Knitted cupcakes and flowers

Today in the village we held our yearly Garden Club Flower show.

The weather was not great, a very cold start with lots of rain, also our voting day, but lots of visitors came and had a look at the Spring Flower displays.

I booked a table for some of my shabby chic recycled pieces and also craft items.

My knitted cup cakes were a good talking point,one lady asked me if the real cupcake was inside,so the look on her face when I told her that inside was only stuffing was slightly interesting!

Knitted cupcakes

 Of course we had a little cafe with lots of homemade baking and hot drinks and this was a great place to catch up with some of my friends and people from the village.

Little decoupaged tins

 Later in the day the rain cleared and that was good for packing up.
The end of a nice day in Mapua.

Decoupage and transfers

The Garden flower show

Decoupage, transfers and shabby chic

Very popular techniques are the decoupage and transfers onto furniture in the Shabby chic course.

 Gilded decoupaged box.

 Lovely finishes with wrapping paper and napkins.

Black and white napkin glued onto box

Distressed shabby chic chair and new fabric

Distressed cabinet with lace fabric

Two furniture pieces once brown wood finish, now in light colours and  the chair upholstered with new fabric.
These pieces are a few examples of the Shabby chic course just finished.

Shabby Chic Course Finished work

Again the results of the Shabby Chic course at Waimea College are fantastic.

I love all the creativity and I am inspired every time by the finished work.

Each course is different, I teach the same techniques, but the outcomes are always so unique.

All the pieces in the photographs were items found in recycle or op shops and are now beautiful restored with care, patience and love.

Piano Stool distressed and covered with French fabric.

Transfer image from the "Graphics Fairy" website onto a trolley with a background crackle.

Transfer image onto a wooden distressed clock, the numbers are just gilded.

Beautiful distressed tray with a rose transfer image.

Decoupaged fairy inside a frosted vase

A copper vase gilded

A old wooden tray decoupaged and antiqued, love it!

This rose is not painted on, but done with the transfer technique using wrapping paper.

The next course starts in August at Waimea College,Richmond, Nelson.
I also travel to teach workshops in Shabby Chic, for more information, email me.

Little French table

This little table was bought in a second hand shop and after cleaning and sanding I painted the table white.

Next I used blue paint and mixed it with a little grey for the second colour.

When dry I sanded the table back to reveal the white colour underneath.

Most of the furniture I distress and decorate have three different layers of paint, so my last layer was grey, but I painted crackle medium on first and finished with the grey paint on top.

After the paint was dry I sanded the table and used a waterbase varnish to protect the crackled paint. The image used for the center of the table is from the Graphics Fairy website and I used the modpodge method to transfer the image onto the table.
Full instructions how to transfer images onto furniture are on the Graphics Fairy website,you will find a link to the website on my blog.
 I hand painted the flowers on the sides of the table.

The table is protected with a satin water base varnish.

I took the table to the Shabby Chic market at Beacon Hill and sold it on the market.

Mosaic shoe and shabby chic table

On Easter Sunday the Mapua primary school always organizes a big Easter fair as a major fundraising for the school.
Visitors from all over the South Island visit and suddenly our little village is overwhelmed with traffic and people.
The atmosphere is festive, the rugby field is full of stalls, there is music, food stalls and a little cafe in the rugby rooms.
Two years ago I had a stall and my daughter Rachel helped on the day, so I decided to book a stall again for this coming Easter.
I will share my stall with my friend Roger, he restores furniture and makes fire boxes out of gas cylinders.
So I started to do some mosaic pieces and I found these old shoes at the sallies and mosaic one of the shoes with small pieces of china.
The table also came from the sallies and I painted the table with three layers of different coloured home made chalk paints and sanded the layers back.
The transfers are prints of www graphics fairy an amazing website with free images to use, worth a visit!
Also I bought some scrap booking papers from Spotlight in Nelson and got those copied mirror imaged in black and white.
Now I am transferring the images onto the table.
The mediums I am trying are transfer medium  'picture this' for fabrics and mod podge.
I think mod podge gives a more translucent finish.
The table is still a work in progress, so I keep you posted.

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