Jewellery trees

Went mushrooming last weekend and found some cool branches.

1. Collected pretty branches and took them home

2. Cleaned them and snapped off any brittle bits

3. Drilled and glued a few together

4. Slapped on a few golden paint highlights

5. Popped some wooden beads on the ends of a few branches

6. Hammered to a painting easel 

(long story involving some very slow drying clay and a failed attempt at making a clay stand) 

7. Hung some bracelets and necklaces from it

It would look really cool on a wall as well, 

but I have no available wall space on walls that aren't rock hard cement..

Here's a ring holder I made a few years back, also added some beads to it yesterday:

And of course this would look really cool au naturel, sans paint and beads!

Habitare

Went to the Habitare show yesterday, a furniture, interior decorating and design fair, 

and I found some inspiration for future projects and just fun ideas in general: 

there are some very creative people out there!

A lamp made out of light bulbs. 

Which doesn't sound ground breaking, and it's not the first lightbulb light I've seen, but still fun:

 I've got a (growing..) selection of pretty old books myself, here's a fun way of utilizing them 

(the button wall is a cute idea as well):

I could live in this bed. So comfy looking. 

And I love the braided pillows on the wall, 

the big is is cool too, but kind of looks like a... well, a braided turd. 

But an awesome braided turd at that:

(they also look like giant, fat tentacles waiting to choke me when I fall asleep.. well, at least they'd be soft..!)

Boxes on walls is always cool:

A different kind of wooden floor:

Love love love this idea: rakes as hangers! Want.

This room was super cute.

 Love the white tree, love the pillow made out of a rug (on the floor) and the closet in the corner has a cool idea behind it (and foxes are the best!):

Hardware text:

There was also an interesting exhibition in the show area:

 time traveling from the 50's to the 00's in Finland:

 Designer wallpaper from the 50's, I thought the birds had really funny expressions...

Finnish design: chairs from the 50's!

A living room from the 50's, me likey:

...and one from the 60's. Love the vinyl holder!

 Pretty glassware and others things:

I'm hoping to bump into this print sometime at the Kierrätyskeskus:

 Cassiope tetragona, Vaccinium vitis-ideae and Trientalis europaea, awesome!

 Prints! Colours! Seventies!

A hip and happening 70's room, check out that white chair thing! 

Cool idea with the clips and lp covers on the wall as well. 

80's. Wow. What a decade.

....

What a Fatboy is doing in a 90's Finnish design room is a mystery to me..

at least there's a brick of Nokia on the table!

And the final room, a room from the 00's. Meh.

Cool show and cool ideas. For dessert, (real) birch wallpaper from the 00's

Vintage, man.

Macrame and hanging things with it aka crockery bondage

Was blog-surfing and found this cute little project from a blog called Transient Expression.

So I rummaged about in my craft cupboard, 

but all my fimo bits are so small that I wouldn't be able to make a vase even this small from any one colour, 

buuut luckily I found some ooooold old clay and a few minutes later my vase was sitting outside drying.

It didn't turn out as pretty as the original, but I like the concretey look of it so I'll let it be.

Then I took some pink yarn from my yarn bowl and got about macrameing. Initially just for the clay clump I'd just made, but I was impatient for it to dry so I thought I'd try out the idea with other small plant pots.
The smallest ones I have in use are teacups. So:

They're hanging by the window for now, I might move them a bit to the side,
but that requires drilling in more hanging, umm, bits to the window frame,
and I'm not in the mood for that.

Then I got carried away and did a whole lot of macrame for some cute cups 

I've had lying around and an old tea pot.

This display of crockery bondage is now hanging in my kitchen. 

The tea pot will be filled with some plant that hangs nicely. 

Like thyme or something. Something edible anyway.

I also made a fox out of the left over clay:

I will be painting him once he's dry. Perhaps in a very very faint orange, with a golden nose...

Himmeli

Made my first ever ''himmeli'' (from the german word for heaven) out of bright pink straws. 

Then I made a green one... these are very addictive to make! I still need at least a neon yellow one... and a white one... and a teal one... and...

The things on my walls (Part 1)

Oops, it's been a while! I blame my intensive uni course on analytical analysis and modeling, it was... fun.

But now we shall take a look at some things on my walls! *waaahhhh, the crowd goes wild*

I think I have a phobia of bare walls, unless they're in some big space where they add to the feeling of space, or somewhere like a toilet, where i guess it's ok to have a bare wall.. though I would like to have some artwork in my toilet, now that I think about it...

In my apartment i have a total of 17 walls (not counting the balcony, that's still a work in progress after 2 years of living here... krhm...). Of those 17 walls, 2 are huge windows, 3 are covered by built-ins (bedroom closets and kitchen cabinets), 4 are in the bathroom so they don't count, and the rest? The other 8 are covered in stuff, the things on my walls!

I will now share some of those things with you.

Here is my elephant wall. The elephants are cut out of postcards I've gotten over the years. I debated with myself about what animal would be the star, other ideas were horse, bird and i-forget-what.
I finally chose the elephant, because a herd of elephants (or do they have some fancy name for themselves? Like how groups of crows are called murders, etc.?) looks pretty fabulous, and elephants never forget (which ties in nicely with the postcards i've received, from people who have remembered me, and also with the when-walking-out-the-door-don't-forget-the-keys thing).

Here's something i made just to fill up the wall with something for my housewarming party. I ended up liking it so much that it's been there ever since. Also, I'm probably too lazy to take down the 63 squares of paper/cardboard (mostly cut out from the Carhartt magazine Rugged (R.I.P), those free postcards they have at movie theaters in Holland and club advertisements) that are individually bluetacked to my wall.

Below are bits of my kitchen walls. My kitchen walls are one of the (many) black holes of my apartment, where stuff just randomly accumulates into something that could probably look better, but oh well.

(you should see my fridge door...)

The shelves are dutch fruit crates from the 60's and 70's and I've used old glass jars as picture frames. The recipe book was a handmade gift from my sister. The teacups are part of an ever growing collection that I've scavenged from the local Kierrätyskeskus (a recycling center, one of my favourite places).

I own about 50 pairs of earrings, some of which I've made myself (will make a post about those at some point), and they have various homes around my house. 

Most of them live on my retro tennis racquets (also from Kierrätyskeskus!) 

The rest of my earrings live on a diy cup cake stand (made out of an old candlestick and a plate) and this clay-twig-thing that I made, and the rest are in various stages of revamping.

I bought this cute owl from the Bärenpresse stall at the christmas market in Bonn, Germany for about 3 euros. You buy them as pieces of cardboard which you then cut up and join the pieces together yourself. I bought the dragon home as well, but that ones a bit more work than my owl, so will make it when I have time to actually focus on all the cutting, bending, glueing etc.

They're lots of fun to make and awesomely old school! Speaking of which... must get back to studying! Until next time, toodles!

Whoot whoot!

Zzz...