Friday 26 April 2013

Bureau de Change

Firstly - I have to apologise, I have a terrible weakness for puns, word play and the like, so please excuse the post title.

Now that another of my secrets is out of the way here's what I am showing you this week - said Bureau:




You may recognise it from my master bedroom post, where I told you it would be looking for a new home. Well we haven't found the new home yet, but a few more options have opened up for it now that it's had a little bit of paint and attention.

Without wishing to sound predictable this bureau was found on a cold grey Saturday several years ago, languishing (rather unloved I felt) in the corner of a charity shop. I felt compelled to rescue it as I was looking for a small desk with storage for my teeny tiny living room and I liked the dark wood and the price tag. Home it came with me (or rather, with the hubby as what I invariably do on these occasions is find a piece of furniture, fall in love, buy it, then place a call to Mr Coco Blue asking him ever so nicely if he wouldn't mind picking it up for me. He's always thrilled to receive these calls, as you can imagine!)







So home it came with me and for a while it did service as a desk/craft stuff holder and then when we moved house it shuffled around the flat playing host to everything from drinks to junk to clothes, until finally coming to rest in the master bedroom possibly due to inertia. As it was looking somewhat unloved and the worse for wear after a mishap with a kitten it had a bit of emergency surgery and then a rejuvenating facelift. Now it just needs a loving home to rest in, happy to show of its new colours with pride.









As a side note, Mr CB expressed some reservations about the drawers being a different colour to the body of the bureau. Now personally I rather like the contrast but I'd love to know what others think!


Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a great weekend!


Coco Blue

Thursday 18 April 2013

Pint Sized Teepee


Yesterday I made this little teepee for my little half pint. It's just the right size to have up in the living room without taking up the whole floor space and just the right size for a mini explorer. It's also very simple to make and the materials are easy to get hold of ( you'll probably find you already have them around the house).




You'll need:

4-6 Garden Canes (mine are the half size ones as I didn't need it to be too tall).
4 Small bag clips or pegs
1 Elastic band
1 Sheet (or duvet cover as mine is)
Ribbon, Feathers, Paper bunting etc to decorate.


First, take the 4-6 garden canes and wrap and elastic band around the bundle of sticks about two inches down from the top. Next, in your chosen location, fan out the canes to create your teepee structure. Leave a larger gap at the front for your opening. Those of you lucky enough to have a garden will be able to push the canes into the ground a little to help anchor the teepee. Otherwise just anchor the canes in the pile of the carpet or a rug.

Once your frame is up drape your sheet/duvet cover around the canes, securing with a bag clip at the top of the front canes.





To hold back the excess fabric at the front of the teepee I folded it back into the tent and secured it to another cane with two more clips.



That is your basic structure done. Then it's just a case of decorating! I had a pack of craft feathers left over and so selected a few to add to the top of the teepee and tied them in place with some ribbon. Then I strung some extra paper bunting around the outside. You could add flags to the top, or pompom trim or just leave it bare. Really, whatever seems the most fun!



And, because every one needs a companion on their explorations, an old hobby horse got into the spirit too.




I think we may decamp come summer to Grandma's rather more expansive garden and enjoy some outside adventuring with this little teepee.

I'd love to know if any of you try this!

Coco Blue


Thursday 11 April 2013

Paper Pin-wheels

Another attempt to use up my paper hoard - paper pin-wheels.


These take no time and not much effort (I'm just not an effortful sort of crafting girl) . I will say though, this version is more decorative than functional - but I don't hold that against them as their loveliness will still brighten up any room.


You'll need:

Paper (I used 6x6 scrap book paper - the bigger the paper, the bigger the pin-wheel)
A chop stick
A drawing pin
Scissors (not shown)
A ruler (optional)
Glue (optional)



You can use double sided paper for contrast once the pin-wheel is assembled  or single sided paper and have a white contrast. Alternatively you can glue two sheets of paper together to make it double sided (although this will make the paper thicker which may effect how much it turns).

Take your piece of paper and fold in half diagonally. Then fold into quarters. Unfold the paper and cut along your folded line into the centre, stopping about a centimetre from the middle. Alternatively you could draw lines from each corner to the centre and cut along those.

Then take your drawing pin and make a small hole in the centre of the paper and gather one corner from each cut piece into the centre, securing with your pin. Push the pin into the top of the chopstick. You are done!




 
A pot of these on the table would look lovely in place of flowers.

I'd love to hear if anyone has other simple paper crafts - I have a lot of paper to use up!

Coco Blue

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Paint And Paper






There isn't much you can't brighten up with a little paper and paint.

Paper:

As I mentioned in this post, I have a slightly obscene amount of craft stuff stashed away, most of it paper and ribbon. And while I would love to say that I have made a rule with myself not to buy any more until it is all used up, I just can't say that's true. However, I have been trying to plan ways of using it up and after the 'success' of my Easter bunting I thought I would expand my skills repertoire to include measuring. 



So I have been making some scrap book paper bunting for both grown up spaces and little person spaces.







Not wanting to waste the offcuts I also made some mini bunting to string across a window.



Paint:




Last week I had the delightful company of Mr Coco Blue for the whole seven days and one of the things we did was take a trip to a nearby stockist of Annie Sloane Chalk Paints and I happily lightened the Mr's wallet to the sound of one tin, three tester pots and a paint brush. Once the necessary CPR had been performed and he had recovered from the shock (these paints don't come cheap!) we high-tailed it home and I tried my hand at a few pieces to get a feel for the new paint.

First thing to get the chalk paint treatment was a very large old frame we had hanging about. I painted a coat of French Linen with a pretty dry brush then, once that was dried, went over again with a slightly watered down coat of Old White. I deliberately left some of the wood showing through. (Can you spot the additional decorative cat hairs in the picture above? I expect I have a cat somewhere with a smudge of paint on it!)



Using a dry brush technique to apply the paint helped to highlight the grain of the wood and so didn't need distressing, but this paint is supposed to be very good for distressing. I look forward to trying it on a few more things soon.


Coco Blue

Friday 5 April 2013

Living with a Room: Living Room

As mentioned in an earlier post, we rent the flat we currently live in and have been here for just over 3 years. In that time we have slowly made changes to each room as we replace our 'starter' furniture and better come to understand what  decorating style works for us and the way we live. 

We first viewed the flat in September 2009 and got the keys in the first week of December. That first week I took annual leave from work and set about painting four of the rooms (one of them twice!)
We could have left the walls as they were, we knew they had only been repainted recently, but I've never been a fan of magnolia and I really wanted to feel that this was home for us, not just somewhere we were passing through. We knew we planned to be here for about five years, so to me it made sense to spend time and money making it beautiful for us. Lots of people seem to think it isn't worth doing things to a rented place, perhaps because they can't change wall colours, curtains or carpets because of the landlord, or because they don't feel there is any point in redecorating a place which they don't own, but for me if you live somewhere and want to enjoy living in that space it seems obvious that you do what you can to make it beautiful. We lived in a flat once where we couldn't paint the walls, and that was fine. But I still hung pictures, and made good the repairs when we handed the flat back at the end of the tenancy.  Even though we were only in it for just over a year, it still felt important to me that it reflect who we were and what we loved, rather than just being a series of beige and magnolia boxes where we happened to keep our stuff. 

So, I thought I might share a few pictures of the journey we have been on while decorating our rented space, turning it into more than just magnolia boxes, and making it as lovely and welcoming as we can, even with the limits of a small budget and the constraints of renting. 

I wanted to start with the living room, as this is the room which I think can be the trickiest. It's both a public and a private room, the place where you relax at the end of a long day, but also the place you entertain guests in your home. It needs to be both comfortable to live in and presentable to the world.

The pictures below are those I took the day we came to view the place in September 2009.



A lovely magnolia chimney breast (and bare floor boards).


Attractive cables hanging from the ceiling.




More lovely bare boards and dull walls.

Before we moved in carpet was laid and curtain rails fitted. We were very lucky and had a small say in these things, being able to chose the colour of the carpet and style of curtain rail from a selection. The first thing we then did was to paint the walls a soft grey. 

The pictures below were taken the autumn after we moved in as I, yet again, tried to work out which furniture layout would be best.




At this point we were working with the furniture we had brought with us from our old flat. The only addition was the second hand coffee table we picked up from a local junk shop. Actually, I think most of this furniture from the old flat was picked up second hand or donated to us, the exceptions being the sofa and TV.





Some things seemed to stay in packing boxes for an inordinately long time. It was mostly books, I think, as we needed to get some custom bookcases built.


 I settled on a layout which worked for Christmas, but I don't think it stayed like this for very long!





By the following Christmas we had swapped our very ratty old white sofa bed for a leather button back sofa. We had found out we were expecting a baby the week before we went looking for a new sofa and the practicality of leather appealed to us.




We had also had the first set of custom bookcases built and upgraded the TV and wall mounted it. Mounting the TV opposite the chimney breast rather than on it helped to ground the room and allowed quite a bit of flexibility in the furniture placement.




We'd acquired a few more pieces of furniture as well, although most were either bought when on sale or, again, were second hand. 




I spent several Saturday morning sanding and repainting our old dinning chairs. They are very heavy and solid, but once we had the new flooring laid the dark wood was too much along with the dark sofa. The cheapest way to make them work was to paint them. 




Another two  bookcases were installed and we got rid of the carpet which had worn badly in the first two years of us living here. I think carpet is one of those things that it really pays to invest in - you definitely get what you pay for.



We also added wood slat blinds as, in the summer, this room can get quite bright in the morning and they help to filter the light and heat.






We swapped our old reproduction oval dinning table for a smaller extending dinning table which we found at an antiques fair. It's very solid oak but it needs refinishing  - a project for the future perhaps.



The pictures below are the most recent. Since my daughter was born in June I have repainted the walls a pale blue green colour and we have had a new ceiling light fitted. We have had to take out the coffee table (to make room for the Jumperoo) and have, once again, rearranged the furniture!




Toys under the sofa and clean laundry on the arms - definitely a real life snap shot!


The ubiquitous jumperoo in pride of place, and my favourite blogging spot at the table by the window.






So there you have it so far. I don't think this room is 'finished' really, but I don't have plans to do anything major to this room in the future. If any more changes are made they will be cosmetic ones, changing cushions and pictures etc. I would like to add more art above the sofa, but I want to add pieces I really love, so they will be found slowly over time. Likewise the things on the bookcases will change as I find the things I love, and replace those I merely 'like'.

 If you had asked me my plans for this room before we moved in, way back in 2009, I would not have described the room as it is now. I would, probably, have described something more formal, with lighter colours, and probably some mirrored furniture and linen upholstery. But the room we have is a room we have created, piece by piece, as we find the things we like or the things we can afford and as our needs as a family change. One day I will be able to swap the leather sofa (which I affectionately call 'the big ugly sofa') for a linen upholstered one, but at this point it would be impractical. So, for now, we are trying to make the best of what we have, and make our living room somewhere we can all actually live - without worrying that living in it will mess it up and we can't have people pop round without warning so we can hide the mess!

Coco Blue

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Meet The Duchess




 We made our acquaintance last week in a charity shop (my dears, times are hard for all of us and some times even the best amongst us have to tighten our purse strings). She was tucked away in a corner and I was turning to leave when she caught my eye.

Once I got a better look I thought she might be the 'something' I am missing in my master bedroom. It's not often that the answer to bedroom boredom is another woman, but in this case it think it might be!

She isn't a large lady however, so I think she will need some company in the bedroom to maximise her impact but I have a  DIY project in mind which may be just the thing.




She gives me a starting point for a new scheme at least, and while I think changes may have to be done slowly, I can almost start to picture how the room could evolve. And that makes me happy!

Coco Blue