Can I show you my new website? Its called Project Warren and you can find it at projectwarren.com. I launched Project Warren in September and its about the things I really love, mainly gardening, refurbishing furniture and making things for the home.

I won’t be posting here any more, so it would be lovely if you would come and visit my new blog. You can also find me on twitter @ProjectWarren.

Pop by and say hello!

Thank you x

The novelty of new camera’s skills and talents has not yet worn off and for the past two days we’ve been snapping everything in sight.

So, will you indulge me whilst I show you practice-run snaps of things from around the house and garden, until I have something more craft-based to talk about?

]]> http://www.victorialouise.co.uk/picture-perfect/feed 1 http://www.victorialouise.co.uk/a-gift-for-a-greenfingers http://www.victorialouise.co.uk/a-gift-for-a-greenfingers#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:34:58 +0000 VL http://www.victorialouise.co.uk/?p=636 At about this time every year my dad sends out a warning to my sisters and me not to get him a birthday present, not to waste our money on buying him something and just to make him a card. Of course we ignore him!

Although this year I thought I would make him something as part of his gift.

My dad is a green fingered type of chap. All his life he’s loved gardening. Before he retired he would work long, long shifts and come home and get stuck into the garden. He spent hours teaching me the names of various plants, flowers and trees and still one of my favourite smells in the world is tomato plants because I spent lots of time helping (actually probably just getting in the way) dad in the greenhouse.

So, what I’ve made him is a drawstring pouch to keep his plant markers and dibbers. Its just a silly prezzie, a bit of fun but I know he’ll like it. It’s the first thing I’ve made from the Meet Me at Mike’s book! Yay!

The natural talent for gardening hasn’t rubbed off onto me unfortunatley, I have to try a bit harder to make plants happy. But here are some snaps from our garden this afternoon in the lovely autumn sunshine…

Take a few sad, tired old cushions and peel off their grubby covers…

Add a generous measure of lovely colourful 70s  fabric and a handful of zips…

Whip up into a batch of fresh new covers…

This fabric came from various places; 70′s M&S pillowcases from the car boot sale, pretty flower cotton from Barnardo’s charity shop and the funkiest second hand retro print (that I’ve been saving for ages) from a little village craft fair.

Lucky I sat the sewing machine class to brush up on my zip skills. Zips don’t have to be scary if you practise, practise, practise!

Also from my fabric stash came these cute little curtains…..

If you want to make your own cushions, check out:
‘How to Make a Cushion Cover‘ with a zip on Mooky Chick
Kirstie Allsop’s guide on ‘How to Make an Envelope Cushion Cover’

This intriguing statement hangs on the tea room wall of the beautiful La Rosa Hotel in Whitby. Go and stay there and you will see that it speaks the truth.

I’ve written a little review of the hotel over at Green Girls Global but I just wanted to show some pictures here too.

If there ever was inspiration to find second hand and pre-loved items and bring them back to life then this place is it. On top of the antique and restored furniture the walls are painted in low odour paint and covered in vintage wallpaper.

More inspiration for me lately has been the beautiful blog Design Sponge and their ‘Before and After‘ feature. So many things pointing me back in the direction of furniture restoration I can’t ignore it.

The downstairs hallway has been one of the last places to be decorated in our house. I guess it’s because you don’t really spend any time in there like you do the other rooms. It is the first place you see when you walk through the door though and for me was influencing the way I felt about that first step into the house. Because there was no decoration to speak of, it wasn’t particularly warm or welcoming. So, this weekend I’ve been remedying that.

As always it has involved reusing and recycling and as it came together involved things relating to our wedding and honeymoon last year, which is appropriate as our first anniversary is next week.

A wooden box that contained some organic wine (which we tried out for our wedding reception) painted blue and filled with potpourri to make a lovely scent.

Framed postcards bought in Brussels and Amsterdam on honeymoon.

Embroidered lid for this photo box which is currently empty but I think I’ll fill over time with pictures of lovely places we’ve visited.

Just need to make some curtains and it’s all done!

My mother-in-law gave me this Bottle Chopper last year when she cleared out lots of craft stuff to move house. I fell in love with the idea of it instantly but didn’t get around to having a go with it until yesterday. In all honesty the fact that the contraption needs to be assembled like a piece of MFI furniture put me off for a while (I’m not good with spacial tasks and instruction leaflets) but craft starved, due to work, over the past couple of weeks I decided I was hungry enough to tackle it.

Let me say, before I used the Bottle Chopper I had all sorts of romantic ideas about the lovely recycled glass items I could cut out and paint. Not cigarrette holders and ash trays but perhaps pretty glass bangles, mobiles and ornaments. Little did I know.

I should have been warned by the boasting statement on the box “As demonstrated on Tomorrow’s World”. For anyone who never saw the science and ‘technology’ TV programme Tomorrow’s World it basically consisted of various demonstrations of inventions that you knew would never catch on – Actually, that’s not strictly true, I just looked up the wikipedia entry for Tomorrow’s World and there is a long list of  widely used technologies which were first shown on the programme (like camcorders, CDs and the breathalyser).

The Bottle Chopper does not work in the way I expected (which may explain why it hasn’t been as successful as the compact disc). There’s no chopping involved whatsoever, just scraping and lots of tapping. The Idea is that you score around the glass with the little blades and then tap the bottle all the way around, on the score mark, from the inside which (apparently) evenly cracks the bottle and splits it apart.

Well, it does work like that but I’m guessing that it only gives the desired results if you’re very patient (not me), you don’t mind getting tinnitus (not me) and you wear protective clothing for the tiny shards of glass it throws out. The tap-tapping must be gentle and even all the way around. You should not tap-tap gently until you can’t bear the sound anymore and then just whack the bottle with one big swipe from the outside. This does not give an even edge.

This has to be the most convoluted and humorous craft I’ve ever tried. I was giggling all the way through it.

To be fair to the Bottle Chopper, Yvonne Dockree and Tomorrow’s World, I can see how it would work, you just need to get the knack. So, this isn’t the end of my glass recycling schemes, just an interlude.

The unusable space of my craft room has been bugging me for ages so sorting that out was the ideal task to get my mind off design and code.

This was the state of my craft room at about 5pm this afternoon…

…and this is it now, about 4 hours later…

Believe it or not I am a tidy person but lately this room has just seen me running in and out either dumping something or rummaging and sifting to find something else.  Hopefully now this will be a much better working space rather than just a storage area (dumping ground).

What’s your creative / working / craft space like? Is it neat or tidy? Or like mine, a bit of both?

We couldn’t afford new stuff and although I preferred old furniture we couldn’t afford that in good condition either. So with the help of Nitromors (a very effective but chemical laden paint stripper), varnish, stain and paint I sanded, scraped and brushed various old wooden items back to life.

This writing bureau and one of 4 chairs were total freebies and they had both been coated with a thick black varnish which was flaking away. The chairs were minutes away from going on a bonfire but they were so pretty how could I not have them?

This two drawer chest was just £5 from a lady who had painted it bubble gum pink for her daughter when she was little. I had to get rid of that paint for the poor wood underneath.

The only problem is that as much as I enjoyed this hobby, with the chemicals I was using, it was bad, bad, bad for the environment and I haven’t done it for a few years. So, when I saw a post on my favourite blog, Crafting a Green World, about eco friendly stains and paints for furniture it sparked my imagination again. When working on these pieces of furniture I used to daydream about having my own restoring workshop and maybe even a shop like the lovely Bunny’s in Horncastle (Lincolnshire) to show people that re-loved and upcycled furniture is the nicest.

I’ve done a bit of research to find some eco-friendly paint strippers, varnishes and paints which are kinder to the environment and that perhaps I could use when I get my dream workshop and pick up my hobby again. Here’s what I found:

Home Strip – paint and varnish remover
Auro Paint Stripping Paste
EarthBorn Paints
Ecos Organic Paints
Farrow & Ball Paints

If you search Google there are actually lots and lots of eco paints available now. I’ll let you know if I try any of them.