Repurposing Ideas, Repurposed

Doing my usual internet trawling for design ideas and to avoid the washing-up, I happened upon this article from Real Simple, detailing 14 ideas to repurpose items for a dream-yet-bargainacious wedding. Flicking through, however, many of these ideas are far from nuptually exclusive, and would work for an array of events, dinner parties or just a bit of credit-crunch repurposing fun. Then it occurred to me that I was actually repurposing an article about repurposing and I got rather excited (and a tiny bit smug about the workings of my ingenious little brain). Anyway, do click on the link to peruse in full, or check out the Craft Hacker tidbits below:

1. Use pretty vintage teacups and soup tourines to hold flowers and food nibbles: filling teacups with sugared almonds is great for a wedding, but why not try candy-coloured foil-wrapped chocolates for afternoon tea, skittles or M&M's for a tweenager's party, or - if you're an ambassador and want to really spoil your guests - some Ferrero Rocher to round off your evening soiree in style.


2. Repurposed cake stands - scour charity shops and you can pick up an array of these vintage beauties. Use for holding fun finger foods, or candles - a great idea to stop them dripping onto your tabletop and to allow you to pack more into the same space through clever tiering. My inner Anthea Turner loves the tip also listed about adding a spritz of cooking oil spray onto the area first to allow for easy cleaning of wax drips.

3. Clothespegs as namecard holder - would look very sweet at a rustic summer's barbecue party, or turn up the vintage by substituting for Grandma's old dolly pegs. With either variety, spraypainting would be a quick and easy way to update if the natural wood finish happens to clash with your hordeuvres. For a more masculine affair, a good old bulldog clip would look great teamed with the right placecard, or even a chunky oversized paperclip, bent out of shape to hold the placecard upright.

Bedcrumbs and Tea Parties

Perhaps not the most helpful of notes to self whilst trying to embark on a post-Christmas detox, but the cheery encouragement ‘eat cake in bed’, appliquéd onto a handmade silk dupion cushion, is perhaps one of the best excuses to indulge that I can think of. When it comes to cute Brit company Bedcrumb, though, and their sugar-sweet website boasting itself to be full of ‘self indulgent home accessories’, it would be almost rude not to partake. As well as anti-dietary slogans, their cushion cover range also includes rather delightful, spider-ey scrawled fashion illustrations with characters named Josie and Betsie amongst others (craft hacker kudos for mixing vintage brooches and fabrics in with each original piece). Also of note is the hand-picked mismatched crockery sets, available for singletons (tea for one) to full-on tea party proportions. I’d like to claim the drool patch developing around my chin area was caused purely by the lovelies on this site, though sadly I fear the images of ‘food porn’ (cupcakes) are somewhat responsible too…






Thanks to Decor8 for the tip-off!

If that's whet your appetite for more vintage crockery without the food-based distractions, however, then make your way over to Katie Potts Tea for Two. The aptly-named Potts scours the land to find the most delectable forgotten vintage British china from the 1920's to 1950's, pairing pieces together to make whole new teasets presented in beautiful, reusable hat boxes specially designed for the job. There, forgotten about the cupcakes now? Errrr, no, thought not.

Haunting Hacks from Ghost Furniture

Happy new year! I trust you had a crafty Christmas? I've been catching up on lots of reading, doing a few craft hacks and generally idea generating, which I tend to be rather good at - it's just the remembering and collating of said ideas that is my downfall. However, rested and buoyed by the numerous press coverage on how craft is going to be THE big story of 2009, I start the blog anew as of....NOW!

I'll be posting a few hacks I've been working on very soon, with some step-by-step instructions, but for now feast your craft-starved eyes on the work of hugely talented duo Di Overton and Harvey Roll over at Ghost Furniture (tagline: "Bringing quality furniture back from the dead and making it hauntingly beautiful.") Whilst I love my 'day job' as an interior stylist, their existence does sound somewhat idyllic - scouring the land for overlooked vintage treasure ripe for their very innovative, often humorous brand of makeover, all created from the belly of their Northumberland workshop. Pieces range from the almost sculptural, such as the Dinner for One table, to more functional objects like the Flapper chair (so-called due to its fabric applique detail, taken from a piece of 1920's loungewear.)

One of my favourite elements of the company is the great detail they go into to describe where each piece originated and how it was created - a complete polar opposite of mass production. Casting my eyes over this sublime collection has certainly inspired me to get working on a coffee table makeover project I've been mulling over for a while now. How about you?