Home at last

So the lost & found exhibition at PS2 has come to an end during a rather full-on weekend.

On Saturday I held a vintage jumble sale and parted ways with some of the items from the show. Only some mind!

A large proportion of my collection of holy pictures will soon be gracing the new refurb of the upstairs in the Spaniard bar in Belfast.

I've kept the best ones and have a renewed resolve to buy only the best items I find from now on. I don't want to become a hoarder. Tell me it's not too late?

Then on Sunday I led a cake stand class at the Crescent Arts Centre and later enlisted some big strong men to help me transport the entire installation home in one fell swoop. And they did me proud! Thanks Bob, Jim and Dan.

Now I'm relishing the opportunity to redesign our home and our living room is slowly transforming from an ugly duck pile of stuff into a swan. A very higgledy-piggledy, overcrowded and colourful swan but hopefully a swan nonetheless!

Read all about it.

Here is some shameless self-promotion! On the morning of the opening of the lost & found show, a photographer from local newspaper 'The Irish News' called round to take a picture of the exhibition. So here I am pretending to look through some records.

This is what the blurb says:

LOST AND FOUND:

Photographer Maeve Henry relaxes in the PS2 gallery space which she has
 turned into an overcrowded living room full of things she collects from

charity shops, skips, derelict houses and other places where

people might not think to look. Her project entitled ‘Lost and

Found’ will be on display until April 28. Members of the public

are invited to bring their own collectables to be part of the

exhibition. Visit www.lostandfoundbymaeve.blogspot.co.uk or

www.pssquared.org for more information

DIY lampshades

Here are a couple of ideas for upcycling those cheap paper globe lampshades you find everywhere, and they each only cost a few pounds to make!

 

I decided that I would put the lost & found exhibition space to good use and get my craft on there. So armed with just some lampshades, paint, tissue paper and glue I came up with these two designs, and I have a whole load more ideas I still want to try out.

The star lampshade is simply a matter of cutting shapes from tissue paper and sticking them on using PVA glue. Simples.

For the paint drip lampshade you just mix some coloured paints with a little water and then use a plastic cup to drip them all over the shade. Then let it dry before then turning it upside down and repeat!

Here they are lit up:

How would you decorate yours?

Lost & found exhibition opening.

And straight on to the opening! It was such a great night and really busy with lots of friends and family there as well as both of the late night art tours visiting the show. The room certainly felt cosy then!

There was even spontaneous dancing to Otis on the record player.

Thanks to everyone who came down. It's open all month and I'm planning a craft workshop and a couple of intimate get togethers down there. Stay tuned for details.

A home from home.

All done! I finished the last few bits and bobs down in the space and generally enjoyed it all day. Here are pictures for your perusal.

On the home stretch

It's been quite a day. We made great progress in the space today though there are still a couple of little bits and pieces to do before the clamouring hoards arrive tomorrow evening. It feels nice and cosy though.

BUT this morning I moved a ladder, forgetting that there was a hammer on top if it and it fell, pointy end down onto my head. And THEN I closed my finger in a car door and I now have a half blue nail. I'd show you photographic evidence but I'm concerned you may be eating at the moment.

One has to suffer for one's Art, doesn't one?

Exhibition progress

Things are moving along down at PS2. I arrived down there on Friday to find my name and the exhibition details on the window - famous at last!

Danny and I set about masking off the walls and painting them, clothed in fetching overalls.

On Sunday I led a paper party deco class at the Crescent Arts Centre and then loaded up lots of furniture into a hire van to bring down to the space. It's all happening!

 

Lost & Found - the exhibition!

There's some very exciting news here at Lost & Found. I'm having an exhibition next week! It all happened very quickly. A few months back a man called Peter who runs the fantastic PS2 project space on Donegall Street in Belfast emailed me after coming across this very blog. He asked if I'd like to have a lost and found exhibition all about collecting, recycling and how we all have different ideas about the beauty and value of the objects we have around us.

Skip forward to last week when I was told that there was a spot open for my show in April - two weeks later! Luckily I work at the University so I have two weeks holidays for Easter. Isn't life wonderful. So it's all go and very busy and exciting but I wouldn't have it any other way. The next few days will be spent packing up most of the contents of my home to bring down to the space, then I'll spend a few days putting the collections all together.

I'd love people to add items to the project (you can have them back afterwards) - they might be old photographs you find in a second-hand book, a shopping list found on the street or your favourite vintage find or beach combing treasure.

There really is treasure everywhere!

There will be an opening night on Thursday 5th April which coincides with the fabulous late Night Art when all the galleries in Belfast open late and there's free wine to be had! It's always a good night, so please call by if you're free. The exhibition will be there until the 28th april. 

Click here for more information on the PS2 website.

Chez moi

Inspired by my earlier room envy post, I tidied up this corner of our living/dining room. It's not quite as elegant but I like things to be homey. I'd completely forgotten I had this amazing and really long zebra painted hanging that I bought in Zambia a few years ago. So it is now the one and only 'curtain' I have in the house. Shameful. 

The beautiful silver bonbon tray was recently passed to me after my great aunt died, and the poster is a copy of the old British Railways poster for my hometown.

Our makeshift bookcase which consists of the base of an old dressing table and the wooden pigeonhole unit, both of which we pulled out of skips. They've been awaiting a revamp for a while, but until I find a bookcase, there they stay.

And I got this toy tiger today in a charity shop because I keep seeing spray-painted toy animals on the blogosphere and I want to get in on that action!

Room Envy

I don't think I'll ever be restrained enough to have a room quite as elegant as this one. But everything is precious about it, I'm especially coveting that painting and the blue velvet studded doors!

I came across this picture on the lovely website littlegreennotebook Have a gander!

Chesterfield love.

Here she is in all her glory. The beautiful new sofa of my dreams. I believe I've spoken on here of my hatred of the cream leather number that came with our rented house so when I bought not one but two new sofas in the space of a week there was the glaring problem of where to put them. Luckily my lovely landlady had another empty house she was able to put the cream fugliness into and now we have a lovely living room filled with our own treasure.

Chesterfields (and burgundy chesterfields to be specific) are the only exception to my hatred of leather sofas and I feel like a real grown up now that I own such a sohisticated piece of furniture. I suppose it really ought to be sitting in a library which smells of rich mahogany and is filled with many leather-bound books but that will have to wait until our next house.

Here's the red one below which is really cosy and looks lovely with my Peruvian blanket over the back. We bought both pieces from charity shops and even though the chesterfield cost five times the price of the red one, it was still a fraction of what it must be worth. Plus this is a forever sofa.

The weird little creature is the worm out of the film 'Labyrinth' (he's freaked out several visitors already) and the cushion came back with us from honeymoon in Santorini. But it's the sofa that I love most. You may have gathered that.

Lamp progress and a new find.

You may have seen the flower lampshade in my recent post but I've now painted the lamp stand pink to match it. I didn't have the sense to take a 'before' picture but it was plain brown wood and from the 70s probably. I put masking tape over the metal bands and left a stripe of wood showing through.

I still need to wax and varnish the paint but I'm far too impatient to wait any longer to use it.

You may also notice a new and rather fabulous piece of furniture that Danny is reclining on in these pictures. A grown-up sofa which I am head over heels about. More pictures to come.

And here's my latest find. I volunteer in a charity shop one morning a week and the other day this gorgeous old bowl came in. Fortunately for me the shop doesn't sell anything that is damaged and this has a monster of a chip in the rim so I wasted no time in dragging it home with me, in return for a donation to the charity of course. 

 I'm no expert but I'd wager that this was once part of a basin and pitcher set from a wash stand and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the best part of a hundred years old. Feel free to enlighten me though!

A saucy little chair

Introducing the sexiest chair around! About 3 years ago I went to a vintage fair with my Aussie friend Gemma and she bought this fabulous little chair plastered all over with pin-up girls.

Skip forward to a few months ago and Gemma was moving back home (by random fate with her boyfriend who is a childhood friend and neighbour of mine!) and needed rid of some of her belongings so I was lucky enough to be able to buy this off her. the Australian import authorities are notoriously strict so there was no chance she could get a piece of wood into the country. Her loss was my gain.

Can't you just imagine sitting on this chair at your huge dressing table in your impossibly glamorous 1930s dressing gown? I wish people still dressed like that these days - silk underwear and velvet evening dresses and hats with net and long gloves and diamonds at breakfast! I think I was born in the wrong era.

Thanks Gemma!