Christmas Tree Decorations

Well, it's been a while since I posted - it's been so crazy trying to get everything sorted for Christmas and I have been  using every spare minute in between to finish a large plaquette which was commissioned for a wedding.  I finally handed it over today to to the happy couple so I will have lots of time free to blog over the Christmas and I will be off work for 10 whole days for the holiday season yay!  I will be posting about this lovely plaquette after the new year so keep in touch if you would like to see it.

My last post presented some Christmas decorations that I made and I was so happy with them on my tree that I decided to make a few more.  They are simple and fun to make, I added some more sparkle to these ones but it's difficult to see in the photos.  Hope you like them.  Double click to make the picture bigger.

No Magic....

To celebrate the scary season, here is my final Halloween decoration for this year.  I found the idea for this one on the internet and I believe the design originally came from a stencil.  However, I didn't have the stencil so I used a mix of typography transfer and découpage and I am very pleased with the way it turned out.  I made some small additions of my own too, to add some depth and character. This plaquette was a commission and I'm thrilled to say that it's owner loved it.  I do think this one has something special and I was sorry to see it go - I will make some more like this next Halloween using different colour schemes.  What do you think? Let me know by leaving a comment here or on my Facebook page which you can access through the Facebook tab at the top of this page.  Thanks for looking, have a magical Halloween!

Click to see a larger picture

Retro 1970's Style Plaquette

I have always loved '70's things; disco, flares, floral shirts and platform shoes to name but a few, so when a friend recently showed me some 1970's style vinyl wallpaper that she had bought, I was immediately excited about what way I could use it on one of my wall plaquettes.  As the design was large circles (see pic below) and I was using a small enough piece of wood, I had to cut the wallpaper into smaller sized segments in order to create something interesting on the board.  The overlapping circle sections of yellow, orange, rust and brown coupled with the 'Quant' style flower cut-outs make this piece a nostalgic throwback to an era of flower-power peace and love...

Bathroom Decor

If you're a regular visitor to Funky-Junk you will know that I recently revamped my bathroom using little more than a some chalk paint.  If you missed the posts you can see them by clicking here and here.  After all the hard work on the floor was done, a few accessories and some wall decor was needed to replace the items that had been removed and I thought it would be nice to make a couple of plaquettes for myself (for a change). I had a beautiful floral vintage design napkin that was given to me as a gift and some of the flowers were orange - a perfect match for the bathroom and I was looking forward to using it for a découpage project.

First, I sponge painted the base of both plaquettes with two different shades of orange chalk paint.  I then découpaged one of them using the napkin with the orange flowers.  For the second plaquette I used a mix of napkin and paper découpage.  The Edges were given a distressed finish and a few coats of sealant were added.  Topped off with some green velvet ribbon, they're just what was needed as a final touch.

Click to make bigger

Click to make bigger

Click to make bigger

Light Shade Upgrade

Once I have a paintbrush in my hand and my mind is in 'creative' mode there's no telling what will get a new coat.  This time though, it was the bathroom light shade.  I was giving the bathroom a freshen up by adding some new orange plaquettes that I made (more on this later) and by adding some new orange accessories, but when it came to changing the old black shade I just couldn't part with it, but as it didn't match the new look, and I couldn't find anything as nice, it just had to be painted!  It's a black metal shade with a cut-out design and I really love its ethnic look.

Revamped Shade

Before

The bathroom has a beige base i.e. it's tiled floor to ceiling which means anytime I want to add a new colour I just change the accessories.  Simple.  I went from black to orange - towels, pictures, candles, ornaments, floors - oh I forgot to mention the black floor tiles got painted too (but that's for another post). Everything that was black got changed to orange (except the tiles, they got changed to beige).

The light shade got painted with some chalk paint that I mixed up myself and I had planned on distressing it slightly to let some of the black show through but changed my mind at the last minute and instead I dry-brushed it here and there with some olive green chalk paint and ended up with a really great look that I'm super happy with.  I added a coat of polyeurethane varnish to seal it and that's it, a lovely new look shade as you can see in the pics above.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my light shade upgrade, I'll be posting more on my bathroom makeover soon so don't forget to drop by.

Easter 2014

Well that's it for this year's Easter craft creations, which I'm happy to say were all a success.  I hope you all enjoyed looking and that my tutorial on how to decorate your own Easter eggs was useful.

These are the last two Easter bags but watch out for my new novelty kids bags coming soon.