Tea Towel Cushion Covers

I'm always on the lookout for good value, nice quality fabric that I can use to make things with. It doesn't matter if it's an old shirt or blouse in a charity shop or a duvet cover that I no longer use in one of the bedrooms, in fact it could be anything. If I like it I will chop it up and re-purpose it. Last week, I nipped up to my local Aldi shop to grab some butter and milk and while I was there I spotted some lovely tea towels. They were very pretty and floral and the perfect colour to go with the two battered old chairs I painted a couple of weeks ago. At £2.99 for 3 and 100% cotton, they were also a bit of a bargain and one I couldn't pass up so I bought 2 lots. 

The pink and blue tea towels were destined to become cushion covers, the creamy white ones are beautifully soft and I am saving them to do some hand embroidered pictures with at some point. 

With the addition of some cute little pink flowers I had in my trimming stash, they were transformed into simple envelope cushion covers. I didn't even have to hem them I just stitched them together with the right sides on the outside and hey presto, 2 cute cushions. It took about 20 minutes to do both of them which is definitely my kind of sewing project .... I'm all for instant impact :-)

I also have a bit of a dilemma. I painted the chimney breast wall a very lovely, subtle, pale pink a couple of weeks ago and before I started painting, I removed the gigantic, overmantle mirror that was hung on the wall. It's really, really heavy and very awkward to put back up and unfortunately, once I had painted the wall I couldn't manage to get it back up onto the wall. So after waiting two weeks for someone to visit to give me a hand to get it back up, I took one look at it when my visitor had left and decided that it needs painting!! It's painted in Annie Sloan Old White at the moment but it needs to be brilliant white because against the pale pink it looks nasty and grubby! 

So, the dilemma ...... do I take it off the wall again and paint it, knowing I will have to wait at least a couple of weeks for someone to visit so they can help me put it back up or, should I try and paint it while it's still hanging on the wall? I don't want to break it, there are 5 mirrors in total and that adds up to a lot of years of bad luck if it falls off the wall while I'm painting it but equally, if I break it while I'm taking it down I could still be in a whole pile of bad luck bother. 

Oh the dilemma!!!

Good Old Annie Sloan Chalk Paint

In my kitchen, I have a pine dresser. I have had it for about 15 years and although it is now a bit scratched and battered and going a bit orange, as pine sometimes does, I really like it and it's extremely useful for storage. I have been meaning to attack it with a tin of chalk paint for absolutely ages but I have not really had the time. Until yesterday. Yesterday I was in a very bad mood. My lovely truck had to go off to be scrapped because the head gasket had gone and I couldn't afford to get it fixed, I discovered that the bag of organic layers pellets had gone mouldy because it had been resting against a damp towel in the laundry room and I had to throw it away and my hideous neighbours were once again being vile and all this was before about 8am! Not a good morning and because of my bad mood, I knew there was no way I would be able to sit down and concentrate on sewing because I knew that I would be unpicking more than I actually sewed so I was slumped on the sofa watching awful bank holiday TV in a very grumpy mood. 

Then, while I was rummaging in the spare room looking for a magazine to read, I spotted the tin of Old White Chalk Paint that I had earmarked for the dresser. I had this mad idea that paining might get rid of some of my frustrations so I grabbed the paint, found a brush and after I had moved all the things off the dresser, I attacked the dresser with the paint. 

Before

Three hours and two coats of paint later and the dresser was transformed. I have to say I love it but I am undecided as to whether I should sand it back and distress it. My mum says I shouldn't so I might just give it a coat of wax to give it a bit more durability. 

After

Unfortunately, as usual, having something newly painted in a room tends to show up all the marks and blemishes in the rest of the room so now I just need to paint the walls, paint the ceiling, paint the doors and paint the beams ........hmmmmm maybe painting that dresser wasn't such a bright idea after all :-)

Ta Da ...... My Battered Old Piano Is Now........

PINK!!!!!! Yes I said pink :-) I know it won't be everyone's cup of tea but I absolutely love it. I had initially painted it a sort of pale-ish greeny, grey, blue which I mixed from some Annie Sloan Old White and some tester pots I had and it was actually quite a nice colour but, it made the far end of the living room look really cold. I didn't really want to paint it in Annie Sloan Old White because, being a bit of a wimp, I seem to paint everything Old White and besides, it would just get lost against the white walls.  I'm still decorating the living room and some of the beams aren't painted with the top coat yet and the lighting wasn't brilliant but you get the idea so from this ............

To This ..........

The plan initially was to Annie Sloan it, distress it and then wax it but as I still haven't quite mastered the wax ageing process yet, I was a bit dubious about attacking it with the dark wax. So, after a thorough rummage in my paint cupboards, I came across half a tin of satinwood paint in a fabulous pale pink colour called Sweet Sundae. After taking a few deep breaths and before I could change my mind, I slapped a big patch of pink paint on the front of the piano so I couldn't chicken out and it looked so fabulous, I carried on and painted the whole thing pink. I absolutely love it. It has really warmed up the room, it goes perfectly with the curtains which are a lovely floral pattern and it goes beautifully with my Cath Kidston cushions on the sofa. 

Inspiration For My Piano

I mentioned in my last blog post that after I have grappled with the living room ceiling I am going to paint my piano. It's a very old, very battered and very out of tune upright piano, which was bought by my ex mother-in-law for about £40 about 12 years ago for my kids to play on when they were younger. It's been moved several times since then and it's not been tuned for years and no-one has ever really played it but, it will apparently cost a fair bit to get someone to come and take it away and quite honestly, it looks nice with my family photos on top of it and it fills up my living room, which is quite big. It's just very very ugly, although there is a very beautiful inlaid rose with gorgeous leaves which I am planning to pick out in a different colour.

To be fair, it's looking a little more battered than usual at the moment because it's really dusty from all the furniture moving I have been doing while painting the ceiling and also because I didn't bother to cover it while I was painting and it got a few splodges of paint on it but as I'm painting it anyway it won't really matter.

This is the beautiful inlaid rose that I'm going to pick out in a different colour.

Sooooo in order to get some inspiration, I was looking on-line to find some ideas and I have come across some really awesome painted pianos. I'm hoping to mix some Annie Sloane Chalk Paint to get the perfect colour and I was thinking of painting it a lovely muted French Grey, I thought it would look nice against the newly painted white walls but then I found these pictures and now I'm not so sure. I really love them ...... What do you think?

http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/upload/1407443603826293_jESgNe9m_c.jpg

http://www.savvyhousekeeping.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/turquoise-piano-4.jpg

http://www.thecottagechick.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Green-Piano-3.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hh1r91yQ_2A/UDCE6qW3K8I/AAAAAAAACrE/t84illZ-wgg/s1600/meganspiano2.JPG

Annie Sloan Mini-Makeovers

Well, my gloom seems to have been lifted. I went for a lovely walk yesterday and when I got back, after thawing my fingers out over a cup of tea and a chocolate chip cookie, I grabbed my Annie Sloan stash and set too. As you might have noticed, I am a bit of a hoarder. I buy things and then put them in the spare room until I can decide what to do with them and where in my house I can find a space for them. 

A couple of years ago. I bought a lovely oil painting of a boat in a harbour from one of my local junk shops. Possibly not everyone's cup of tea but I thought it looked kind of like some of the little harbours in deepest darkest Cornwall, the kind that has managed to stay hidden from the hoards of rampaging tourists that descend on us during the summer months, (or maybe even somewhere in the Mediterranean) so, I bought it for princely sum of 50p. The frame was a bit ugly but nevertheless, I still really liked it so I put it in my spare room awaiting a transformation. 

Before

Cue Annie Sloan, a coat of Old White, some clear wax and YES ...... some antique wax as well!! I was feeling brave. As the picture itself is old-ish, I thought I should make the frame look older so I bravely gave it a coat of antique wax over the coat of clear wax and then rubbed everything back to expose some of the gold that was on the frame before I painted it. I have to say I am really happy with it.

After

The next thing to get the Annie treatment was a cute little trug. It was a present from one of my daughter for Mother's Day last year and it had some lovely primulas planted in it. Once the flowers had died back, I planted the foliage outside in my garden, where they are doing very nicely, and I put the little trug in the spare room with the rest of my stash of lovely things.

Before 

I initially painted the base, inside and out, with a coat of Greek Blue, a gorgeous sunshine blue like a Greek island sky. However, I then had a bit of an epiphany. My Christmas theme this year is red and white rustic and I realised that I should have painted it white so I could use it to put something Christmassy in. So, I set to and painted over the Greek Blue with a coat of Old White (although it might need a second coat, I haven't decided yet).

 Et Voila ....... cute little trug all ready for Christmas.

After

Annie Sloan Mirror Makeover .... Before and After

A couple of years ago I bought a beautiful, if somewhat shabby, over mantle mirror from eBay for about £30. Some of you may have noticed that I get quite a lot of stuff from eBay .... it's rather  a bad habit of mine but there are so many bargains and I find them hard to resist ....... a bit like car boot sales :-)  Anyway, the mirror has been sitting in my spare bedroom ever since just waiting to be transformed. I have been itching to get started for ages and since I bought the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, it's just been a case of finding the time to transform it. That time finally came last Thursday.

I gathered my lovely collection of Annie Sloan paints together to try and decided if I was brave enough to paint the mirror any colour other than Old White ..... sadly, I wasn't, I chickened out again and so out came the Old White. I do feel slightly annoyed with myself. I have seen many beautiful items on other blogs where clever people have used the Annie Sloan products to great effect but I'm still not quite brave enough to give it a go on something really big and something that is eventually going to be in a very conspicuous position over my fireplace in the middle of my living room. Cowardly I know, but there you go. 

Before 

I know I said in a previous post that the paint is quite expensive and at £17.25 for a 1ltr can, it's much more expensive than the paint I would normally buy but, I must say, I am very impressed at how far the paint goes. I did two layers of paint on the mirror and as you can see, it's quite a big mirror and I barely even made a dent in the can of paint. I did find that I had to mix in some water though because the paint was very thick and quite hard to use, but once the water was added, the paint went on beautifully. It dries really quickly too and I managed to get the whole thing painted twice in about 4 hours. I was going to wax the mirror with some of the clear wax but I think the mirror is quite old and it's a bit rickety and I had to put parcel tape around the edge of each of the mirrors on the back because I was slightly worried that they would fall out and I didn't want to go near it with a hammer and nails, so I just buffed the mirror with a cloth to get rid of some of the chalkiness and hung it over the fire. 

After

It's now just waiting to be decorated with some mini-bunting, some cute little knick-knacks (Yipee, more rummaging in junk shops) and it will be finished. Actually, with hind-sight, I should maybe have painted the panels at the bottom a different colour, maybe a pale grey, or even a really pale pink but that will have to wait until I can get the thing off the wall again! It was quite a job to get it up there in the first place and took two of us several attempts to get it hung and straight so, unless I can figure out a way to paint it while it's still on the wall, it might just have to stay Old White forever.