Piano Stool - a New Look

Many years ago, and a long way away, we bought a piano for 50 quid. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I'd really missed having one while we lived in a shoebox in London, so I was delighted. It was a little out of tune, but we all loved tinkering with it, and I think I have a picture like this for each of my babies

Sadly the time came when the keys started to become detached from their hammers.  Day by day more and more failed to work, as the glue powered off and it became a write off. We kept it for the kids to hammer away at, and they loved to do so. It was unplayable really by this stage, but that never put off the kids

One day of course I had enough, and I started to take it apart one day while D was at work. Yes it was madness with 3 children running around. Soon it was no more than a beautiful mechanism.

I had a lot of trouble getting rid of the iron frame. It weighed an absolute ton, and no metal merchants would take it from me. In the end I let the local dodgy geezer do the job for me.

However you'll notice from the photo above that the piano stool was something special. Full length, big enough for 3 kids, huge amount of storage for music and also very useful for those times when you don't have enough chairs at a dinner party. So we kept it and it moved house with us. But it looked like this

I know my photography skills leave something to be desired, but it was actually that colour. Stained and manky, and one half lighter than the other.

As of today it looks like this

This makes me super happy. It's been on my to-do list for about a year and I finally pulled myself together and did it. The fabric is from IKEA (bought years ago from their offcuts bin) and in the end I had to make liberal use of hot glue, as the tacks I bought were too long and would have made for an uncomfortable seat.

We bought another piano, a posh digital Yamaha one. I'd love to have a 'real' one of course, but this is good and the sound and feel are brilliant. Plus you can plug headphones in and play away without annoying anyone else.

Boots from an old jumper

I posted on facebook not long ago that I had upcycled an old jumper into some boots.  Wow this generated a lot of interest, and so many people asking me for details in person as to how I did this.  If I had known in advance people would be so keen I would have done a photo tutorial!  So here's the best I can do. (Another disadvantage of doing this after the event is that I've been wearing them round for a couple of weeks and they are dirty.  Sorry about that.)

Firstly, I didn't really make the boots.  I bought some super-cheap Primani ones. Then I simply chopped off the sleeves of an old mens jumper (not an old man's jumper) and glued them on.  It's not rocket science, and it's hardly even economically valid, as you can buy boots that look a bit like this for next to nothing.  But hey, I like to do this sort of thing.

So...cut the sleeves off and decide which will be the right side.  Then turn them wrong-side-out.

Take the boots and run a line of hot glue round the very bottom of the boot and pull the sleeve over and stick it down.  Fold it over and stitch round if you have a) the time b) something to stitch to.  By luck rather than judgement the boots I bought had a sort of piping round the sole so I stitched to that.

You'll then probably need to just put a bit of glue around the inside ankle (the bit where the leg joins the foot of the boot) just to gather the fabric in nicely so it stays nicely on the foot bit.

Then fold the top of the sleeve down (you might need to just snip the cuff if it's too tight) and sew or glue some buttons on.  Glue round the top if you like. I found that wearing the boots while doing the ankle gluing and folding down bit was easiest.

Incidentally, a hot glue gun is something every person should have in the house.  Useful for so many things.

Dinosaurs and mushrooms

More t-shirts! The Bean had been asking for a dinosaur t-shirt for a while and I tried to convince her that a nice brontosaurus was the way to go, but she wanted a "scary dinosaur that says rrraaaahhhh" so I had to oblige. I made both, but the brontosaurus (which apparently is meant to be called an apatosaurus, who knew?) was immediately given to Bug, who happily seemed very pleased with it. The Bean is delighted with her scary T-Rex.

The most complicated stencil I have done so far was a t-shirt for D for Christmas. It was a multi-layer job so took a bit of time. It's also my first time using white, and rather disappointingly it has already started to crack after just a few washes, something I have not experienced with any of the other colours. I had to use rather a lot on the dark purple though, so it's my fault. I should have paid more for an ink made especially for dark colours. We live and learn! It's very noticeable that the white has a rather plasticy feel on the t-shirt where as you can easily see from the dinosaurs above, the other colours are more like true dyes. So I think in the future the white will be limited to lighter backgrounds. I'm still pretty pleased with the result though!

Playhouse and kitchen

Way way back in the Summer I found this amazing playhouse in a skip. Being a bit of a scavenger I carried it home (I think the excitement of a bargain might have raised my adrenalin as it is pretty heavy).

The girls loved it and it has been happily located outside under the gazebo for the summer, and then into the shed for the Autumn. We resurrected it for the winter since we don't use the French windows when it is so cold and wet and it has been taking up rather a lot of room in our lounge since.

I wanted something a bit more exciting for the girls to do in there than just sit around, and being skint I didn't want to buy a nice kids kitchen for them so I have had my eyes open for more skip goods. I found this shelving unit by the side of the road and for ages it has been just sitting in the house, happily played with by the girls but while they were away this weekend I decided to get down and sort it out.

So here's the new kitchen. The unit slotted together really easily, so it was simple to change the layout, and I just added a little shelf at the top. I'd been collecting Calpol lids for this purpose and just screwed them in lightly to give oven knobs. I usually use tester pots of paint for this sort of thing, but I had some leftover paint from decorating our house and from my parents so there was plenty.

Here it is in situ. The girls love it!

T-shirts

More t-shirts! Same idea, same process. You might recognise these butterflies from Cerys' curtains. The thing with stencilling 262 butterflies is that I now have a lot of butterfly cut-outs! The make pretty good t-shirts though, and the Bean loves them. Similarly I had the negative image from this t-shirt, so I thought I'd just use it for Bug.

If you would like a t-shirt or indeed anything stencilled in a similar manner send me a mail at alice@beanpi.co.uk and I'll let you know if I can do it.

Cerys' curtains

This was the biggest stencilling job I have taken on so far. My niece Cerys has the hugest window to her room (lucky her) and her Mum and Dad wanted some personalised pink curtains to cover it. They have chosen butterflies as the theme to her room, so the job description was just lots of butterflies!

I took the opportunity to find some decent ink this time...I had been using Dylon fabric pain previously to do t-shirts but it is expensive and messy as it is very runny. This time I used proper screen printing ink (permaset aqua) which is water based and doesn't create a hard plasticy finish. It washes well and remains soft. We wanted pinks and purples this time so I got the dark red and purple and a transparent white mixer and made a colour chart of possibilities...which was a nice t-shirt for the Bean.

And then to the butterflies! We went for a mix of mid-pinks and purples and a random spatter of 4 different sizes of butterflies.

Yes it took a long time. Yes I had to cut each butterfly out separately! 262 butterflies and 4 curtains later and I love the result.