Sunday, November 13, 2011

Innovative Ideas to Make Candle Stick Holders

Glass candle stick holder with ashtray top

Chair leg spindle

Chandelier

Tea light inverted glass insulator candle holder...double decker candles anyone...Chief hope you aren't reading this!! LOL!!

Iron ring...not sure what it really is but it makes a great insulator sconce!

Lotion caddy...great inverted insulator candle holders, or desk caddy!

GREAT SUCCESS!!! Craft Fair 11-11-11


What a wonderful weekend I had!!  I just spent 2 weeks scrambling and creating, getting ready for my first ever Craft Sale in my home.  It was a great success due to the awesome vendors (talented friends) that agreed to bring their creations to the house and sell them over the weekend.   The house was packed nearly NON STOP and many mentioned that this was a better showing than the 36th(?) annual CSI Craft Fair with a hundred vendors...and that our prices were very reasonable.  THANK YOU...what a wonderful compliment:)



As you can see from the above photos, my friends are mainly sewing experts and quilters.  Something that is very foreign to me, but its a complimentary talent when assembling a craft show around my mostly wooden creations.  The house was so jam packed with fabric items that my walls and furniture were COVERED!  By the end of the first day of the show about half of the sewn treasures had been purchased however many of my large pieces were still in place.  After spending a few minutes in the evening visualizing my items being purchased and headed out the door and down the road, I was ready for day two.  Now I don't know if it was my visualizing, or the fact that there was less to choose from, but my bigger items did finally make their way out the door and to a new home!  Which made me very happy.  So thank you to all that came out and supported us, and hopefully we will see you next year!
 
Here is a sample of some the coat racks, towel racks, wine racks, key racks, pot racks and just general storage items I made for the weekend.  I dug around in my storage shed and pulled out all the bead board and barn wood (well...actually it was wood from a demolished outhouse!) and got my brain creating!  As you can see, I throw NOTHING away.   You just never know when you might need it:)
Notice the bead board door with hinges making a cap, and wooden wheel "hooks"






Another bead board door with hinged cap designed to hold towels and any other bathroom item you can tuck into the bins
Speaking of beadboard, these tables are made from 2 bathroom stall doors that I found in my stash!

Bead board doors already hinged.  Decked out with rusty metal I found in the shed.  I think the metal piece has something to do with sifting crops because there is a whole stack of it laying around.





















Due to the aquisition of SEVERAL typewriters and adding machines, I have started making personalized, or monogramed jewelry.  Call me if you would like me to make some Christmas gifts for you:) 










Chair leg spindle candle stick holder
 Here are some of my FAVORITE items that SOLD this year:
A dog bed bought by a little girl with a new puppy!  Made from chair legs and an upside down wood piece designed to be a mantel clock.  I purposely left the middle bare so whoever bought it could monogram it!  Minnie will be nice and comfy:)


I saw something similar to this made with a hanger for a bird feeder.  I have personally used it as a flower vase with water and flower buds in each hole.  It could be a candy dish as well as decorated for each season.



I painted a tray red then added antique couch pediments, a tin bin and art deco shell shaped soap dishes.  A perfect sunglasses and key holder.


Another tray with couch pediments to jazz it up!
Cork board couch pediment...so glad I have an ample supply of pediments because I have more ideas on how to use them:)




















I was hoping to keep this chandelier candle holder but someone from California stopped by today and bought it!  I have mixed emotions on that!



THINGS I GET TO KEEP!!!!





    

The BEST part of the whole weekend was being able to pass on a family heirloom...hee hee...to a great grandson!!  I had hung the monogramed shower door of the previous owners on the wall and was trying to find a  Marshall family member to give it to.  Becky and Ben showed up and now it is in the right hands, to be passed on for generations!  How cool would it be to say "I have my great grandpa's monogramed shower door!" 
  Enjoy it BEN!

Kelly

The Big Ol' Living Room and TONS (maybe even literally) of Wallpaper

This spacious room had ceiling to floor and wall to wall drapes, as did most of the rooms, but there was something hidden in this room.  Something some of the grand kids didn't even know was there, and something we uncovered within the walls.  Come along on the adventure to find out what it was hiding behind those Hawaiian print drapes and lurking within the walls.

This room had several layers of wallpaper as seen below.  The first thing I did was take down the drapes.  Believe it or not the red flower wallpaper pictured below is actually a match to these drapes!!!  The wallpaper that was up with these lovelies was the yellow and green stripes.  Next I pulled down the top layer of paper to reveal the apples.  It helped to rid the room of the musty OLD odor it had, but I dug deeper.  I was on a mission to discover the history of the home.  I saved a sample of EVERY layer of paper from EVERY room.  My initial intent was to make a collage for each room.  But after peeling back the layers I soon discovered this to be impossible due to the large patterns and almost mural like scenes.  These are the layers from the living room.
top layer
2nd layer






2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th layer

6th layer, probably from the 20's

7th and original layer, from 1916!
  There were 9 layers of paper on the staircase walls which is located just south of the living room.  I soon discovered these layers provided a nice insulation!      These are the layers found under the stripes and apples.
4th layer
3rd layer
  
5th layer



5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th (original)
Now the REAL work on the living room started when I was away at a friend's house celebrating New Year's Eve.  I THOUGHT I was going to come home to some work COMPLETED on the bathroom, BUT this is what greeted me!  The plaster was all down from the ceiling and walls of the living room.
Notice the colors of the wall above the window.  The top was white then there was a gray stripe and a turquoise color under that.  It took me a year to figure out the gray stripe was the concrete that had been originally decked out with a picture rail!!





When the time came, Wayne had a little help hanging the new sheet rock.  Because I could not get all the wallpaper off and we did not want to disturb the base boards, we covered the concrete walls with 1/4 inch sheet rock.  We were able to set it on the baseboard and glue it to the wall.  That helped to provide a little bit of that insulation factor we lost with the peeling of the paper.  


Wait...wasn't there a HUGE window here somewhere?


















My sister Nancy flew out about a month after we moved into the house.  I put her to work on the staircase stripping 5 layers of paint.  This was one of the first jobs we tackled, and it was the LAST to be completed 5 years later.  What a long drawn out process it is to strip paint from antique molding!




  























Now... the finished product!  After 5 years of stripping several layers of paint from the woodwork, it has now been restored to its 1916 glory and the diamond windows have been hung back in their proper place.  Notice the built in bookcase to the right.  It had been covered for decades under the drapes and it was a surprise to some family members to see it existed!  As I worked on the restoration of the built in I discovered photos of the Marshall family, as well as the Atwoods who were the original owners, that had fallen through some cracks and found their way UNDER the bookcase.  There were also several Christmas cards addressed to the Atwood's from the late 1920's and early 1930's there as well.  

The porch swing,  was found in the crawl space under the house.





















 













Double pocket doors put back in place!








The staircase is visible in the background.

Another pocket door put back in place, originally there were double doors, but we had to hide duct work and were unable to put both back in.
Here is a view of the living room looking into the dining room and mud room at the back door.  We tried to keep the home as true to it's original construction as possible, but with several additions that took place in the 40's, 50's and 80's it was hard.  I hope we did it justice and that THIS old house will be around for another 100 years!

Kelly