Meet my friends

Happy fall to all :)
Today I want you to meet my good friends Barbara and Claudia. They both have lovely blogs where they are sharing their passion about home décor.
Barbara lives in Poland and is a master of decoupage and loves shabby chic style, also prefers the old French style in decorating.  I want to share with you her recent work - jewellery box, just click the image and visit her beautiful blog - you will learn about decoupage and decoration as it is in Poland!


Claudia lives in Germany and loves shabby chic in white, she decorates her own 300 year old home, and she does a beautiful job, click and look for yourself:


I am personally very interested in learning about how people decorate their homes in different countries, yeah, we all love shabby chic, but it has its own specific expression overseas. So if you are interested as well, check these girls out :)
Some more images from their blogs:  
                                                                       From Barbara





                                                                From Claudia

Please, comment and stay connected! 

Give a shabby chic look to an old side table

With beautiful summer days I have absolutely no time to keep up with my updates here. Creating and painting in summer - posting in winter,  I guess :) I have lots of stuff to post, but trying to use sunny days to be outside and finish my projects, that keep coming and coming. My head goes round with all the ideas I have :)
Today though it's a bit rainy and I want to show you the little side table I found recently in the used furniture store. The little son of a furniture was hard to notice but I saw him and had pity on him :) Now it is going to be a present to my husband, he can use it for storing his phone and clock and keep it next to our bed.
Little cute table found his home.. All right, you can put  the tissue away and see for yourself:

Annie Sloan paint in old white and clear wax was used for this transformation. Also I decoupaged the antique maps on it using Mod Podge. I distressed the edges everywhere and here it is... Oh yeah, almost forgot, first I painted the table with Americana décor chalky paint in "primitive" colour, you can see it through the old white layer.
Do you know by the way how this thing officially called rather than side table?

Comment, follow and like my Facebook page for more and more! Be happy!!!

If you want to use antique map printable for your project you can find it on my pinterest board "vintage graphic - coloured". 

Projects are coming..

Hi, everyone, it really was awhile since my last post, sorry about that. What was happening is that I started too many projects at the same time. Now I have some of them finished and some still laying waiting for their turn. Oh, well. Also was busy with my family, three little kids , you know :) That's why I'm so slow with my crafting.
But today there are some things to share, they might be not 100% finished yet, but ready for public anyway.
Actually I started to decorate my ceiling fan blades, and it takes forever, than I redone the vintage spice rack, which you will see now... also lamp redo and shelf painting, blanket crocheting (started actually..hm.. let me think... maybe in October..... oh, my :) ) I'm excited for the summer, which means more projects will be done sooner, as I can work outside, hoping to paint even some big pieces like furniture. Excited to try Annie Sloan chalk paint. So here are my plans for now. Try to post regularly is another goal :)
Here is the rack, still going to add the bottles with vintage labels, but I'll repost it again when those are done:

And here is the lamp (before and after): 

This was my first experiment to transfer image to fabric, and I just used the Mod Podge, worked good! I was surprised. 

Till next time! Cheers!!!

"Eternal Calendar" tutorial (introduction series - 1)

Hello everyone! I want to do something different today, for awhile I was admiring the beautiful art works of crafters overseas, then I had an idea to introduce them to my readers here, because when you share something to others you yourself enjoy it twice as much. My dad used to say that when I'd got some extra candies on my hands.
So I want to introduce to you the Russian master of decoupage Natalia Bliss, she did a great tutorial on how to make this amazing calendar that lasts forever (translation and art supply suggestion (by analogy with russian ones ) are mine):

You will need:

• Half finished product for calendar
• Acrylic paint (brown, ivory)
• Candle
• Palette knife
• Images for decoupage (numbers, months' names, roses)
• Patina or distress paint (author uses "bitumen")
• Water base clear finish
• 3-D gel like "golden gel mediums"
• Desire to create

Here is the half finished product and the product with edges painted with brown acrylic paint in the places where you want  it to be distressed later:  

After that rub the brown edges with candle:

Then paint the whole thing with ivory acrylic paint, when dry, rub the places where candle wax is with the help of palette knife, [I guess you can do it with sand paper too]. 

Next step is to glue your image to the surface, that is decoupage. 

Print the months 'names and numbers on the paper as shown on the picture below: 

First cube 0-1-2-3-4-8, second cube 0-1-2-5-6-7

Glue them to the cubes, make sure the numbers are in the right cubes. 

Now back to the roses: with the sand paper rub the edges of paper to make it look more smooth and even with the wood. You can add a bit of colour around the image then it looks even more like one piece. 

At the end with the help of sponge apply patina or distressed stain to the work, so it looks aged like this:

Next use water based clear finish to cover the work. The last step - apply 3-D gel to the roses: 

Here you have it! 

Thanks to Natalia for the wonderful tutorial. If you like this calendar, please come and check her other works. Also you even can buy some masterpieces from her online store - NATALIA’S STORE 

Leave a comment, please, if you liked this kind of "introduction posts" and would you like to see similar tutorials in the future!