, I was winding through my neighbourhood on my way home and I passed an old wooden wardrobe door leaning up against a retaining wall on the side of the road.

Of course, I stopped walking and wandered over to inspect this discarded, somewhat useless item that someone had clearly placed there for anyone who wished to take it. The door was just made out of cheap pine and looked like it had been there on the side of the road for awhile. So I decided that I didn't need it, trying to convince self that I didn't want to turn into one of those people who just collect all manner of random useless things and never do anything with them, and I kept on walking.

Not five steps later, I had a brilliant idea, ran back and grabbed the door and carried it half a kilometre home, which garnered a lot of weird looks from people.

I sanded it back, bought some paint and turned it into a whole new amazing blackboard, for just under $30. It currently lives in my lounge room and is always adorned with favourite quotes and song lyrics. I have also been known to use it for birthday wishes for my housemates and friends and particularly exciting countdowns (like Christmas).
xo

PS Props to whoever can tell me what song the current quote is from. I need song title, artist and album... GO!

Quick moisturiser fix.

I love moisturiser, especially in winter. And I tend to put it on right before going to bed, but consequently my bedside table becomes littered with all manner of hand and body creams, and that just looks ugly and untidy.

I had a brainwave last night to transfer the moisturiser into a cute little jar (I have a stash of empty ones in the cupboard) so that I could leave it on my bedside table always, and not hate how ugly the bottle of Palmers Cocoa Butter looked next to my sweet alarm clock, vintage doileys and pile of penguins. I painted the lid with remnants of a sample pot, tied some string around and viola ... perfection
xo

How To: Make Homemade Body Scrub

This stuff I had lying around the house went from this:

To delectable and effective homemade body scrub below! Perfect to combat the winter scaly skin.

Lately it's been getting a little chilly in Brisbane, and consequently my elbows and my legs have slowing becoming more and more scaly. Luckily, before my skin became so scaly and weird that I morphed into a fish, I remembered I had seen an awesome DIY recipe to make your own body scrub.

Don't get me wrong, I love expensive beauty products as much as the next gal (or well groomed guy) but I don't like the price tags, particularly when you are buying products that are not tested on animals (apparently not inhumanely slathering rabbits with lipstick means the product costs twice as much as one made by torturing animals). So this little project seemed like the perfect solution. Admittedly I was sceptical at how well the scrub would turn out, but after a test run in the shower this evening I am thoroughly impressed. This sweet scrub come through with top marks, and my skin feels soft and ladylike again.

I used:

• A cute jar
• 2-3 cups of raw sugar (or however much fits in your jar)
• 2 tbs of ancient massage oil I had in the cupboard and had never used (you could substitute this for olive or apricot oil)
• 10-12 drops of lavender essential oil, also forgotten in the back of my cupboard (you could use vanilla essence if you were just searching for stuff around the house)

Best of all, you just have to mix the ingredients together well, stuff them in a jar and you're done. This whole thing took less than five minutes to complete! To fully perfect the body scrub, I plan on keeping my eye out in the op shops for a tea spoon with a hole in the handle, so I can attach it to the string and have a little dipping spoon for my body scrub.

Try it, you won't be disappointed!

xo

The Lion says RAAAH!

Because lions represent courage, strength, bravery and Gryffindor and cross stitch is cool.

xo

Spectacular sample pot results

Before:

After:

When we moved into our house the previous tenants gifted some stuff to us including this outdoor table and matching chairs that were stashed away under the house. The chairs are so horrendously uncomfortably to sit on that I didn't bother doing anything to them. But the table, while a bit smaller than I would have liked, had potential, and you know, it was free!

So I bought a sample pot of British Paints Grey Canvas colour and as you can see the results are pretty much perfect. The whole project, including giving the table a quick sand and hose off before painting only took about 3 hours to complete. And all I purchased was a sample pot of paint. I think it was $7 well spent.

xo

She said, he said, SUSHI!

Today I had my very first vegetarian only sushi and it was delicious!

I have always been a fan of plain avocado, but the vego selection on the left with sweet salads was a surprisingly tasty treat. And both topped with Japanese mayonnaise were amazing.

Also as I was coveting the tiffany blue sample pot of paint so much yesterday, I went searching around the house for more items to turn tiffany blue. I came up with this little candle holder that was gifted to us by the last tenants/forgotten on top of the bathroom cabinet. It was dirty beech coloured wood and now it is pretty and fresh and looks so cute with a tealight candle inside.

My new favourite sample pot is called 'Green Tiara' and is made by Taubmans. You can find it here and it's T81-6 in the colour swatch.

xo

Odometer Party!

After the Brisbane floods in January one of our radio stations, Triple J decided we needed to have a party to lift our spirits. So Tom and Alex on the breakfast show got people to call in and come with the best excuse they could for a party. The winner: Steph, whose car's odometer ticked over to 300,000km recently.

Last night the radio station threw an Odometer party where everyone had to wear an odometer of some sort displaying how many days old they were.

I spent a good hour of procrastimaking stitching my odometer above. My friend Peter and I had an awesome time, and even had a chat to Tom Ballard. All in all a totally awesome night!

xo

PS Figure out how many days old you are here.

How To: Make a Book Bag

Dear Fellow Bookworms,

Like me, I'm sure you are always carrying around a novel or a book to read 'just in case' in your handbag or floating around in your car. If you're also slightly scatterbrained (guilty), you may find your books tend to look a little worse for wear after they have been living in your handbag for awhile.

So I created this book bag. It keeps my books dog ear free, saves them from that odd m&m floating in the depths of my handbag just waiting to melt all over something precious, and on the odd occasion when there is a makeup explosion it's an impenetrable shield.

Even if you're not a big reader, this little book bag is super handy to keep your diary, a pen and any paperwork that you might be carrying all together and neat.

Best of all it's super easy to make.

You will need:

• sewing machine
• 2 pieces of similar coloured, high wearing fabric cut into 55x30cm strips (I used Ikea Gunilla fabrics - they are cheap, hardy and funky)
• thread to match fabric
• needle
• ruler
• 2 pretty raised buttons
• 40cm of thin ribbon

This project will only take about half an hour, so let's get started.

NB: you can make the fabric pieces larger to fit school books, sketch books or magazines; or smaller to fit a small diary or even your mobile phone and iPod.

• First thread your machine with the matching thread. Don't worry if you are new to using a sewing machine; all you need to do for this project is sew in a straight line.
• Line you two pieces of fabric up so that the colourful sides face inwards and the back of each piece is visible.
• Using the machine, stitch the fabric together about 1cm in from the edge of each side and leaving a 10cm open gap along one of the short sides.
• Turn the fabric right way around, so that you can now see the colourful sides of each piece of fabric. Use the ruler to push the corners out as best as you can through the gap.
• Fold one end of the fabric over about 20cm to make a pocket and stitch it together about 6mm in from the edge. MAKE SURE the end with the gap is at the top of the pocket, where it will be least visible.
• With a needle and thread hand sew the gap together using a simple darning stitch.
• Sew one button on the front part of the pocket and one on the flap.
• Then tie the ribbon to one button, securing the knot with a stitch.

Now stuff your book bag full of books, carry them in your purse for as long as you like and marvel at how pristine and perfect your books stay forever (provided you don't spill chocolate on them while you are reading them!)

xo

PS To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (pictured above) is one of my all time favourite books. What's yours?

Pretty Paper Frames

About six months ago my mum gave me some old family pictures from the '60s and '70s. Being both amazingly retro and featuring my lovely family, I loved them instantly and wanted to make them part of my decor ASAP.

Not wanting to cut the photos or damage them, I hunted around for cute frames. But a lot of the photos were odd sizes and I couldn't find frames to fit.

Then trawling through the ever fabulous Design*Sponge I found the answer to my problem and a quick easy way to make the old photos into a feature in my cottage: handmade brown paper frames.

I made a few little changes to the original instructions:

• I backed the frames with black paper, and cut the black a little bit larger than the frames on purpose to create an extra boarder around the brown paper.
• To protect the old photos, I also used clear Over Head Projector sheets (how very '90s of me!) between the black paper and the brown paper frame (like glass in a real frame).
• Unlike the lucky people at Design*Sponge I don't have a sticker maker to run the frames through, so I just used double sided tape to secure it all together.
• Admittedly my frames are not quite as polished as the original, but I was careful not to be too careful when creating them in order to give them a crude look and make them more dramatic.

This is my favourite, my parents in 1976 not long after they first met.

And I love these two as well, taken in the early '90s, Daddy's little girl, and Mummy's boy.

PS I did actually find a frame for this picture featuring two of my favourite women, Mum and Nana circa 1960.