Recycle, Reuse, Reduce: Bottles and Jars

Some of my favourite repurposed bottle pics: Life is a Luxury, A Pair and a Spare, Jenna's Beach Retreat. 

Recycle, reuse, reduce! It's the mantra of our age and nothing seems to be more popular than repurposed bottles and jars. They've been trending for quite a while now with no sign of going away.

I love it, ever since moving interstate without a job, affordable decor ideas have been my new passion.

My cousin/roommate and I used a left over sparkling bottle as a vase on our new Op Shop dining table.

But sometimes a plain ol' bottle simply won't do, sometimes you want a little spice in your life, sometimes you want colour. It's times like these you need minties you decorate.

I needed another pen holder for my desk and thought that old pesto jar sitting in the pantry would do nicely. I promptly removed the label but wanted it to look a little more fun so away I went. Below are step-by-step instructions for you own bunting/circus inspired jar art.

Materials

What would be ideal for this project is a stain glassing craft kit, or Pebeo glass paint. In the absence of these do as I did and use whatever you have handy, I used Posca paint pens, acrylic paint and, luckily, I had some Pebeo porcelain outliner paint for the edging. There is one thing you can't do without however and that's a jar/bottle. So to sum up...

• Jar/bottle
• Some sort of paint
• Paintbrush

1.  Remove any labels and sticky parts from you jar.

2. Start painting on your design. I went for a sort of bunting idea, you can do anything you want.

3. Once the paints are dry outline it with the outliner paint. If you don't have outliner paint a sharpie will do in a pinch (with slightly different result).

4. You're finished! Wasn't that easy and cost effective. Now stick some pens in it, use it as a vase or paint the lid as well and store loose seasonings in it. The possibilities are endless

Pinterest Picks

My picks from Pinterest; the boards I found them on, and the sites they came from.

1. Wilting Flowers

• This evocative photograph comes from Pumpkin Eye, a Tumblr account gathering together a myriad of quirky and just plain pretty images.
• I found it on Roachel Follett's comprehensive 'Flowers' board.

2. Fashion photograph by John Rawlings, 1941

• I traced the pin back to Le blog de SoVeNa. The images found there are fascinating, unfortunately the articles are not written in English so I can't make heads or tails of them, but the images are more than enough to get me through. Knowing the image is by John Rawlings, however, you can find out more about him and his work at Voguepedia.
• The board on which I saw it: Adelaide McKenzie's 'Past'.

3. Paper Flowers

• A tutorial from the design and DIY blog known as The Elli Blog. Beautifully laid out and with an added interest in weddings this is a lovely blog to take a wander through. A clearly laid out and well styled tutorial for the pin is also available.
• The pin came from Cici Absolutely White’s ‘Do It Yourself’board full of amazing DIY I’m dying to try.

4. Paper Houses

• The paper houses come from the blog Designand Form. For those feeling crafty there’s a tutorial complete with templates on the site. Design and Form is run by Emma Sweden and home to many other stunningly minimalist paper craft tutorials.

• I found this pin on Robbie Lockard’s ‘Tablescape Ideas’ board.

Restoration: Dollhouse Part 2

Part 1
Things aren't looking good.

I thought I'd rip up the carpets to' get rid of 'dust catchers' but really I thought I was taking the easy way out. Rip them up paint over the top easy as pie, right? Wrong.

It left a huge mess behind that I can really get rid of and tore up patched of the woods surface as well. As it turns out the doll house is made out of chipboard which puckers and roughs up if you excessively wet it like I did trying to get the remnants off. I think I've found a solution though. I'm going to scrap it down to as smooth as possible, seal the exposed wood and then cover the lot in coloured contact like the original 'bathroom' and 'kitchen' were. I'm hoping to find some wood grain contact, I think they sell it at Ikea but I really only have time to go to Big W so fingers crossed.

Restoration: Dollhouse to Bookshelf

I don't think I told you, but I'm moving out. Yep, I'm leaving my parents big comfy house in Brisbane and high tailing it to Melbourne, or there abouts, to live with cousin. It's all very exciting and nerve racking and a whole plethora of emotions I hardly new existed, and seeing as there's only nine days until I leave I though I'd take on a project. Makes sense doesn't it.

 This my dollhouse. My Papa (grandpa) made it for me when I was around 3 or 4. I adored it. As you can see it's been through a bit. I stuck stickers on the inside walls as artwork for my barbies, when I was ten I got a free stamp with a magazine, tried it out and got bored halfway through, and it's spent the last decade or so living in the garage. Not anymore! Over the next few days, lets say six, I'm going fix it up The Block style. When I'm done it will be ready to come to Melbourne and serve as my cute a quirky bookshelf.

Lets survey the damage.

All in all it's not so bad, it just need a good clean and a lick of paint. The hinges aren't even rusted.

Now it's back to work, packing, organising and the usual moving interstate things.

Part 2

Sydney

I'm back, I got in late last night and slept in late this morning. Sydney was great, I loved everything about it (minus the slightly higher price of some things). The food was to dies for, the shopping inexhaustible and the atmosphere was electric.

 View from Sydney Tower of Hyde Park and St Mary's Cathedral near where I was staying.

While there I learnt of three awesome artists, two are Sydney based and the third I found in a book In one of the many bookstores managing to stay alive in Sydney (this one was on Oxford street).

Elizabeth I by Alexia Sinclair.
I discover Sinclair in a Sydney Style pamphlet that was at the check on counter of my hotel.

Atma by Walton Ford.
This is the guy I found in the bookshop. They had some large format books on pedestals for patrons to look at, and I spent most of my time in that store flicking through this one. If it wasn't so likely to kick over my bag weight limit on the way home (or my bank account for that matter) I might have bought it.

Boobook Owl by Joseph Austin.
I bought this little cutie in the form of a greeting card at Paddington Markets. Austin does some stunning Botanical Etchings as well, mostly of native Australian plants too.


To keep up to date with the words and pictures I'm sharing now head on over to my new website, www.sarahfallon.net.  I'm talking reading, writing and all kinds of daydreamy things.