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.

Earrings from a shampoo bottle!

Step 1: Buy awesomely coloured shampoo and conditioner bottles

Step 2: Use them up (on your hair, usually), rinse them (the bottles, well, your hair too) and stick them in your craft cupboard cos 'you might find a use for them some day'...

Step 3: Years later, epiphonize (yes I know that's not a word) about making earrings out of them, rinse the dust off and cut out the more flat areas of the bottles (better suited for earring making at least)

 Step 4: Recycle the bits you don't need!

 Step 5: Admire pretty colours and think about what the heck you're going to do with them and wonder if you should just recycle these bits as well because honestly who's ever gonna want earrings made from shampoo bottles and this probably won't work out anyway...

 Step 6: Decide to try anyway. Doodle some ideas (I doodled some easy-to-cut designs)

 Step 7: Decide what to do

 Step 8: Get to cutting!

 Step 9: Ah, yes, exactly as planned! Except it looks like a transformer.

 Step 10: Drill/cut out holes to attach the pieces (I just use a screw that I hammer the holes with, it does the trick since the plastic I use is quite soft)

Step 11: Make some connectors out of wire or use store bought ones and attach pieces together

Step 12: Realize that initial plan will not work out, so leave bits to sit until come up with better plan or decide to settle for this version (picture below)

Step 13: Make some more, cos it's fun.

Here's some blurry pictures of another pair I made a few years back:

And I guess there's at least 2 people in the world who would wear shampoo bottle earrings since I've worn my pink ones on several occasions and the neon lime green ones I made (same design) we're adopted by a friend of mine, who has also worn them on several occasions. They can be made quite big without them being heavy at all.

So, hurrah for shampoo bottles!

Earrings from a bag!

On my birthday last year I decided to treat myself by buying some leather paints. I'm generally not quite sure yet what my relationship with leather is (I don't eat meat), but I think remaking old leather bags, shoes, wallets, belts etc. seems like a very ecological and fun thing to do, so, after hoarding a bunch of leather items from Kierrätyskeskus, I got to work on my first pair of leather earrings!

They're super light, colourful, and don't really look like leather anymore, really...

And they've definitely become one of my favourite pairs to wear.

An old and worn leather bag.

Designing and how well it works/doesn't work. 

The things you'll need:

- bit of old leather 

- leather paint

- protective top coat

- fine paint brushes

- something to cut out and punch a hole in the leather with

- the usual earring paraphernalia (pliers, hooks, links)

Et voilà! Painting old leather is a really nice way of making sure those cows didn't die for nothing...! I've never been too good at painting, but oh I do enjoy it, and will definitely utilise all the paints I've bought to revamp some of my old leather goods. 

Happy crafting!

Necklaces

Due to the fact that I usually opt for earrings instead of a necklace, I haven't bought or made many. Right now I'm craving a neon yellow necklace, so maybe I'll get one done in time for spring... In the mean time, here's a few necklaces I made last year: the first is made out of socks. 

Which sounds somewhat unpleasant, but I can assure you, these socks we're thoroughly washed before I used them for this...! And they'd been sitting in a plastic bag in my cupboard for... about 3 years before I finally figured out what to do with those dear, holey, worn-at-the-heels things. I'd seen a tutorial on making roses out of strips of fabric (will link if find it again), and I figured I'd try making them out of strips of socks. It turned out better than I thought it would, I've still got a bunch of those sock roses in my crafting cupboard, so perhaps I should make a headband or something out of those...

The second (above) necklace is just a very quickly done one: I was in a hurry to get to a christmas party, and the theme was white, so with about 15 minutes to spare I cut up some felt, did a bit of glueing, and that was that, out the door. Haven't worn it since though... hmm.. maybe need to make it more... wearable... somehow... 

Roses are red, roses are blue, these ones I made from an old sock or two.

My poetic aptitude is off the charts.

Some more new earrings and a handy way of storing them

Here's some more earrings I made a while back, my plan was to start up an online shop to sell them, but I still haven't gotten around to doing that... Soon, soon...!

I also picked up some cake tin parts from the freebie section in Kierrätyskeskus, super handy and pretty for storing earrings, rings and random bits and bobs.

For christmas I made my mum some earrings, bracelets and a reflector and wrapped them up with one of these cake tin halves, and  now she stores her earrings and bracelets on one as well (though I've made her so many that they don't really all fit...).

Something pretty

(thats a good song by the way, by patrick park)

Ever since i can remember recycling, reusing and many other re- starting words have been high in my i-like-this list.

My cupboards and closets are filled with ... things. Things that normal people throw away (or hopefully recycle). I'm a collector. Of things. Of many things. Of too many things.
I'm not good at throwing things away (maybe that should be another theme for this year... ''you can throw it out''-year) because i can see possibilities and new uses for just about anything.

So my first actual post shall be about this need of mine to see the good in everything. The story begins with toilet paper rolls. Everyone needs them, everyone has them, so why not do something fun with them? And perhaps more importantly, something pretty. I started not putting them in the cardboard recycling almost 2 years ago. I now had many toilet paper rolls.

Even a friend of mine brought me a big bag of rolls (there would've been two bags, but her boyfriend threw them out cos he was sick of them being in the way).

So. Now what?

I tried to look for different things to do with them. Googling only lead to many children's craft sites. I did not want to make toilet paper roll butterflies or penguins.

This was one of the best reuses that i found, but wasn't i wanted at the time. I wanted something on a bigger scale, something to decorate my apartment with. And maybe something a bit simpler to create (i'll post about a warning story for that, my kusudama lamp, which is still only halfway done... but more about that later).

I finally found inspiration on one of my favourite sites, design*sponge, and this is what i made:

I randomly glued these quarter parts of the rolls together and clumsily hung them from a random nail in my living room wall. Not very chic, but easy and fun to do! All you need are the rolls, scissors and glue. I also used some mini clothespins to keep the parts together while the glue dried (only took about 10 seconds of pressure for them to stay put).

About half a year later i decided my foyer needed spicing up, so i painted these formations white and bluetacked them to the ceiling and floor. I think this turned out pretty nice, the shadows they make at night when the lights are on are pretty amazing too.

(They do fall down from time to time, so i keep a blobule (like globule, but blobbular) of bluetack nearby for quick fixes...!)