Going Down To Christmas Town

I've long since loved these little Christmas villages that fill shop windows and mantle pieces of more organised Christmas decorators. There's lots of styles out there, paper ones which light up, traditional looking house to the really fanciful sorbet colour ones, they're not something we see a lot in the UK. 

I absolutely love them, and as we have a lovely mantle to fill this year, I hope to create my own little house village. 

However with presents to buy and a BIG family holiday to save for, I don't have a lot of money to spend on these beauty's.

I can however afford this gory lot, 5 old style little decorative houses taken from a charity's donation only box, costing the grand price of £2. 

I already have paints, brushes and more importantly glitter. I think I can make these the start of my village. 

I do have some training with doing this style of painting as I used to work for Border fine Arts painting ceramic animals all day, but I especially love the idea of something that used to be treasured being precious again.

My favourite so far is the centre house has it's taller than the rest and has a perfect Christmas style tree next to it.

Are you making your own Christmas decorations this year? Which is your most treasured decoration?

Amanda.x.

Make Do & Mend

 Now with our house sold I'm having to get used to fully living in a rented property until we can save enough to again buy our own bricks and mortar. Living in rented can be a little difficult when it comes to decorating, when you need to give your surrounding a lift you have to work with what you have. 

Our dining room needs a bit of loving especially our table, the table itself was borrowed from my sister-in-law so I can't really do as I'd like and paint it.

 However I can recover it in something that's removable, with a little help from Lucas; some vinyl fabric; and a staple gun, the transformation is complete.

 

 We did the chair covers to as they get quite messy with 2 young children spilling on them. 

Much better now but I'd still like to paint it white.

The next thing I re-made wasn't something I needed but a want, my friend has a blackboard with a gold vintage frame which she got from Heals. This is my cheapo version.

Take one ugly tobacco stained yellow oil painting bought for £2 from local charity shop.  Sand the painting down as the oil could be quite bumpy.

Add as many coats of blackboard paint(£2.85 from Wilkcos) as necessary to cover picture, opps still looks a bit bumpy. Another sanding and some more coats of paint.

It still is a bit rough but does the job and I think looks impressive.