Proof of Life

I can't believe it has been 5 months without blogging! That never happened, not even 1 month!

Things have been hectic and blogging and social media have suffered under it, I'm going to do my best to blog regurlarly again as I do love it.

You might remember that we bough a house almost 2 years ago. We first moved our working space, which took almost 6 months and then slowly the house as we were on zero budget and a lot needed to be bought and done on the new house as no one had lived in it  before a lot of things were missing, like a stove and warm water boiler etc.

After moving the house I worked on both the new house (garden, curtains, shelves and a million other things) but also continued emptying the massive amount of stuff from the old house (attic full of vintage items and furniture, thousands of books etc).

Our old house is a beautiful house full of wooden details but we have lived there for 20+ years and had 10 dogs and our working area it was very tired. As we hope to sell it for a good price I have been renovating it, myself and also with some paid help. Interior and exterior walls have been painted, some roof repair etc. I have been fixing a lot of furniture pieces that were previously in the attic. They are all vintage, I sold a bunch of furniture locally through Facebook marketplace and Letgo to empty the house (and for some cash) and also been fixing those that we are using to stage the house.

It has been tiring but also very satisfying to see these old sad pieces come to life again! This room's very dark wardrobe made it dark. As it wasn't in perfect vintage condition I did not feel guilty to paint it to make it fun. The paint work is inspired by the chair in the corner, which was brown before and did not have cushions. The fun blue fabric was also used for a long cushion on the bed. The mirror is also an old and very heavy piece that used to be gold and dreary. The pelican photo was taken by me in Florida.

Only the bed matrass was bought everything else we already had and was just a question of spending time and effort to make it.

Our pretty varanda that used to be our workspace is now a spacious living area. The couch set was a sad outdated brown 1970s set that we at one point wanted to give to a friend and didn't want (for free) and is now beautiful. I painted the wood off white and upholstered it with Gray-offwhite fabric. If we had no dogs I would have wanted it in the new house! There is also a table set on this veranda that also got painted and new cushions and a work table got a make over, I'm only showing parts!

This sad little cabinet had some missing pieces, and is now one of my favorite furniture pieces in the house. Not sure if I'm going to sell it once the house is sold as I love it now.

The seating area furniture belongs to the house but the wood was sad and dark.

A bit more spicey, light and fun and about 10 hours of paint work.

All these midcentury pieces were in the super full attic but now have been great to stage the house. They all needed work though.

I upholstered the sides as the wood was bad and dark.

The chair in the corner got the same fabric as the bed to match. I fixed the vanity (no before pics. And am going to fix a chair to put in front of it.

I forgot to picture many other pieces and I sold 5 large furniture pieces which made a lot of space.

I'll soon show the new house as well which finally has a garden, not entirely finished and a bit of a mess which is another story for another day :)

Trashure - Furniture Makeover

 It has been a while since I showed a full process of a furniture piece. My brand new phone's camera died so haven't been able to make any videos either.

I loved the shape of this chair unfortunately it had skeletal issues so I could only reuse its legs.

I cut an upcycled piece of MDF with rounded corners and attached the legs (after sanding and varnishing) to that.

I glued a piece of firm foam to the wood and stapled fabric to keep it in place.

I knitted about 12 meters of knitted tube with this handy 'machine' each row is turned by hand so it is a manual thing but goes of course faster than hand knitting.

 

I cut strips of foam and put those in the knitted tubes.

I then stapled the short ones side by side.

Woven the longer pieces in.

And then staped those too.

I love how it turned out! The lamp is also a project I did not so long ago, it was an old coat rack but the hooks were missing so I turned it into a cool standing lamp for our own home.

I love the fresh minty color, we got the yarn while traveling last year in Florida at a thrift store! So it is a very eco-friendly project.

I stapled a contrasting colored fabric to hide the staples and endings.

This one of a kind beauty is available at StarHomeStudio.etsy.com.

Happy New Year, Happy New Ottoman!

 

Happy New Year everyone! Boy what a year! I don't thnk the first 6 months of 2021 is going to be any better as long as there are selfish and uncareful people around this pandemic is going to take a while.

But enough of the negativity! We ended 2020 by finishing this beautiful and very cheerful ottoman.

Creativity is what is keeping us sane.

I'll be blogging more again now that our new home and workspace is finally getting in to shape. I have to blog about what we have been up to soon, it was much more work and costs than anticipated and we are still not completly done but we are getting there.

About the ottoman. We wanted to create another funky cat ottoman as we sold the previous one we made. To match the green and black cat we created a green and black velvet patchwork which took a crazy amount of time to create.

The cats are vintage embroidery.

The pouf was a vintage brown piece that I painted in a fun way in matching colors.

This piece makes me happy, that's a good start of this year. As we are in a 3 days lock down (to prevent New Years celebrations) I think it is going to be a creative and inspiring weekend!

How was your New Years Eve?

Happy Holidays!

 

Happy Holidays everyone! However you celebrate it, the end of 2020 is a good reason to be festive :)

Newly Listed: Knitted Wing Cowl

Knitted Wing Cowl, White Feathers Bridal Cowl, Scarf Winter Wedding Scales Wrap Cowl, Leaves, Birds of a Feather by StarsWear

Owl Winter White Snow Forest  Feathers Tree Branches Birds North Woodsy Wildlife Nature Frozen Woods Photography Photo Print by EclecticForest

Fantasy Fairy Tale Forest Art Print The Queen by ThisYearsGirl

Snowflakes, Winter's Flowers, Stars from the Heavens, Montana Snowflakes, art quality Photograph by spirithelpers

Get the Look Vol.21

Dough bowls have been quite trendy for a while especially for farmhouse styled, rustic interiors, great as a big center piece for on the table as seen above. The American ones are often carved wood, our Turkish ones are a bit different than the ones you usually see.

I've added some new basket sets in the shop, the more the bigger the impact, they give such a fun texture to the wall. We also have a fun wooden farm tool of which we have no idea of  its original function but it makes for a great decorative piece.

I love open shelving, the look of it, the dusting is another story. I saved this image as we have a fun collection of bottles in the shop but upon closer look I noticed the Boch La Louviere plate, of which I have listed a set of five in our Ebay store.

I love staged bookshelves as well, what better combination is there than books and art?

I've listed quite some lovely 'lived-in' pots which would look great on such shelves, the more the better.

I love the textures and colors of natural wooden bowls, especially the old ones that get additional texture by use. The Antique Pestle and Mortar I listed is not usable anymore but has amazing dents, holes and natural color textures.

House Process and Furniture Project

 

Our very slow process of the house had some big projects as well. One of them was getting a storage shed as we are already running out of space!

It was quite the operation to get it in its place, the distance was long so it had to be a big crane, and there was a wind that day which made it also harder.

 

A total of five guys and lots of staring.

It had to go around the corner, the crane operated could not see what he was doing so communication went through yelling and phone.

This part was scary, it could hit the roof of the house any time.

But it got in its place without any accidents, and guess what?

It is already pretty full :) Full with furniture projects waiting for me to tackle.

I did finish one, but that did not empty a lot of space ha ha.

The base is a flea market find, the top driftwood and boat wood.

 I made a video of the process how I made this cute little table.