gingerandgeorge

Fancy Painted Glassware

Despite the simplicity of this project, it actually took me an age to put together this week. Spray painting glass jars and bottles outdoors, in between the heaviest and most determined of downpours? Not the best idea. If you fancy giving it a go yourself, don't be an impatient idiot like me. Hold out for a dry day instead, and everything else should be easy-breezy.

You can find a quick step-by-step tutorial over at the Hambly blog, and in case you were wondering (you wouldn't be the first), all of the photos are in colour; it's just the glassware and the wallpaper background which are in black and white.

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Project Restyle :: Clock

I found this clock in my local charity shop a few weeks ago. It was pretty grisly to look at, not in the greatest condition (faded face, peeling varnish) and cheap as you like. In other words, the perfect restyle candidate. 

The only thing I was really concerned about was how easy it would be to take apart. Thankfully, it turned out to be a breeze - the face lifted away so easily that I actually ended up having to apply a little glue at the edges to hold it back in place once the project was finished.

With the glass carefully set aside, I unscrewed the clock mechanism (if you're doing something similar, be sure to lay out the pieces in the order you need to replace them later on. Take it from someone who hasn't always done this in the past...) and then peeled off the decorative cardboard face. 

I then rough-sanded the peeling varnish, before going back over the whole of the wooden clock surround with a finer grade of sandpaper, ready to spray on 3-4 coats of gloss-finish paint. 

Once that was dry, I traced around the original cardboard clock face onto some patterned paper, cut it out and adhered to the centre of the clock. You could obviously add numbers at this point, but a busy print like this looked better without.

The hands and clock movement screwed back into place really easily, and with just a small amount of glue to hold the edges of the glass in place . . . one restyled clock, ready to hang and remind me just how late I very probably am.

One quick tip: if, like me, spray paint is something you struggle to get hold of, particularly in a good range of colours, it's worth trying either the London Graphic Centre or (a little less obviously) your local branch of Halfords. I wouldn't necessarily recommend using their car paints on paper projects, but for more solid pieces, like the clock here, they give a really good, tough finish and are relatively inexpensive - around £6 for quite a big can.

And if it's a clock like my thrift-store find you're after, there's currently one here on eBay. Let's just assume the bit where it says 'very rare' is a case of fancy seller-exaggeration, rather than an indication I've just wrecked a priceless heirloom with a can of green spray paint, ok?

x

 

Way Back Wednesday (No.9)

When I was eleven, my junior school class visited London for a week. We did just about everything you see in the guidebooks, from the museums to the zoo by way of the Planetarium, the Tower and Drury Lane, but one of the most memorable places for me was The Old Curiosity Shop. We only stopped outside for maybe five or ten minutes, everyone took photos and we carried on to our next port of call, but the tiny building left a lasting impression.

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Surrounded and overshadowed by much newer and larger buildings, it looks almost doll's house-ish, and is as lopsided as it is ancient. It was built in the 16th century, and was one of very few buildings in the City to survive both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz, which for me, is a big part of the reason it's so fascinating: it offers an all too rare glimpse of London as it looked hundreds of years ago. It might not be as beautiful as much of the Georgian and Victorian architecture we have here, but to find something so old and unexpected tucked away just minutes from the chaos of traffic and city life is a pretty wonderful thing. 

So, why am I getting all misty over it today in particular? Because an even-smaller-than-the-real-thing Curiosity Shop is this week's Way Back Wednesday project. 

It was put together for a Dickens-themed magazine feature and I enjoyed making it more than is probably sensible. Constructing things in miniature is, I think, the perfect combination of challenging, fun and satisfying. Also, smaller almost always equals cuter, and that's surely no bad thing.

The top section lifts off so you can store things inside, which makes the finished project functional rather than just decorative, and at risk of blasting my own trumpet much too loudly, I think it looks pretty similar to the real thing. Maybe not separated at birth, but you'd at least know they were cousins. 

So, how about you - if you had to make a miniature version of a favourite building, which one would you choose?

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Paper tales

I feel a little like I might have over-hyped these by now, and you're inevitably going to wonder what all the fuss was about, but please say hello to my little troupe of vintage wallpapers.

 
Discovered and donated to the cause by my lovely dad, I think they originally belonged to my grandparents. My grandma in particular was a keen (if not overly capable) fan of the DIY and I remember most of her cupboards and shelves being wallpapered when I was growing up. The two below are my favourites, and I've already used just a tiny bit of the green print in a project I'm hoping to blog about next week. 

As I think I mentioned before, plans are also afoot to share a couple of wallpaper-inspired projects and printables with you over the next few weeks. I think I'd feel mean keeping such kitschy goodness all to myself. If you've seen any clever wallpaper tricks around the internet or, even better, have any vintage pieces yourself, I'd love to hear about them.  

In the meantime, I'm off to add my pictures to Julie's Chasing Patterns group over on Flickr. If you've not quite had your fill of fancy vintage or pretty prints for the day, it's well worth a visit. 

x

Way Back Wednesday

Hola lovely blog-pals.

Today, I have a brand new mini-series for you, along with a grovelling apology for the awful, pun-ish name it seems to be stuck with.

Yep, it is that bad, and could only have been worse had I chosen to spell it 'Way Back Whensday' instead. The idea itself is hopefully a little more sound. Very simply, a project from the handmade archives, posted here each and every Wednesday until I run out of things to share. And considering I pretty much killed my last laptop with the weight of photographs alone, that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Some of the projects will just be plain and simple pictures with a couple of sentences on the where, why and when, others will also have a how-to. So, shall we get started?

This was a project I made for the very first issue of Creative Steps magazine, around four years ago. It’s a fully-functioning DIY sweetie dispenser, built from two used ice-cream tubs, a matchbox, a straw and a cardboard tube. Sweet-eating with the greenest of consciences.

See you back here next Wednesday for another?

x

Psst...

...you can see another recent thing-I've-been-making over at my friend Gabrielle's blog today. Clearly, we've both been in generous mood lately, as she sent me one of her gorgeous (and very green) grocery bags a few weeks ago, too. 

 (Images borrowed from The Green Gal)

I'll thank you kindly to keep your mitts off mine (unless you're handsome and offering to carry my shopping), but you can score one of your own, either in her Etsy shop, The Green Gables, or from Not On The High Street. Lots more prettiness on her blog, too, from handmade to vintage, eco to edible.  

Maker friends are the best, don't you think?

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Did I mention?

Fun, games and good things going on all over the place. Banana Frog, Copy+Paste, Julie's, Hannah's and at Flickr. 

Plus, a bit more of something completely different, later on, back here.  

Sneaky P

I’ve been moonlighting again. If you want to see what this little bit of aprony goodness is all about, head on over to Banana Frog for more pics and a quick how-to.

x

No cheap egg-based gags here

Nope. Not a one. Nothing about how egg-cited I am to be doing another giveaway, or how egg-ceptionally cute Danielle’s new embroidery patterns are. Because, as my world-weary man often says in the face of such threats, ‘you’re better than that, honey’.

The point is debatable, but I should probably get to the job in hand. Free stuff – hurrah! If you've not already seen the aforementioned embroidery patterns, they're beyond cute. Danielle asked me to try them out a few weeks ago and I had heaps of fun playing around, both with this appliquéd version:

And then working this one on a lovely, simple Japanese print which I’ve been wanting to use for ages.

I turned it into a little hanging, gathering the back and adding a strip of lace at the top, and – for the price of a comment, plus a bit of luck – it could be all yours. In celebration of the looming holidays, I’m also throwing in an Easter egg, made with my favourite Green & Black’s chocolate. It looks something like this:

So, if you’d like to win the redwork hanging and the chocolate, all you need to do is comment below. Let me know your favourite thing from the new Kitschy Digitals Goods shop, or the original digi-kits, and I promise not to show any bias towards those who pick the embroidery patterns. I’ll leave comments open until the middle of the week and get the ol’ random number generator to pick a winner on Thursday (because that’s my dad’s birthday, and I’m likely to be in a gift-giving kind of mood).

Am I going to point out how eggs-tremely simple it is? No, I am not.

x

PS. Even more Kitschy freebies going on here. 

It's not you, it's me

Dear Blog,

I know I've been neglecting you just lately, but please understand it's not because I don't love you. What with the whole moving house thing, and working on a project that's sapped every last ounce of my creativity, life has got pretty blurry. But I've decided enough is enough. It might be a few weeks before I'm back to posting wordy epistles or inconsequential tutorials, but in the meantime, I'm thinking we could compromise on some pretty pictures and scintillating links. Like this t-shirt I posted over at Banana Frog.

Or some deliciousness from the new Cath Kidston range.

Maybe this beyond-incredible project at Oh, Hello Friend, or a cute kokeshi  I made from scraps and Kitschy Digitals kits.

And if you feel like a bit more conversation, you could always go and hang out at Julie's. She's both talented and, in the nicest possible way, accommodating, and she makes inspiring things like this.

 Just make sure you don't get really loved up with anyone else. Because, y'know, I'd miss you, too.

x