easy easter bunnies

I don't do much for Easter. Its just a break from work really, and an excuse to eat chocolate.

It was different when I lived in Greece... it was the only time we went to church in my family - other than weddings, christenings or funerals. Easter is the best time in the Greek Orthodox church in my opinion. There's something really special about the build up and celebrations of Easter.

Though I must admit, I really didn't enjoy fasting for lent...

In Greece, Easter is a big thing. It wasn't just the lamb on a spit, or the red eggs... it was the fact that after fasting for weeks you were finally allowed to eat real food - milk, eggs... chocolate.

Now I live in Tasmania and I don't do Greek Easter. Partly its cause I have no family here and barely know any greek people to share Easter with. I tried going to the Greek Orthodox church in Hobart once and it just wasn't the same... so I just do the Aussie thing: hot cross buns and chocolate eggs.

Enough about my sad story. I was going to share these cute little bunnies. They're so easy to make and are a great way to decorate an easter basket for kids or friends.

I don't have a pattern for you, but its real easy. 

All you need is some felt, some pipe cleaners and some buttons. 

First cut out two simple round top shapes for the front and back and an oval for the bottom, making sure its the right size for the rounded tube rabbit body. Its not as easy as you'd think, I had to reduce the size of my bottom (the rabbit's bottom, not mine unfortunately) once, then I had to reduce the width of the rabbits, but once I worked out the right size I could make a ton of rabbits quickly.

Next choose buttons for eyes, a larger button for a tail, and a pipe cleaner for the ears. Bend them in half, then in half again, doubling over each end to form ears. Make sure you sew the eye and tail buttons onto the appropriate piece of felt (front or back) in the appropriate place, cause its easier to do it that way. Trust me, trying to sew buttons on while working inside a tube ain't fun. Using a plain blanket stitch, sew the two rabbit parts together, not forgetting to add in the ears when you get to the top. Before you sew on the bottom, fill the rabbit with whatever stuffing you have on hand, then sew on the bottom.

So there you go.

Easy.

I do give great instructions even if I do say so myself...

z

Shared at:

another record table

Yes, I mentioned a new record table. It was in the photo I shared in my last post. I forgot I hadn't actually posted about it...

Honest mistake.

So, here it is, in a rustic setting.

I don't know if you remember, but I did make a record table before. I had a stool base with hairpin legs but no top and thought a record would make a great top for it.

It was great. I sold it at one of the markets.

I regretted it.

I made another one. Not as pretty. No hairpin legs. This one was a stool with a top when I found it. A ratty top which I promptly dispatched to the great broken stool home in the sky.

All I did to make this table was give the legs a wash, buy new rubber stoppers as it only had one left, dust off the old gramophone record and use a crapload lots of liquid nails to glue it together.

Simple.

Effective.

Cute.

I put it in the living room and for ages I used it to hold my coffee cup as I watched TV or worked on the laptop. Then one night I forgot myself and put my feet on it.

I don't recommend you do that. Gramophone records are really brittle.

Out came the liquid nails again. This time I glued the new record to the old one, making it double thickness.

Its back holding the remotes right now. And I have a footstool for my feet.

It pays to remember what things are for. Footstools are for feet. Brittle 33.5 record side tables are for a cup of coffee. And perhaps a bowl of popcorn. A small one.

z

Shared at:

Talk of the Town Link Party

easy industrial stencil art

Somewhere along the line, my rustic shabby country farmhouse has turned a bit industrial. I mean with the poles in the middle of the living room there weren't many places to go...

So I embraced the poles (not literally, though there was that one night when I thought I'd try pole dancing... best forgotten. Forget I mentioned it...) and built a TV unit/room divider between them.

Now I have a proper separation between the 'work' and 'entertaiment' areas of the living room. Instead of trying to hide the poles (ever tried to blend in poles in the middle of a room? impossible) I painted them black and made them a feature.

This resulted in a slightly more industrial feel to the decor.

Plywood and poles will do that.

I also bought a new leather couch and ended up with a scandanavian style instead of the old gentleman's club style that I thought I wanted. The colour and style really suits the new rustic industrial farmhouse decor.

Here's a preview of the new couch in place, including the mess all around it...

Anyway, I decided it was time to up the industrial aspect of the living room with some original recycled artwork.

Plus, it was time to take the christmas tree down!

These stencils are all real, factory shipping label stencils, some have even been used. Many times. Others are just plain old. They were given to me by a great friend and soon as I saw them I knew I wanted to make this artwork.

I recycled an old frame I got from the tip shop. I had originally put fabric in it to match some cushion covers and hung it over the bed in my house in Fentonbury when I was selling it.

Since then its been in our bedroom, just sitting there.

Waiting.

Till yesterday.



Yesterday I took it down to the casita, took out the fabric, laid out the stencils in a way that pleased me, used a ton of glue to hold them in place (there's no glass on this) and then decided the frame looked wrong in distressed white.

So I taped off the inner rustic timber 'mount' and sprayed it gloss black. Then, after it was dry but before it had cured completely, I used a paint scraper to scrape a bit off here and there to show some white through.

Much better.

I especially love the splashes of blue!

It kinda looks good there now. It goes with the black poles and the little record side table. Which I haven't shared yet... oops.

We're getting there.

All I need to do now is paint the living room white. Or a grey that isn't blue. Get rid of the carpet and put down some kind of floor that's easy to clean and doesn't make me gag. Finish the TV unit. Get a bigger rug. Find a solution to the world garbage problem.

I'll get right on to it.

Easy.

z

Shared at:

Talk of the Town Link Party

saddle storage in the workshop

Sharing another project I did before the eye/cataract saga. Back when I could lift things and bend over without fear of detaching a retina...

Eh. Its only a temporary setback.

You may or may not remember that we've been storing the saddles and other tack in the workshop area of the casita. 

My workshop.

Where I keep my tools and do messy things with paint and sawdust.

Anyway, we can't store them in the feed room for obvious reasons so its basically that or move them to another shed which is out of the way and we have to carry things when we want to use them....... though, with the amount of riding we do lately, would that be such a bad thing....?

Hm...

Must think about that...

Meanwhile, it doesn't matter cause I've finally sorted out saddle storage in a way that takes up less space, is safe for us (ie no saddles falling on heads) and is safe for the saddles (ie no saddles falling on heads).

It was easy. Basically. It just took a long time to do from inception to completion. And I used only things I had on hand.

I have a fence in the middle of the workshop area of the casita. It was there cause the shed was being used as a shearing shed when we bought here. When we cleaned the place up and put in a new floor, we didn't worry about removing the entire fence. Its been handy for tossing horse rugs and even hanging saddles off.

The problem of putting saddles over the fence, however, was that they took up space on both sides of the fence, thus limiting what I could do on the other side. So what I did was basically make a kind of saddle 'tree' to hang them off, thus limiting the spread...

I began by attaching a long piece of hardwood to the fence in several places and up onto an exposed beam in the ceiling so it was secure. This became the 'trunk'. I then made three triangles out of timber and attached them to the trunk, each one a 'branch' for one saddle. The bottom branch holds Wayne's western saddle (very heavy) so that got an upright support as well.

To finish it off, I used an old piece of pipe I had, cut to length, to create a rounded rest for the protection of the saddle upholstery. Mind you, I also put saddle blankets over the pipe and over the saddles for added protection.

The other side - minus saddles hanging over, taking up space. I'm can now push cabinets and other things up against the fence and have more room to work.

While sprucing the place up, I even sprayed the side of this old locker gold for a bit of class...

Looking good, in a messy/creative/working kind of way.

Of course, there's always more to do. But the saddles have a home now, so cross that one off the list.

z