Attic24

Monthly Mosaics

:: January ::

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:: February

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At the start of 2013 I made a private resolution, just between me and myself. I resolved to be On Time with my monthly mosaics this year, to make them happen bang at the end of each month like other organised bloggers do. Thing is, I have to accept that making schedules for my blog is pretty pointless these days. Everything happens quite spontaneously at Attic24, and I've grown to rather like it that way. So monthly round-ups may not in fact happen at the end of the relevant month, but they will happen at some unscheduled point in time. Usually at a time when I actually have time to pootle about with my photos and create the visuals.

It's a lovely thing to do mind you, to look back at the month that has just passed and celebrate it visually. It serves to jog the memory, to capture the essence of that time in the year, to be content with the look of life's Little Bits. After almost five years of writing about my life and making these monthly mosaics (yes five years, that's sixty months!!), I still really love to do it. It makes me happy, reeeeeeeeeeally happy.

I'm looking forward to the next sixty months.

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Ps you can view all sixty of my MM's in one place if you like....you can have yourself a colourful Attic24 slideshow. There is a link to the mosaic album in my right sidebar, or go HERE to see.

Sixty! Wowsers.

 

 

 

 

A Late Winter Walk

We enjoyed a really lovely family walk today.  It wasn't a particularly pretty day with heavy clouds and low light levels, but it was surprisingly mild and very still. This is one of our favourite go-to places when scenery, fresh air and gentle exercise is called for. It's a quiet reservoir only a couple miles from the Attic, and a circular walk round it takes less than an hour. It is just enough.

Trying to get the Little People out of the house at the weekend is becoming surprisingly hard work, it's like trying to prise a limpet off a rock. They cling to the comforts of home, they protest loudly, they complain about the boredom of Walking For Pleasure. It takes determined effort to organise even a short outing such as this one. And yet.....once we arrive they really do seem to forget they didn't want to come and enjoy it very much. Lots of running, paddling, throwing, climbing, jumping. Little B is thankfully not that way yet, he is always up for an outing. He spent almost the entire time pretending he was a racing car (he did stop racing long enough to lob many rocks into the still water). I love how young children choose to run everywhere. Such energy and physical joy.

x

 

 

 

 

Upcycling

I bought these delightful little "sol d'or" narcissi from the market yesterday, it was the gorgeous colour of them that grabbed my attention (am I right in thinking that sol d'or translates to golden sun in English?). But oh my goodness, I really hadn't bargained on the scent of them, and as I sit at my desk to write this morning, there is the most incredible scent of Spring in the air. It's absolutely knockout! Thinking that three vessels on the table is possibly a little excessive so I'll be moving one of the little jugs up to scent my bedroom later. I've already got some in the bathroom....ahhh, you can never have too many fresh flowers in the house.

Anyhow....this post isn't supposed to be about the whiff of flowers, I got distracted a bit there, sorry. What I want to yarn on about today is my recent upcycling exploits. I've kind of grown to like the word Upcycle, even though it annoyed me for a while with it's trendiness. I used to think why say upcycle when it's just about giving something a makeover? It's the same with vintage and retro, which is really just a trendy way of saying old isn't it?

I bought this last weekend, on a complete whim when I went out to buy eggs. Instead of going straight to the butcher, I detoured past the second hand shop and saw this quirky little (vintage? retro? old?) wire veggie rack sitting forlornly on the pavement amongst the second hand furniture. It called out to me, begged me to take it home and love it. And for the price of £6 how could I refuse the call? So I came home to the Attic with half a dozen eggs, a bunch of daffodils and a wire veggie rack tucked under my arm.

On Thursday I was lucky enough to have a precious child-free day and the weather was gorgeously bright and sunny, so out into the back yard I went to put my upcycling plans in motion. First stage, a good ol' rub down with some hot soapy water.

Second stage, lots of newspaper and a can of spray enamel paint bought in the sale from a local discount shop. Teal Treasure indeed. My favourite colour of all time (although I prefer to call it "Tiffany"). I don't have any experience of using this spray stuff, and truthfully I didn't do a very good job. I didn't listen to the words on the can and was a bit heavy handed with it. So it dripped a little, and also the can ran out before I had truly finished covering all that wire. So the upcycling is a little bit patchy and blobby. But the colour............oh the colour!!! Look see.......................

......isn't it lovely? So much more appealing than mucky old cream.

I do believe I managed to transform this unwanted item into a colourful thing of beauty. A real treasure. Useful too....can you guess what I'm going to use it for? What do you suppose those wire baskets will be crammed with? Of course......yarn, glorious yarn!!! Yippeeeeeee for the thought of a whole colourful rack of yarn that can be maneuvered about on dinky little wheels! I will of course bombard you with pictures when I've got around to filling the baskets, it'll be a visual feast.

This was my other spontaneous upcycling project this week, yesterday to be precise. Another impulse buy, this (vintage? retro? old?) wooden cutlery tray was sitting in the window of the Oxfam shop as I walked past, price £2.99. I do happen to like aged wood, but I am not too keen on the colour brown. So after lunch yesterday, I set to work with my upcycling plans. I have a modest stash of Decopatch papers left over from previous projects, so I trimmed some to size and finally managed to wrestle the lid off the top of my decopatch glue. It worked a treat...the decopatch papers are very thin, a bit like tissue paper, but the magic glue transforms it. Not only does it easily stick the paper down, but it provides a very durable finish, making the whole thing very hard wearing and practical.

So this old wooden tray has been successfully upcycled and repurposed at the same time, how about that? I'm going to be using it as a desk tidy, to hold essential bits and pieces on my new " Lovely Shabby Chic Solid Pine Farmhouse Kitchen Table with Farrow and Ball Painted Legs!"...haha, LOVE the dramatic Ebay descriptions with Lots Of Capital Letters! Yes, I have a new piece of furniture being delivered later today after a frantic, nail biting finale to an Ebay auction a few days ago. Oh the drama of those last 30 seconds!

The farmhouse kitchen table is not going to be living in the Attic though. Nor is the upcycled wire yarn rack, or the upcycled wooden tray, no no. They are all destined to go and live in my new studio. Studio. St-u-di-o. Oh that word!!! Makes my heart flutter, it still seems so dreamlike and unreal! I am desperately desperate to tell you the whole tale, but whilst we (my studio buddie and I) are busy renovating the room we will be sharing together, I feel inclined to keep it under wraps. There will be an overexcited post all about it very soon though, as soon as we have finished the dirty work. There has been much hard graft going on. Lots of cleaning, scraping, sanding and oiling (the floor), and now lots of filling, sanding, priming and painting (the rest of the room). Soon though.

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Edit to add :: Interesting article HERE about defining antique/vintage/retro (be sure to read the comments!).

I think the rough conclusion is thus ::

Antique = at least 100 years old
Vintage = 20-99 years old, from the era it represents
Retro = newer, but made to look like an item from the older era.