When Golden Books become golden treasures

What do you do when your treasured vintage books fall apart at the spine, or rip and become illegible? These clever crafters pay homage to their special childhood tales by upcycling their destroyed pages. The stories live on for another generation...and might encourage your children to want to go op-shopping with you and ‘save’ more books destined for destruction, unless a loving family takes them home. Check out Mini-eco’s upcycled paper garland of the Tawny Scrawny Lion …or Cat Taylor’s Richard Scarry birthday party invitations ...or Ruby in the Dust’s rebound Golden Book with extra blank pages for children to write notes…

Now I know what to do with my beloved Dr Seuss pages that lost their cover and companion pages two decades ago! Time to dust them off and restore them to glory…

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Cavas Bus Stop Art: uplifting messges for your family

When times are so sad and distressing in New Zealand, I'm wondering if other people, like me, are turning to their favourite art, design and craft blogs for a bit of escapism. If you are, and that's why you're reading this: welcome. I hope you and your family are safe and warm.

Hopefully these lovely gems I found on Felt.co.nz and wrote about for my column on http://www.babybites.co.nz/ recently will bring some cheer to your home.

I absolutely love the vintage ‘bus stop roll’ canvas art works that are so in fashion in home décor right now – I even made my own one combining locations important to my life, and to my Australian husband's.

Now you can buy ones especially for the little ones in your life. Instead of listing locations though, these typographic-style art works list fun, positive “Family Rules” or a list of “Beach Rules”, “Dreams for your Child” or “Wishes for your child”. I love the thought of my little girls staring up at this poster and attempting not only their ABCs and starting to learn to read, but memorising such neat messages. Made by Almond Design in Melbourne, these artworks are available in colours perfect for all nurseries like yellow, pistachio, pale blue and mocha.

PS: Don’t forget to get yourself one of these fabulous WWII motivational ones especially for mums ( “Keep Calm and Carry On”!) See Studio Dollmain on Felt.co.nz


Read my original column on http://www.babybites.co.nz/

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Anzac-ifying my house...typography style

For around six months I’ve had an idea in my head for a new painting in my house and finally, I’ve done it. This time I tried something completely new in terms of technique, and inspired by my partner in OTLP, Greta @ Topography.

An art history student way back when, I particularly love modern art and some of my favourite pieces are ones by Toulouse-Lautrec and New Zealander Colin McCahon which use hand drawn or stencilled words. I don’t necesarily like political messages, but more the forms of words and the use of them as creative expressions of the brush themselves. As a journalist by trade, I have a thing for words.

So therefore it's pretty logical that I adore the new fashion trend of using Typography in interior design fabrics, nursery fabrics, and on canvas art works, particularly in black and white.

I wanted to do something totally unqiue to our family though, so armed with a piece of graph paper, I came up with a combination of words and numerals important to my New Zealand childhood and my husband’s Australian childhood. Using the graph paper squares, I spaced them according to the different widths needed for different sized fonts and then hit the craft shops looking for stencils to fit. I also bought some scrapbooking letters, to use as a stamp when wiped generously with oil paint.

Miss Four and I painted the canvas black, and then used white oil paint through the stencils and on the back of the scrapbooking letters, as stamps. I actually love how it came out partly looking hand-drawn and partly like place name signs. Alongside my extra large size canvas I did a few years ago featuring flax and toi toi, and my new fantail cushion, and my treasured Aboriginal bird painting, I feel like I’ve ‘Anzac-ified’ my house appropriately.

What do you think? Might pop it into the Creative Collective's January challenge to try a new craft and share it...

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