Saturday, March 30, 2013

Heritage



Recently I've spent a short week in Hungary. As I'm always looking for stuff for our new house I spotted a few 'new' old things at my grandma's house. The old scale with a coupe of the original iron weights above was my great-grandmother's, just like the old wedding picture and the 30's Singer I've already got. the little oily was made by my grandma and the lamp shade was a gift to her from my mum about 50 years ago.



Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Kitchen almost ready



Finally, our Piet Zwart kitchen is almost ready! The countertops were installed today and in the meantime the downstairs toilet is finished as well. Soon we are 'moving' upstairs with the renovation project to get on with the bathroom...





Saturday, March 9, 2013

Making a greeting card from scratch - involves sewing a button...



Well, this post at least involves sewing, as far as sewing a button goes.
Since there is not much time to sew I try to use my creative energy for other things. I made this card to send to our friends who just became parents of a baby boy.
There seems to be a baby boom amongst our friends and colleagues. I was bored with the store bought, expensive cards and wanted to find a way to produce a lot of pretty, but not too expensive cards to send. Something pretty, different and suited for both baby boys and girls. So I came up with these. By using two buttons it can even be used for twins.
(I've done the outlines almost free-handed, but made up a neat PDF pattern for the stroller and the heart. Scroll down to download it)

Materials needed: 
- a set of blank greeting cards with envelopes (doesn't have to be the best quality since they will be covered with wallpaper which gives more thickness)
- structured wallpaper (is much cheaper than structured craft paper!)
- gift wrapping paper (I've got one with small red and blue flowers)
- a thin, brown cardboard box (I picked up mine at the greenery)
- cute small buttons - pink or blue
- a thicker white or other colored thread
- double sided tape
- craft glue

How to:
- cut a stroke of the wallpaper that measures the height of the card. Then fold and tear the shorter sides to size
- glue the wallpaper to the outside of the card
- cut the outlines of the stroller from the gift wrapping paper and glue it onto the wallpaper
- cut the heart from the cardboard
- using a needle sew the blue or pink button onto the heart with the thread (the ends can be left as they are)
- attach the heart on top of the stroller with double sided tape
- done!

 



To download the stroller and heart outlines click on the arrow next to 'Scribd.' below:


Monday, March 4, 2013

Dirty hands



Last week in a hurry we've managed to finish the downstairs toilet and the kitchen floor just in time! Yesterday I've done a morning shift in the hospital and after that I have crawled on my hands and knees on the floor for 4 hours to grout the kitchen tiles... Mr. X was very motivated to finish everything but all I wanted is to get some rest. My hands were swollen and dirty, pfffff.....
The toilet is not fully ready though, only the back wall is finished for 80%. I still have to grout the side walls, but you get the idea. Love the little black row of tiles!



Here is what the kitchen floor looked like today in the morning. We used dark grey grouting, hence my dirty looking hands in the first picture. I quickly cleaned everything one more time before the kitchen-guy got started:



And here it is, our 50's style 'Piet Zwart' kitchen! Actually, this design was the standard kitchen from the late 20's till the '60's in every Dutch home. We choose a brand new one. There is one kitchen maker who currently holds the licenses since most parts are handmade and painted in one particular fabric in the country. The sizing of these cabinets is still different from the standard sizing of the other cabinets, but everything is modified to fit built-in appliances, which was not the case 60-70 years ago.  I love the pale pastel green color!!!
(For once, after a bit of cleaning I don't have to do anything here today, just watch someone else doing the hard work! In the evening I start again with 4 nightshifts in a row, so that's enough for now.)