photo of the day: ancient earthworks

These ancient earthworks are just off the main road between Belfast and my home town. I have a weird obsession with hill forts, dolmens, cairns and so on and I eyed up this clump of trees every time we passed it.

 We finally got round to stopping at it last weekend and up close it's clear that the mound and its ditch around the perimeter were at least partly formed by humans and I just find it fascinating. Keep your eye trained to spot these ancient formations in the landscape.

Nellie the Elephant

Somehow I forgot to post about this recent find - a yellow elephant money box from the Northern Bank in Northern Ireland. I remember these from my childhood though I didn't have one myself. I looked them up online and found an identical one from the Midlands bank in England and apprently they were made in Finland in the 1970s.

The Ulster bank had the more famous 'Henry Hippo' money boxes which loads of my school friends had and I was so jealous of them because I was with a different bank. No need to be jealous any more! 

I must confess however that I inexplicably decided that the best thing to remove the decades of dirt would be nail polish remover. I was wrong. It stripped the shine off parts of the suface before I realised the error of my ways. Still, I love the bulbous shape of her and perhaps she'll encourage me to save a few pennies for a rainy day. 

Today's finds

I haven't done a post about my finds in ages but rest assured that my thrifting is unabated. Here are a couple of little beauties I've picked up recently - the Hornsea biscuit jar may horrify anyone who was around in the seventies but to me it's pure retro good ness.

The little Scottish watercolour is unsigned but really quite acomplished I think. I just did a quick count though and I now have 30 framed pictures in our living/dining room alone. Perhaps it's time to start rotating the collection, before I become one of those hoarders you see on TV who can't even get into some of the rooms in their home. 

And this little plant isn't found so much as made. I volunteer one morning a week with an organisation called the NOW project (http://www.nowproject.co.uk/)  and last week we planted these mini cacti and succulents like this one into old teacups that I collected. I just love how the design of this cup echoes the shape of the plant so this one came straight home with me.

If you happen to be from round these parts we'll be down at St George's market in Belfast next Friday morning selling all the goodies we've made over the past few months. We'd love it if you came down to support the charity.

Pixelated goodness

This morning I came across instructions for how to make this ridiculously clever pop-up card on a website called minieco which is chock full of brilliant craft ideas in the prettiest colours. It completely blew my mind! Turns out it's really easy to make as well.

Get the instructions and free printable here 

Here's my go at making it. I cut a little quotation out of a book and stuck it inside and glued another heart onto the front. (which came from a botched first attempt at making the card)

The inventor of this design is a genius and I now have yet another new website to obsess over. Happy days.

Origami winged heart tutorial

I browse a lot of design blogs and have almost overdosed already on all the hearts and pink everywhere so I'm not going to go overboard on the Valentine's themed posts. This however is a really sweet and easy piece of origami that you can make in a minute or so. I found the tutorial on youtube (that's the absolute best way to learn origami in my opinion) and the photos are of a few hearts I made myself. 

If you search on youtube you can find slightly more complex versions of this design with more realistic wings but I think this one is a good one to start with if you haven't done a lot of origami before. You could make large versions of this to decorate a room or stick one to the front of a homemade Valentine's card.

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!

New Bar!

I bought this little gem in my local charity shop recently and it's sitting in our living room, awaiting a makeover. I must admit I've seen much more fabulous bars for sale before but very rarely and always at a price so I think this was a good find. 

I stole the glass cabinet for my new craft room so this has taken its place. I've thrown all our fancy glasses and cocktail equipment in there for now but plans are afoot to give it a new lease of life. I'm thinking mignight blue or possibly purple on the outside and if it's at all affordable I'd love to put gold leaf in the inside. We shall see.

I'm planning to make it look a bit art deco though I think it might actually be more 30s or 40s. What do you think? And how would you paint it? Feel free to comment with some inspiration.

Chin chin!

word from the wise

A little nugget of joy from me to you. And Calvin is right, there really is treasure everywhere if you keep your eyes open.

Occupy Belfast

We called down to the Occupy Belfast rally on Saturday outside the old Bank of Ireland building in the city centre. The Occupy protesters managed to get inside the building a week ago and it's fitting that it is an old bank building and significant that it has been allowed to lie derelict for years when so many people are being evicted from their homes.

It is hoped that the gorgeous art deco space will be used for emergency housing for those who need it as well as a space for teachings and sharing of ideas. People are currently going about cleaning up the building and are hoping to get the running water. Tellingly the only damage so far has been caused by police who broke windows and doors despite having no legal right to evict the protesters.

Check out this video filmed on day two of the occpation. And why not 'like' Occupy Belfast on facebook; they're looking for equipment to set up a working kitchen so if you have anything lying around that might be of use then why not bring it down to the protesters camping out at Writer's Square.

Workers of the world, unite!

Craftiness: bird lampshade

Here is what I've been pottering about with for the past few days. I was inspired initially by this AMAZING lampshade below which is from Graham and Green but I didn't find its £400 price tag quite so inspiring so I decided to use a lampshade I got in charity shop to do something along similar lines. I'd still love to get a cage-like structure and make a more modern version like the Graham and Green one though.

I started with an old lampshade (look for ones with interesting wire work inside) and stripped the material and trim off. I've found that the material tends to be glued to the wire at the top and bottom and it's practically impossible to get it all off, but it shouldn't be too visable once it's all painted and decorated.

I then painted the frame with a couple of coats of emulsion paint (spray paint would probably be easiest) and then it was a fairly simple matter of wiring on artificial flowers and birds that I ordered from an online floristry shop. I covered some of the wires with coloured pipe cleaners. This is just my first version of the lampshade and I'm planning to make the flowers and birds from scratch next time. The floor lamp stand will be getting a re-vamp in the near future as well.

This is also the first project I've done in my new craft room at the top of the house. The light in it could be better but I got so sick of having half-finished craft projects lying around the living room (and I'm sure Dan was too though he was good enough not to complain) so everything is now in one place out of the way. I'll post some pictures once I have everything completely organised and pretty.

So what do you think? Does it need more flowers and things on it? Should the bulb be covered somehow? I'm hoping one day be able to sell a version of this so any advice would be appreciated!

Going deeper underground

This is Danny descending the wooden staircase down 54 floors into the Wieliczka Salt Mines near Krakow last week. Luckily there was a lift to take us back above ground, although that was quite an experience in itself because they insisted on squeezing 9 of us into a space that appeared made for no more than two. Below, Dan and Mary wait in the cold for the bus to the mine.

The mine is like nothing I've ever seen before - we went 135 metres underground but only saw one percent of the mine. But what a percent! There were sculptures, underground lakes, huge chapels and amazing salt chandeliers, all made by the miners in their spare time over the last few hundred years, and the mine has been in continuous use since the 13th Century.

This is the mind-boggling St Kinga's Chapel which is carved entirely out of salt including the floor tiles and crystals in the chandeliers. Like most visitors I licked the wall, just to check. And yes, it tasted of salt funnily enough. Most amazing of all is that this chapel and all of its sculptures were carved by three men, working one after the other. That's dedication.

The salt looks almost like granite most of the time but the light behind the statue below shows how clear it actually is. This was one of the most interesting places I've ever been and it helped that our guide Sebastian had us in fits of laughter the whole time.

Now if only I could have fit one of those chandeliers in my hand luggage.