A Beautiful Day

Simon is completely recovered from his surgery, yesterday I took his stitches out, I prefer doing it myself instead of putting him through the stress of a vet visit. As he was alright we could finally leave the house and enjoy the sunny weather.

We took a different road again, The mountain roads are like a labyrinth, or a kind of maze around here, there are so many and all take you to different places, seashores, beaches, forests, mountains and villages.

After a ride in the wooded mountains we arrived at a little bay where the water was so clear that you could see what was going on in the sea.

Diamonds of the sea...

We than had a wonderful walk in the forest, even the air you breathe is delicious in such places.

Around the trunks of the trees ivy's were growing slowly upwards.

We then drove a little further in to a different road and came to a magical place.

Even the shore was different than usual. It was very calm and mysterious.

Right there was a little house, what a view to wake up to.

When we approached the house we discovered that it was abandoned.

With nature slowly taking over the house. Coincidentally we came across the real estate agent who had just recently sold the property so I guess it won't be pretty like this for much longer.

The real estate agent was actually the only person we came across, we had the entire place for ourselves.

There was another abandoned house close by, this one reminded me of the little houses of a fairy tale.

With hopes to come across something magical I looked inside but unfortunately there was only rubbish.

We had a beautiful day, I hope you enjoyed it with us :)

Eco Friendly Wedding; Decorations and Locations

Continuing to find eco friendly solutions for weddings I thought about the amount of decorations required for a wedding. Thousands and thousands of dollars are often spent on decoration. Mostly flowers again which are as explained in my previous eco friendly wedding post horrible for the environment. So you spent all that money and leave a big carbon footprint for something that will be thrown away a few hours later. I am not saying that you have to marry in a plain boring place, however you can solve the whole decorating solution by choosing a location that is pretty without any help. The picture above was of a wedding from one of our customers who had her wedding on a beach, you can see in this post how they hardly had to decorate the place and they did not use any flowers, even the bouquets were not real flowers.

This forest wedding is magical! Only some lights and they were ready to go. We have so many magical places in the world no need to decorate :) I love this location I think it is much more memorable for the guests too as it is unique and special, it is in a camp with loads of outdoors activities.

And of course garden weddings. This can be a hired place but also your own yard or of a relative or friend. The trees in the picture above are much prettier than any men-made decoration if you ask me, without any additional cost or environmental damage.

Other locations I came across which are unique and do not require much decorations are: Library weddings, Farm weddings and Park weddings. To make it even greener it is best to choose a location which is closest to most of your guests so that not much travel is required.

Another picture of the beautiful beach wedding of our customer, for which we made a hairpiece, brooch, boutonnieres, earrings, bridesmaids jewelry and flower girl jewelry.

Would you choose any of these locations? Or do you know any other than these that would not require flowers and other waste to make it pretty? I'd love to hear them :)

Newly Listed: Sea Treasure Keychains

Sea Treasures Keychains - Driftwood, Hagstone, Glass, Nautical Keyrings both by StarHomeStudio
Sea bird photography, ACEO, wall art, beach, sand, sea, vintage, gull, flight, sky by JimnEmPhotos
Ocean Photography, Beach Photo, beach decor, water, rocks, landscape photography by EdgingtonFineArt
Jellyfish Art Print, Teal Navy Blue Beach House Home Decor Ocean Art Photograph by SevenElevenStudios

February Projects

This year did not start well for us, actually 2015 ended bad with Lucky passing away, and then 2016 started with Bibi passing away. Needless to say that we have been very sad. With Christmas rush over we also did not have the sales to keep our minds occupied, which did not do our moods well.
With all this we have not been very motivated in general which causes for a circle as not being motivated is pretty depressing too.

Then last week we discovered a lump on Simon, pretty big and pretty scary as it must have grown fast, we wash our dogs regularly so I notice such things pretty quickly.
He had a biopsy on Tuesday and was diagnosed with cancer. A not very aggressive skin cancer, but no cancer is friendly. We had him operated on Friday and a total of 4 lumps were removed. The survival rate is pretty high of this type, so we hope that Simon will stick around for a while, we are not ready to loose yet another family member.

Here he is in the garden of the animal hospital waking up in the sun right after surgery.

With all this we have vet bills piling up, so we are having a sale in our Supply shop in hope to help a bit with the costs, use the code DOGGY20 during checkout and you will get a 20% discount. We have a flat rate shipping of 5$ for no matter how many items (except the fabrics due to weight).
Of course any sale in any of our shops is very much welcome StaroftheEast, StarDelights, StarBags, StarsWear and StarHomeStudio.

With all this going on I have not been able to finish my January projects. Only the piano stool got finished, the two chairs are still in the same condition and the walls still need to be painted. The fact with all this that I burned my right arm with boiling oil, and strained my left wrist while carrying Simon is not helping either.

Before my arms got injured I did manage to finish the weekender I showed 10 days ago. And I started and finished a little furniture piece in between.
After all this depressing talk, I want to finish with a positive thing, here is the furniture piece I made and am very happy about:

It started as a very sad and ugly nesting table (without the rest of the nest). There clearly used to be wood between the legs but those were gone.

It has a dark brown ugly color (no offense to those who like this) which I very much dislike.

And you could clearly see that it was suppose to be part of a set because of the grooves.

I started with sanding the wood and filling up the grooves with wood and wood paste.

I then varnished it with sanding sealer, sanded it again and then applied several layers of white acrylic paint to give a nice base.

I knew right away what I wanted to add to the legs, driftwood! I choose strong but natural wiggly looking pieces to make it clear that they are driftwood.

Coming together nicely, don't you think?

I then painted everything (except for the top) a sea green color.

And for the top I used a Vintage map of Istanbul. As the top was not entirely flat but had a rounded border, cutting the map turned out to be a challenge for me, but I eventually managed to make it straight, unlike the detail you see above.

After varnishing and sanding the top many times (I lost count), I am very happy with the result!

The entire table and the driftwood was varnished too to make it waterproof and wipe-able.

No sign of the once-upon-a-time-it-was-an-ugly-nesting-table.

The cute end table is available in our StarHomeStudio shop where you can see and read more details about the table.

As for February projects, well I will need to finish January's projects and I won't add anything else to that list as my arms need to heal first. I also hope that Simon will recover quickly the 'cone of shame' is driving him nuts and for us it is the 'cone of pain' as he keeps bumping in to us with it.
Please send us some positive vibes, we really need it!

Newly Listed: Romantic Getaway Weekender

Romantic Getaway Weekender Travel Bag - Leather Caryall, Vintage Embroidery and Linen Floral Striped Traveling Bag by StarBags
Red Fiat 500 photography, Vintage photography, Fine Art photography. Italy,  vintage red car by PotraitOfALand
Red buildings and canal in Venice, photograph Italy, photo wall art home decor by DeepLightPhotography
Ireland Landscape Photography Red Mountains of Ireland Home Decor Picture Print Wicklow by CandyMountainPhotos

Transformation of a Piano Stool

I showed this sad once-upon-a-time was a piano stool piece for my January projects. It took me almost the entire month to finish it, with other things in between of course but still it took much more time than anticipated.

After thoroughly sanding the wood and cleaning the metal from rust, I treated the metal parts with a black anti aging and anti rust metal paint.

The wood was first treated with 3 layers of sanding sealer and then sanded again to give a nice smooth surface. Then I painted 3 sides of each leg black and the top sides white, creating a sharp edge between the black and the white turned out to be a challenge as I could not tape it off due to the shape of the legs but eventually I got it.

To create the black stripes I tried several things, creating a stencil pattern did not work out as the surface is not flat. Also stamps or simply trying to draw straight striped did not work out either. Of course my first thought was tape but the thought of cutting a gazillion thin tapes and then putting them off was scaring me. Mum came with the great idea to stick the wide painters tape to a piece of plastic coated paper and put it through the shredder. In a short time I had enough evenly cut tapes.

Peeling them each off the paper and applying them to the legs took a while.

The scary part was painting over the tapes with black. You might think why I did not paint the legs entirely black and then painted with white. Making the stripes white on a black surface would have need more layers of paint on the tape, and pulling those neatly off would have had a bad outcome as everything would have cracked because of the many layers of white, so this was although not obvious the best way.

Wile holding my breath I started to peel of each tape one by one. I read somewhere that it was best to not let the paint dry entirely or the paint would chip. I read somewhere else that if you applied the tape from left to right you had to remove the tape from right to left (the opposite) for a cleaner removal. Yes I had investigated a lot before starting to get the best result.

After holding my breath for a bit more over an hour (yes I did breath in between the stripes :)), I had lovely black and white stripes.

And loads of little tapes everywhere...
Some stripes needed a little retouching by hand and brush but most turned out great. On top of the paint I applied a mat varnish to seal and protect the paint work.

After cutting the embroidery round, then accordingly a round piece of wood and foam it was time to sew the top. With black and white striped piping to match the pretty legs.

Tadaaaaa! The result! I am very happy how this turned out, it was worth all the effort and its old look is long forgotten.

The embroidery is vintage, a lovely kitsch fluffy embroidery with birds and flowers, very soft to the touch.

The beautiful piano stool / ottoman / pouf is available at StarHomeStudio.

Newly Listed: Minimalist Pink Sea Urchin Ring

Sterling Silver Minimalist Pink Sea Urchin Ring One of a Kind Size 7 by StaroftheEast
Hot Air Balloons Photography Print Fine Art  Balloon Sky Landscape by LullabyWorld
Seashell Art Photo, Nautical Decor, Ocean Still Life, Beach Cottage Decor by MollysMuses
Fine Art Nature Photography, Pastel, Green Pink Floral Wall Art  by BreeMadden