Our Creative Space...

It has been a while since the last furniture piece. They always take a lot of time and space. But this one was so much fun. The colors makes one instantly cheerful :)

The starting point was an old coffee table which was a yucky brown. I sandblasted it to remove all its old paint. We then picked a vintage embroidery and I choose the paint color according to that.

 

Everything is super colorful, yet it has depth thanks to the black.

As both the furniture and embroidery are vintage this is an absolute one of a kind.

Available at StarHomeStudio

Our Creative Space...

 

It has been ages since I last shared our creative space, but with this exciting new tool I wanted to share this. I got a 100 litre compressor (the one I use for upholstery is only 25 litre) and a tank that holds sand, aka a sandblaster. With this technique you can sand intricate and carved pieces in a short time.

You do have to gear up a lot, and it is quite messy with sand flying all over the place. I purchased a net in the hope of containing it all better next time.

I doubt that I will be able to do it in the summer as the gear makes it hot, and short sleeves won't be smart, so I will sand everything that needs sanding before the hot months start.

The first piece I sanded was this wooden mannequin arm, It had two good layers of paint, by hand it would have taken me at least two hours, with the sandblaster about 10 minutes and it got it so much cleaner than I would ever get.

I will also be using it for carved furniture, can't wait to see how that will go :)

Proof of Life

Things have been quiet on our blog, life has been crazy and hectic.
We are still moving!!! It has been 10 months since we bought the house but we are finally almost done.

Between weekend lockdowns and restrictions we have been juggling to get things done, while also keeping our shops updated. While most of our stuff is now moved and the workspaces are all there, the garden is not finished yet. In about 2 weeks once that is done we can take our pack of doggies and move to the new house. There won't be grass for less work and less water use, it all took longer than expected and cost more than anticipated but the ending is in sight.

I will blog about the house soon but in the mean time here is a finished ottoman which I did between going back and forth to the house so it took much longer than it normally would.

I had taken a before photo but it got lost somehow, it had fake leather and was all ripped and dirty. Everything had to go off which is always the part of reupholstering which takes a long time but you never see.

To create a rounded effect it got several layers of various fillings and batting.

The foam first got upholstered with a cream fabric as the kilim on top has little weaving holes.

Something most people don't do but with a slight case of OCD we kind of feel like we have to :) Covering the under staples with a trim.

This kilim was a large piece but we used the remaining parts of these chairs, we had been careful while cutting to keep the round part intact with an ottoman in mind.

I love how this cutie turned out, available at StarHomeStudio.

Another project that has taken ages, 4 months to be precise is this knitted jacket. You saw the start back in February.
The yarn wasn't enough, 3 times and then we ordered it at various places where it turned out to be out of stock, it was a struggle not to mention very hard to knit, but it is finished and turned out very special.

It has a weight and is super toasty.

I love the kind of woven basket effect.

This one is available at StarsWear, we have a few other new pieces but this one specifically deserved some extra attention :)

Crazy Times...

Is there any other subject lately anywhere? The Coronavirus has been on the news for weeks but as it is spreading and thousands of new cases are coming in every day, life is drastically changing for everyone.

The world never felt this united, everyone is affected by it, everywhere people are talking about staying at home, social distancing and quarantine. The numbers are now growing at a very scary speed, while China seems to have it under control, Italy, the USA, Spain, and Germany are now in such growing numbers that health care systems might very possibly collapse.

Staying at home is just the only way to try to straighten the curve so that the health care system can manage the sick.  Being stuck at home for weeks especially in cities is kind of a jail experience, but it is a small sacrifice compared to what some people are selflessly enduring right now.

In that sense, we are very lucky. We are usually a lot at home as we work from home. We have a garden so if rules get stricter we still can go outside without seeing anyone. The doggies are great companion, and we create create create to keep our minds sane.

As our ateliers are in our new home but our home itself hasn't moved yet we are not in a perfect state. Money has run out and things are too crazy to finish our move now so we will just have to wait for things to calm down.

With even less time outside than usual, I made this lamp that took me an entire day till midnight and then some more hours the next day.

It originally was a crystal lamp but it was missing pieces. The crystals will come handy in other projects. I used vintage lucite leaves for this lamp. We bought these many years ago and who knows what we were planning with them because we bought tons of them and hardly used them.

I'm never alone at home :)

p.s. the mirror used to be a clock, a (plastic) copy of an old French type, it was a curb find in Amsterdam many years ago, I turned it into a mirror, always love to turn 'trash' into treasure. The clock part I used for another project.

So after many hours I absolutely love how this lamp turned out.

While the world is upside down it is good to put energy into positivity, creativity, and (fur) family to keep us sane.

I'd like to hear how you are spending your days during these crazy times? How are you feeling about what is happening?

Stay safe and healthy everyone, we are all in this together, the world is smaller than we thought after all.

The lamp is available at StarHomeStudio.