How-to: Decoupage Wallpaper Canvas Hack

High time for a hack I feel: this time, a simple affair featuring a rather crumpled offcut of some Laura Ashley wallpaper, some snazzy blue paint and a canvas with some previously rather shite artwork emblazoned on it. 

Said canvas had been hanging on my bathroom wall since a previous housemate created it prior to my tenancy, and for some time I've been meaning to do something more exciting with it. Cue a bin rummage at the end of a recent magazine shoot where I salvaged this piece of vintage-tastic Memento wallpaper. Far too pretty to use as just wrapping paper, yet too crumpled to use in its entirety, I decided to liberate the print from its plain cream background. Several hours of cutting and scalpel-ing later, my pattern was freed. I decided to go for a contrasting colour on my canvas so painted over the old artwork in this gorgeous cobalt blue, which really picks out the blue/grey tones of my bathroom wall. I then simply arranged my rose on the canvas and stuck it down with some UHU adhesive, along with a few butterflies also on the original wallpaper. Et Voila!

Simple yet effective I feel. I had intended to go over the slightly dodgy sticky-up corners with more glue but actually liked the extra texture they gave to the piece (plus had already tidied everything away) so decided to keep them as a deliberate feature. 

Stay tuned for more exciting wallpaper-offcut hacks - with the bank holiday almost upon us, a little DIY action seems as inevitable as stuffing my face with cream eggs to the point of feeling sick.

I'm a Queen (of Vintage (on the new Queens of Vintage website))!

Have been a little absent of late (did you miss me?) as I've been kept very busy with the dayjob (style assisting on a catalogue shoot this time) plus working on....

Make Do and Mend a Vintage Scarf, by Joanna Thornhill, at www.queensofvintage.com

This! This dramatic build-up is due to the fact that not only have I crafted this cushion cover from a vintage scarf with my own fair hands, but it also forms my editorial debut on the fabulous Queens of Vintage website, on which I am now going to be a contributing writer on all things interior and make-do-and-mend related. Tres excitement!

Click here to see my first post, detailing how I turned this 25p charity shop headscarf into a gloriously kitsch cushion cover, complete with decorative Oxford trim. I would re-post it here, but apparently Google gets cross if you do that - luckily the website is full of lots of other exciting posts too so it's well worth the visit. Enjoy!

Jamie Ward Upcycled Fly-tip Furniture

Nothing like a bit of fly-tipped furniture hacking to get a girl a bit hot under the collar on a chilly Winter's eve (shouldn't it be spring by now?!) Thanks to today's Daily Candy email alert, I am now fully versed and oh-so-slightly jealous of the creative furniture genius that is Jamie Ward. Not even out of uni yet, this pioneering Manchester-based chap forages for discarded furniture and furniture bits to upcycle into brand-new character-filled pieces. Not content with merely sprucing up an existing find with a bit of paint, he actually splices: a chair seat teamed with stool legs, chair backs combined to form a seat pad and so on. His ideas combine skilled craftsmanship with simpler hacker formats such as decoupage and upholstery. Here's my favourite five:


1. Upcycled window pane table - I love any project that involved recycling original window panes, and personally think anyone who rips out original wooden frames to replace them with UPVC should be locked up for crimes to humanity. A great re-use of a vintage classic.
2. Decoupage 'This Is Manchester' stool - not sure the origins of this piece, though it looks like newspaper photocopies decoupaged over a re-hacked stool, finished in a high gloss varnish. Keeping the colour palette monochrome enhances the classy finish.
3. Red-top stool - great juxtaposition of wooden vintage legs with what looks like a slick formica top - would be a practical choice for a kitchen table hack, too.
4. Stripy Collection - fantastic way to use up leftover paint. A good have-a-go hack - choose a selection of colours to match your interior scheme, and keep the lines handpaintedly jaunty.
5. Wooden chair with customised back: by removing the edge back spindles, a standard design somehow looks somewhere between cutting edge and Art Deco.

Upcycled original pieces diverted from landfill to become functional eye candy - Jamie, Craft Hacker salutes you.

Images and information all courtesy of www.jamiewardfurniture.tk

Tin Can Pendant Light

I keep getting told off by the boyf for my inability to throw away empty jars/tins/milk bottles and other items usually befitting the recycling bag "in case they come in useful for something". It seems, however, I'm not the only one, judging by my recent scouring of the design blogs. Dutch blogger Danielle de Lange over at Style-Files highlighted a very craft hack-ey use of tin cans as light fittings (see picture below). Taken originally from (also Dutch) magazine website 101 Woonideeen, the feature includes make-your-own instructions in, yes, you've guessed it, Dutch. Helpfully, Danielle notes the following in English: "To make the lights you need clean empty tins with a printed label (so no paper label) and a fitting with cable and a plug. Create (with a drill) an opening for the fitting through the top of the tin and pull the fitting through this opening. Then you only need to put a bulb into the fitting and your lamp is ready to shine!"

These would look adorable strung several in a row as low pendants over a kitchen breakfast bar (and would also be very appropriate for the setting) as well as gathered like this. I'd be tempted to have a go at spraypainting tin cans in some cheery pastels and even punching some decorative holes in them for an alternative to a printed can.

Thanks to www.style-files.com for flagging this up!

The AA

A little birdy told me that the website for Atelier Abigail Ahern, interior stylist-turned designer, shopkeeper, soon-to-be author and all-round interiors guru, has just been relaunched - so naturally it'd be rude not to take a peek. Abigail's bijou store resides in Islington's Upper Street and, thanks to the dramatically dark colour scheme that fully wraps around its petite proportions, provides a welcome contrast to the bright white showrooms of norm. Showcasing furniture, art, textiles and accessories all curated with a gallery-level eye, this deeply, darkly whimsical space is oh-so-stylishly full of the macabre and the unexpected. Take a look for yourself to get the full picture, or for my Craft Hacker-inspired favourite bits, read on (sadly I can't grab any images off the site so you'll have to link over for these too, but anyhoo...:)

Figurine Collection: These little beauties, cast out of concrete, manage to combine dainty and dangerous in one fell swoop. Love the way a simple colour change gives these usually gilt-laden kitsch ladies a completely different vibe. How about conjuring up your own version by giving a charity-shop figurine a new lease of life courtesy of a can of black spraypaint?

Bus Scroll Wingback Chair: You may have seen vintage wonderland Pedlar's re-use of old bus signs turned into light boxes, art prints and even deckchairs (see below) - now witness the same technique applied to the classic wingback. The sort of hack that requires degree-level upholstery skills so not for the faint-hearted, but inspirational nonetheless.


(picture from www.pedlars.com)

Rejste Side Table: Celebrating our British love of doily/tabletop action, this table cleverly nods to doily heritage in a 21st-Century, laser-cut metal type way. For more doily action, check out my earlier post on Ghost Furniture. I've recently become obsessed with the idea of setting some old doileys into a recessed tabletop with resin. Has anybody seen/tried this? Project being mentally added to the 'to-hack' list now...

Cruelty Free Rugs: Combining witty with pretty, these ingenious rugs by Mancunian designer Jon Male involve craft hacking traditional ruggage into a cowhide outline - subversive and cheeky. Do take a peek at Jon's own website for other inspired hacking, such as these 'A Soupcon of Light' lamps:


(pictures both taken from www.jonmale.com)

Bernard Pye Paintings: If Warhol had cast his eye back a further 200 years, we might now be able to go to Snappy Snaps and have our face recreated in print like this rather than the much-imitated Marilyn Monroe style pop art we all know and love. Yet another fab example of a familiar style we all know and love being reworked to look truly fresh and 'now'. Why not raid the history books yourself and go crazy in photoshop - or keep it old-skool and go to town with a photocopier and some florescent markers?

I for one am rather excited at the prospect of a whole entire book on such matters, and eagerly await the launch of A Girl's Guide to Decorating, out in May.

Headboard Hack

I think it's high time I posted a how-to hack! In an attempt to avoid the temptation of the January sales, I decided to distract myself from sales temptations by implementing a headboard makeover (thus spending the best part of a week covered in paint and thread and therefore barely presentable in my own living room, let alone retail outlets). But I digress.

Before I began, I was left with this:

The previous tenant in my rented room was also a keen interiors-er and had constructed this rather snazzy creation out of some good ol' MDF and an assortment of supportive struts - it houses all my art and craft supplies in pull-out trolleys and even has a section for my boyfriend's clothing (I, of course, have two full wardrobes elsewhere in the room whilst the long-suffering chap has been relegated to a tucked-away rail up top). But the colour wasn't really doing it for me and I longed for a comfy back to rest up against. Plus I'd just inherited some fabulous curtains (a leftover make from a photoshoot) I subsequently customised with slick, chunky black ribbon along the vertical edges, which I was keen to refer to visually elsewhere in the room to help tie the look together.

So I did this:

It's not quite pink enough to upset the boyf but is such a glorious shade it's all I can do to keep from licking it to see if it tastes as good as it looks (I used Designer's Guild Mulberry). By painting the routed lines black, rather than keeping them the same colour, the whole structure really seems to come to life and all its handcrafted joints are lovingly highlighted, plus it echoes the lines of said fab curtains.

For those reading who don't happen to be renting a room from a former interior designer who kindly left handmade MDF structures upon his departure, however, here's a couple of ideas that could be adapted to work in any space:

1. Feature wallpaper stripe.

A quick and easy way to get a shot of colour and pattern into any space. I used some leftovers of this flock-tastic wallpaper from Colefax and Fowler and simply stuck it straight onto the headboard unit using double-sided tape, taking care to pattern-match all five sections required to fill the line. Easy peasy. You could use this method to add a stripe in an alcove, or even stick some to a piece of wood to make bespoke artwork. Still not loving my inherited light fitting but until I'm struck with an ingenious idea for customising that too it'll stay as is.

2. Padded headboard

Another bargain hack (not that I ever do expensive ones, but even still) - through using fabric and upholstery nail strips already in my collection, my only expense was getting a piece of foam cut (which cost around £10 from Pentonville Rubber), which I measured to fill the width of my bedframe and end just shy of the inverted shelf on the headboard unit. I then attached some raspberry silk around the whole foam piece, holding it in place with pins poked through both the foam and fabric.

Then for my feature fabric - a vintage piece of sari fabric I used as a net curtain in a previous flat. After pinning this taut at the back I stitched it straight at the front to hold it in place, before adding my somewhat triumphant finishing touch - upholsterer's nail strip, usually used to trim solid furniture, which I salvaged from a bin (OK, it was a bin at a photoshoot as these were the leftovers from some "proper" upholstering - but a crafty find nonetheless). As luck would have it, by splicing all the leftover bits together I had just enough to cover both sides and it really pulled the whole look together. A simple bit of stitchwork was enough to hold this in place.

And as with the wallpaper, the whole thing is (miraculously, somehow) held in place with some trusty double-sided tape - again, this should also work sticking/leaning the foam directly to a wall, or onto a simple sheet of wood for extra support.

I now sleep far more sweetly basking in the glory of my hack - it also proves to be a much comfier vantage point from which to dream up the multitude of further hacks I have earmarked for the space. I'm getting twitchy fingers just thinking about it...

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.