Use what you have: shabby magazine rack

I was looking recently for a way to corral the Victoria and Romantic Homes magazines that have been piling up, but of course wanted them within easy reach of my reading chair. After looking at a few thrift stores I realized that I already owned the perfect thing - it was tucked away in a storage unit that is currently holding the last of the items from my dad's house. (I REALLY need to bring it all home so I can eliminate the expense of the storage unit - it's been two years!)

This piece is a barrel-style tub with handle and my parents bought it (I think) back in the late 50's or early 60's. It spent its entire life up to this point in a dark honey-oak color. I have actually never liked it (along with a blue-and-yellow vinyl ottoman, it was one of my least favorite objects in my childhood home - I have no idea why!). I realized that if I just gave it a coat of white paint it would look wonderful next to my reading chair!

So I painted it up to match my glider rocker, "lined" it with some of Great-Grandma's hand-stitched pillowcases, and VOILA: perfectly shabby magazine rack!

More soon!

The joys of letter-writing

This past week I took my daughter to Half-Price Books, in search of a copy of her required summer reading, Playing the Enemy (the book upon which the film Invictus in based). While in line at the checkout, I perused an impulse display of paperbound classics - and decided to purchase something by Jane Austen, whom I have never read.

I happened to select Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, and I truly fell in love with it! It was very difficult to read at first - it probably doesn’t even qualify as flowery prose, but Austen definitely uses a hundred words where Hemingway would only use 10. It forced me to slow down, find the rhythm of the writing, and really focus on what was being conveyed. No small feat, since a speed-reading course long ago doomed me to a life of devouring whole books in a matter of a few hours.

Since finishing the book, I’ve done just a bit of cursory research about the Regency period in England during which it was written and takes place. One bit of cultural history I enjoyed learning about was the process and etiquette of letter-writing.

Since the postal system had not yet been established as we know it today, if you wanted to communicate with someone across town you took a large sheet of paper and wrote them a letter on one side of it. You then folded it into a sort of self-contained “envelope”, affixing a wax seal to close it securely. (This not only made the letter easily transportable - it also assured the recipient that it had not been opened and read.) You then gave the letter to your footman, who was obligated to carry it immediately to the addressee.

I have long been a fan of writing letters. In fact I have very fond memories of a series of letters I exchanged in 10th grade with a male friend who moved away, and even farther back, a series I exchanged with a British pen pal named James who had very distinctive handwriting - I spent quite awhile trying to duplicate his capital letter "J." (I also remember discovering Hallmark sealing wax when I was in about sixth grade.) Unfortunately, with the exception of Christmas cards, I haven’t regularly corresponded with anyone via the hand-written method for many years.

In her book, Gift of a Letter, interior designer Alexandra Stoddard - a lifelong letter writer - says, “A personal letter can be one of the most intimate and touching of human expressions, one to another… I’ve come to realize that letter writing is the height of true communication among human beings, especially among friends.”

Letter-writing seems to me to be a custom worthy of reviving. How about you - are you a letter-writer? Have you ever been moved, to joy or despair, by a hand-written letter?

Treasure hunting grounds

One of my favorite past-times is to spend a couple hours wandering the aisles at my favorite area antique mall, The Brass Armadillo, here in Des Moines. The Brass Armadillo has brought me a lot of joy over the years, from finding a then-elusive covered casserole to go with my handed-down set of Currier and Ives dinnerware, to finding just the right set of home-made wheels for my husband to use in building his faux cannon for our front yard:

Here, though, is one of my absolute favorite booths at the Brass Armadillo - this is what I imagined my little store would have looked like if I had ever opened it:

What I like about this booth is that is lays out a collection of treasures, making each one visible but also making a beautiful cohesive vignette.

More treasures around the corner, inside the booth:

It took me a long time to understand something about shopping in a booth like this: When I buy an object from this vignette, I need to think about how I’m going to display it in my home so that it creates the same opportunity to see and appreciate it as it did in the store. That’s why, these days, I try to only buy items I already have a place for at least in my mind - whereas, in the past, I’d buy something just to acquire it, and then be disappointed when it didn’t give me the same satisfaction away from all of its in-store companions.

Of course, I never distance myself too far from the possibility of discovering something completely unplanned:

More soon!

Quick, cute centerpieces

Here’s a super-quick idea I created back in December. I needed centerpieces for the banquet tables for a local Harley Owners Group (HOG) Christmas party. The party theme was “Hoe-down,” and the audience was motorcycle enthusiasts. Here are the materials I used, no more than $1 for each item:

Small glass container
Florist foam block
1 stem silk flowers
1 Bandana
1 fistful of craft raffia

Starting with a small glass candle jar and “country-looking” silk flowers, I first pushed a chunk of florist’s foam down into each jar. (You can hot-glue it if you like; I left mine loose because I wanted the flowers to be removable.) I separated the blooms on their stems from each bunch of flowers and arranged them in the foam so they created a nice “poof” over the top of the container:

To decorate the jar, I wrapped each one in a brightly-colored bandana. This fit right in with the barn-dance theme, and bikers use them all the time as head coverings. I folded the corners of each bandana in so it made a smaller square:

Then, I gathered the folded bandana up around the jar and tied it together using a couple lengths of raffia.

The result was a cute, quick centerpiece that fit the theme. And, when we gave them away at the end of the evening, 22 bikers each got a new bandana out of the deal!

“Turkey in the Straw,” anyone?

More soon!

Monkey see, monkey paint

First of all, just in case there was any doubt that my cat actually likes the romantic office desk makeover featured in my previous post, here's the evidence:

Side note: he SNORES!

For today's post I thought I would go out on a limb and share some of my "art." I don’t make any claims to being an artist. From piano lessons to desktop publishing and everything in between, I consider myself a bit of a trained monkey (and I mean that in the nicest possible way - “monkey see, monkey do, sometimes with passable results!”).

One of the artistic endeavors that I’ve practiced quite a bit is the art of decorative painting. While I have never been able to re-create to my complete satisfaction the designs and strokes of published teachers such as Priscilla Hauser and Donna Dewberry, I’ve nonetheless been pleased enough with my results that I actually painted a variety of items one year as Christmas gifts - which means that I was for once not entirely horrified by my own efforts - and those items actually saw the light of day in someone else’s home.

Here are a few samples of my many painting projects, starting with one of my favorites - a brag book/photo album with roses and greenery:

Crackle-finished plaque for my grand-daughter:

Romantic Christmas ornaments (given to a complete stranger in an ornament swap!):

Another photo album, this time with geraniums and hand-painted calligraphy:

Glass creamer painted with lilacs and filled with hand-poured soy wax candle:

A curb-find cabinet that I painted pink, embellished, and then hung on my old patio, pre-flood:


Tableware caddy painted with cherries and given to my mother-in-law (she's still using it!):

I haven’t painted since we moved to our new house, but I DID rescue my rack of craft paints so I really have no excuse. One thing I lost, though: my original sketchbook full of practice strokes and pictures, which I lovingly called "Bad Art." Here are a couple of surviving images I had scanned out of it for other uses before it was destroyed - a "signature" graphic I used in an online forum with magnolias and my username, "Janetgia"; and below it, a baby robin I painted, then scanned and used as an avatar in another forum:

I've certainly got to spend some time practicing my skills before I feel confident enough to give something away again!

Have you ever tried tole, One Stroke, or any other type of decorative painting? What did you think of the results?

More soon!

Romancing the desk

I don't know what I was thinking when I outfitted my office/dressing room with this new glass-top contemporary desk. I guess I was thinking I needed to waste a few hours of my life assembling something. Or maybe, I was thinking I needed a lot of work area. Certainly the desk was a success on both of those fronts, and it also met the full approval of the cat - who won't sit on things he doesn't like.

But, not long after I bought and assembled the contempo-desk, I realized that what I wanted in here was something old and cottage-looking, with chippy paint and antique hardware on the drawers. Since I couldn't justify replacing a brand-new desk (and because, now that it's assembled, it's REALLY hard to move), I started to think about how I could make the desk look a lot more romantic, and still be functional. My first idea was to soften up the lines by making a table skirt, which had the added advantage of creating concealed storage space underneath:

I thought the result was "okay," and although I liked the fabric I'd used, I knew that ultimately I was going to repaint this room a light botanical green. That fabric wasn't going to work anymore with the new color. So I set about making a different skirt and figuring out some way to make the glass desk top fit better into my vision for the room. The skirt was easily removable, attached as it was to the framing of the desk with adhesive Velcro.

For the new skirting, I purchased two floor length ivory window sheers (which match the simple window treatment in the room). I folded the first one horizontally to get a double layer (not as sheer that way - still trying to conceal the stuff stored underneath), attached pieces of Velcro to the back of it, and stuck it to the desk frame. It wasn't long enough to cover the whole front of the desk, so I cut the second sheer to the proper length and attached it in the same way, overlapping the first one by a few inches. I hot-glued some non-functioning buttons down the front of the overlap just for a tiny tailored detail. Next up was the desktop. I wanted to cover it with something, but didn't want to lose the smooth, solid surface, so decided on adhesive/removeable Contact paper. After a little cussing to figure out how to apply the Contact paper with as few air bubbles as possible, I had the job done.

The remaining task was to create some sort of "transition" between the solid surface of the desk and the softness of the skirt fabric. I chose a length of silk greenery, applying it with zip-ties so again it would also be removable. Here, as they say, is the big TA-DA:

Although the end result is a little more "storybook-looking" than I was intending, I still like it better than the bare desk and better than the floral skirt. Here are a few of the details, starting with a home-sewn reversible "cozy" I made years ago for a desktop copier - now used to cover the all-in-one printer:

Here's a bit of the button detail on the overlap of the skirt:

And, here's the chair cushion, a nice thrift-store find - Laura Ashley floral toss pillow:

The nice thing about this project, other than the very low price tag, was that the whole thing only took me about 90 minutes from start to finish.

And of course, the fact that the cat still likes it. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

More soon!

The Lavender Shelf - and missing violets

I’ve been trying to find a way to display some of my favorite treasures in my office/dressing room, and this weekend I decided to paint and “set” a little shelf I bought recently at a thrift store. Here’s the project:

Starting with a small wooden shelf, I spray painted it in a gloss ivory tone and hung it on the wall. (Note: the previous sentence does not even begin to capture my complete and utter ineptitude in the two tasks described.) I was certain that over the years I had collected more than a few items with lavender hues, so this was going to be my Lavender Shelf. I started by softening things up with a pillowcase hung on the rod. This pillowcase had been embroidered by my great-grandmother. I also added a pretty floral hanky to the shelf:

Next, I spent some time looking for a teacup I have around here that has a really pretty pattern of violets on it - I’ve been saving it for just such a project as the Lavender Shelf. So naturally, I couldn’t find it. I settled for this teacup instead, which is just as pretty (if not as violety) and has my own hand-poured soy candle in it. I also added two vintage postcards as part of the backdrop:

Next up, while looking for my violet teacup I found this 3-paned photo frame and decided to use that on the shelf as well. I sought out fun favorite photos of my hubby, myself and our daughter, printed them out, and then cut them to fit the frame:

Finally, I decided that instead of the teacup I would use one of my favorite pieces from my clay project collection - you can read a little more about him on my clay project website, but the short version is that he is a flea-market find and certainly falls into the “lavender” category:

The finished project looks like this:

What I love about creating a little vignette like this is that every item here is either special to me personally, or is something I bought simply for its beauty and the faith that someday I would be able to make something enjoyable out of it.

More soon!