I haven’t really been much lately for doing things around the house… My excuse is that I’ve been in and out of the house since March, half living up on Ballina and other jobs. I got it in my head to at the very least unpack all my craft stuff and take stock of all the things I haven’t touched in a while!
Some Japanese cotton fabric remnants I got from the Olive Tree MarketsOld fabric stash, mostly from the US which I brought over in my suitcase.Other fabric stash, mostly from Australia ($$$$) and the bottom one’s are from IKEAStash of Japanese Fabric from Nipori Fabric Town (Tokyo)Craft room 1.0 before the move, showing my swathes and swathes of fabric yet to be touched
The finished product (if you can even tell)! This is all a very moot point, because the room will have to be cleared out eventually to make room for a housemate when Pat leaves for his pilot training (sob sob sob). But I’ll take it while it lasts! Not like I will do anything, but hey…
Dumpster dive mannequin find before and after spray paint
I will go on and admit my secret shame: I dumpster dive. Not as much as I did back in the States, but if I see something interesting in the trash I have no shame picking it up. Australians also seem very good at putting their “nice trash” outside the dumpster… Council Clean Up Day, anyone!?
When I lived in downtown Newcastle the back entrance to my place was an alleyway where all the shops would dump their trash and it would sit for weeks before they got it emptied. Awesome for when my partner wanted to make seating for the veranda out of palettes, not so cool when it piled up and you couldn’t open the gate.
But I digress. One day I found this little gem shoved awkwardly in the side of the dumpster, probably by the guys who ran a t-shirt printing business at the end of the alley.
I carried it back up to the apartment much to the shock and horror of my partner.
Something needed to be done with it. I had all of these lofty ideas to paint it, put all sorts of designs on it, decupouge, cover in fabric or duct tape… None of this ever happened. I hauled it from one house to the other, thinking it would eventually go in the bin again.
I got some kick up the ass when I was home for a weekend and figured the very least I could do was spray paint it. One trip to Bunnings and $7 lighter, I had a can of blue spray paint.
I went to town on this thing. The partner tried to give me a few pointers (which I promptly ignored, even though he is amazing at anything DIY), and in about an hour it was done.
One thing I will recommend: clean off any marker before starting! I gave the mannequin a good wash but couldn’t get off the permanent market. I should have dissolved it with something to get it off, because as I was spraying the marker would dissolve from the paint. I wound up just giving it a first coat and letting it dry for a few hours but I could have saved myself some time and some of the nightmarish imagery.
Before and after of my free (thanks Sally!) wood dresser
Sanded the hideous varnish off of this dresser a mate gave me, and probably got cancer in the process from breathing in the varnish dust.
After sanding everything (stopping frequently to blow the varnish dust out of my nose and think about my life choices), I added a coat of Danish oil to seal and protect the wood. Just waiting on some hardware! I went the way of the EBay for some “cup” pulls, rather than a local distributor, because $2 for a pull was a bit more economical than $25 each pull for the EXACT SAME THING (I kid you not).
