Finding things Archives - Lulastic and the Hippyshake

You won’t BELIEVE what she upcycled this breadbin into

12 January, 2015

Harhahahaha. Everytime I write a blog post I have the sensationalist Upworthy title spring into my head first. I couldn’t resist actually leaving this one in because, for real, how else can you make a post about a bread bin sound read-able?

And, LOOK! It IS pretty cool, c’mon. It is a well easy way to make small storage to niftily fit into the corners of your kitchen/ bathroom/ bedroom. And it is super thrifty too as every single charity shop in the whole world has about 17 billion old bread bins for sale, along with the breadmaking machines and the Mr Bean VHSs. Oracles of the nineties, reminding us of an era of scrunchies and homemade velvet chokers. (In fact, heck, I’m going to link up, for the first time in FOREVER (argghhh so. much. Frozen.) with Magpie Monday.

BEFORE

We began by screwing them in- we have three with space in between for pretty teapots.

Anyone else all about the neon at the moment? SO good. With grey? So, So, SO GOOD.

I cut a triangle out of a potato to make some stamps for the side… a bit wibblywobbly, but that way it gives rise to the conversation about how perfect potatos are for stamping.

Done any upcycling lately?

PS – I am on Youtube now! Come and see our Off Grid Yurt Living videos:

Finding things, Our recycled home, Thrifty

Recycled Home- Garden room make over

24 May, 2013

CRUMBS! Who has had quite enough of babies, eh?! Not of actual babies, Juno is continuing to rock our worlds (in a good way) but, blimey, has this blog gone all babyville or what? Here is a bit of reprieve- a little peep at a wee thrifty makeover we did in our spare room.

One of my favourite rooms in our house is one that began as the most unpromising. It overlooks our garden and we keep trying to pretentiously name it “The Garden room”, but it inevitably only ever gets named after the person who happens to sleep in it the most. At the moment it is called “Jojo’s room” after my sister who comes to stay a little bit.

Here is the BEFORE shot, in all it’s mauve and blue glory:

We carpeted and wallpapered and painted but I think it is the fun bits and bobs we have around it that make it such a bright room.

See this bed? It is made of beautiful native New Zealand wood and is soooo comfortable. We found it about 4 years ago when we were living in a little flat in Kings Cross. We had just decided that day that we would need to invest in a comfortable double bed. That VERY night we found this ON THE DOORSTEP awaiting the morning council pick up for landfill items. Couldn’t make it up, could you?!

I found the curtains in a car boot sale for £5, they aren’t luxury or anything but someone at that car boot sale obviously got the memo that we were creating a “Garden room.” *high fives stranger*

We found the mirror discarded in the street and the two vintage parasols came from car boot sales for a few quid. They only smell faintly of old man’s cigars, hehe. I love their shape and their colours and the delicate imagery on them.

I love these pictures, the image of a hot air balloon WELL fills me with joy! I got them from a charity shop for cheap, they were originally framed in pine which just made them look mega 1990’s Habitat. A lick of white just makes them a bit cooler, I reckon.

(In the first AFTER picture there is a string of stuffed fabric birds hanging out from one of the parasols- funnily enough I bought that from Habitat in the nineties… it is pulling off the nineties much better than pine does I think…)

This is a beautiful retro embroidery given to me by my sister who found it in one of her local charity shops. I’d go so far to say that retro embroidery is THE second hand item to snap up these days, it is so often bursting with colour and can fill a room with nostalgic happiness.

Including the cost of paint I’d say this room cost less than £40 to makeover, a thrifty nook indeed.

I am going to be revealing a few other rooms from our recycled home over the next few weeks. I’ve been meaning to do it for YONKS, so keep tuned!

Have a fab bank holiday weekend! We are off camping with family and friends in Gloster (yes, I’m aware of how you spell it and it’s ridiculous.) Here’s hoping it’s a bit dry sometimes. (Hey, look, this is the hope of a realist- it’s rained and poured every second of every bank holiday camping trip we’ve ever done, I think.) Have fun!

PS I’d hate for you to miss a post… enter your email to get them pinged into your inbox. I won’t be spamalot, promise!

Finding things, Our recycled home, Thrifty

Recycled home – happy imperfection

8 February, 2013

We shift things around a fair bit in our house. We are so often picking up new bits of furniture from street corners (poor, neglected things) and little trinkets from charity shops that we kind of have to wriggle the whole lot about every now and then. We just recently overhauled part of our lounge in a bid to rehome a 1950’s cabinet that was covered in cat wee, which meant getting rid of a 1930’s beasty bureau that was taking up 50% of the room… This is the new craft station that took a while to get up to scratch:

These rearranging sprees have turned kind of extreme at the moment, almost, almost, venturing in to “tidying” territory. I have, in the past, been entirely capable of spending twenty minutes creating a tableau- moving ornaments on a shelf by millimetres, reframing bits of fabric to place there, filling a vintage vase with roses to sit just next to that frame, all the while stepping on raisins, over mountains of Ramona’s toys, moving half-drunken mugs of tea out of the scene. I understand this complete obsession with beautiful things and utter apathy towards mess makes me a bit cuckoo.

However, pregnancy hormones must be kicking in, playing with this inconsistency of mine- I am 30 weeks now, and with each day that passes I find myself, like, doing dishes! And picking the raisins up! Not only shifting around the beauty but dealing with the disarray. Talk about total discombobulation. Blimey, I’ll have a crush on Dave Cameron next.

Our latest big change in the lounge has opened up the room massively, and given us space to upcycle this old shadelesss lamp we found with a map of London.It looks wicked turned on, highlighting the twisting and turning bends of the Old Father Thames.

We honestly found this bench in a skip. Who would chuck this away, eh?

Our house would be even more of a shambles if we didn’t have stacks of vintage suitcases lying around. The ones tucked under the bench were found in Oxfam for a few pounds, the black cornet case in a derelict space, and the glam white one was given to me for my birthday (filled with the pair of vintage curtains hanging by the cabinet – best pressie ever, or what?!) These suitcases are the outer hebridies of my craft station- they hold extra paper and paints that I can’t squeeze in the cabinet (c’mon, have you seen the size of that cabinet? It is teeny, weeny, really…)

With the prospect of selling this little bubble of Camberwell we live in looming, we are going to have to get some paint on these walls to make it all a bit more appealing. We have had the bare concrete exposed for the whole three years here- I love the raw feeling of it, especially with the juxtaposition of all our homey jumble-sale trinkets. In fact, a visitor last week asked us how we did it. Like “How did you get this awesome kind of gritty concrete effect?” Hehe. Hoho. “Pure laziness my friend, pure laziness.”

There is nothing perfect in this house… nearly everything has a bit missing, a chip off the rim or a bit of rust, that is the way of making do, and then falling in love, with a completely recycled home. “Imperfection” for us not only means “bad ass thrifty” but it has come to mean “loved” and “enjoyed” and it is nice having a home filled with stuff that has bought happiness to loads of others in the past too. Even if it does make our house smell of cat wee. (Jokes.)

I have to admit, a bit reluctantly, these tidying up capers make it all even more delicious. I could almost get used to it…. *picks up a raisin purposefully*

These snaps were taken by the one and only Tom Hartford – thanks Tom, he was over here taking pictures of some exciting doilly crafts for an upcoming issue of Pretty Nostalgic mag… EXCITING!
redrosevintage

PS I’d hate for you to miss a post… enter your email to get them pinged into your inbox. I won’t be spamalot, promise!

Finding things, Our recycled home

Our recycled kitchen – a makeover from new to old

9 August, 2012

Around this time last year I posted that my dearly beloved had ripped out the kitchen due to us finding a retro cooker that we wanted to install. It just felt rude to bung such a nice nostalgic beast in our existing Nineties kitchen so we decided to let our love of all things old reign supreme.

Another year later and it is about time I did the final update, our makeover from new to old.

The before pictures aren’t terribly good. They never are, eh? I think this is because there is often nowt to shine, but also because of some deep reluctance to spend too much time peering at it all. Let’s just say there was ALOT of pine cladding.

Left hand side BEFORE

A low hanging ceiling with weird fake beams. Laminate flooring covering up stunning Victorian boards.

A huge pantry – it was an original, ancient cooling sytem but it just took up so much space. A boring tin sink with an ill fitting cabinet.

It was all so very dark and dreary.

*extreme makeover voice* It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears but here is our new bright and cheery family kitchen….

We ripped out the cupboards. We were lucky to find some exactly matching vintage tiles in the basement of a derelict house round the corner, we popped those up to cover the spaces we’d exposed.

Tim runs a youth club in the place I used to go to Seacadets as a kid- they were chucking out the old benches so we made shelves out of them. The very benches I would have been resting my sorry, freckly young ten year old self.

The enamel tins are our new pantry- we found them in France when we drove 12 hours to a car boot.

Somebody close by had hired a skip for a house renovation so we pulled the excellent bench tops straight out (with permission, of course!)

These are old lights from a butchers- we found them on Ebay, £17 for the pair. To find them we didn’t type “vintage” or even “traditional” but “trditional.” Is it terribly wrong to benefit from other people’s mistakes?

Tim found this whole sink for £25 on Gumtree, and got to grips with plumbing to install it. Using some old table tops and doors from an old cabinet he carpentered a unit for it. (Cor, Kiwis are bloody ace. Do marry one, if you can.) The tiles, we swapped with a local cafe, in exchange for building them some veg beds.

The retro blind is really a sneaky table cloth, and some of our Midwinter crockery sits upon a shelf we found in a bin and painted blue, and you can also spy the hooks I made from vintage spoons.

And here is the star of the show, our beguiling old oven. He was casted off, into the streets, along with these cupboards either side. A good clean, and a lick of paint on the cupboard doors, and they add a cheer from yesteryear to our kitchen.

When our fridge broke we took the opportunity to get one that fitted in with our theme. We had to hire a van to bring it home from the furtherest corner of Essex but we are so glad we did. It isn’t that old so is still efficient (although its huuummmm would tell you otherwise) but hails from the States which is why it looks so different. It has an ice maker much to my husband’s utter joy.

And this little corner adds a little pop of colour – we found it in someone’s garden and snazzied it up with some paint.

We had help with plastering the ceiling, and Tim picked up enough to some other walls, but other places we just exposed the brick. I love the texture of all the rubbly walls, recycled wood and shiny, colourful kitchen paraphernalia.

We spend such a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking, drinking coffee and eating so we are pleased we did this, despite saying we initially wouldn’t bother. I know it isn’t your usual makeover, and loads of you are possibly looking at the BEFORE pictures thinking it looks miles better HAARHA. But we love it’s quirky little self, it gets my heart all a flutter.

What do you reckon on this cornicopia of found objects?

PS The small and superior photos were taken by Jenny Harding during the Pretty Nostalgic shoot. She does a lot of gorgeous vintage style shoots.

PPS I’d love you to enter my giveaway – retro and Cath Kidston fabric, a 1982 Twinkle, a Midwinter tea cup and a glue gun! (An obvious mix!) Come over and say hi!

Finding things, Thrifty

Charity Shops in Streatham and the Charity Shop Blog Hop

31 May, 2012

When I was younger Streatham was known for only one thing; its gargantuan and spectacular ice rink. We would put on our cool bomber jackets, exchange our best crepes (yoof speak for shoes, mum) for some skanky boots and skate the day away to the winsome harmonies of BoyzIIMen.

Now though, memories of skating in Streatham are being squeezed out by the minutes spent gallivanting around the charity shops.

I am a charity shop ADDICT. I start going through withdrawal if I don’t go for a week (symptoms include pottering around my friend’s homes, picking things up from their shelves with an inquiring gaze.) I like that it is a kind of shopping that requires imagination and vision (my husband didn’t have that vision when I showed him a little packet of retro Christmas candles this evening) and that it builds patience as you dedicatedly wait until you come across the item you hope for.

So Streatham REALLY floats my boat. It must have the most number of charity shops per sq mile then any other area in London. In the one mile walk from Streatham Hill along Streatham High Road to Streatham Station there are TWELVE of ’em and two junk/antique shops. Never has a road so aptly been nicknamed (er, by me and Tim) The Golden Mile.

Here is the run down but also check out the google map where I’ve handily plotted them for you!

Give a Little

Begin at the top with Give a Little at 77 Streatham Hill- just opposite the Mega Bowl. Bursting at the seams with clothes and trinkets, both up and downstairs. Clothes tend to be on the steeper side – £7-8 for skirts but all good quality. The bric-a-brac is fairly priced, nice mugs for £1.

Trinity Hospice Shop
Stay on the same side of the road for this sprawling jumble sale kind of a shop, chocka block with quirky things and people. I love the kids clothes section- literally a tiny mountain of garments that you bury your nose into – three for £1.

PAWS
A little shop that involves popping off the main street a few metres, but well worth browsing as the prices for things vary wildly.

Relief Fund for Romania
Carry back down the main road for a while until you come across the little yellow sign pointing you up to the left. This one has £1 rails- hurrah! Sometimes when you need jumpers for craft projects you really don’t want to spend more than £1 but these rails are so rare.

British Red Cross Books and Music
Cross over the road for the next two. A huge selection here, carefully laid out. In specific Books and Music shops I find you don’t get the bargains you might in another shop but you are paying for a higher chance of finding something ace, aren’t you?

Trinity Hospice
This Trinity Hospice Shop is as sparse as the first is sprawling. But they have selected the choiciest cuts, and there are some creative little crannies. (Doe we say crannies?)

Oxfam
Nip back over the road for this new, massive Oxfam – this one is the Ikea of chazza shops. Clean, spacious, affordable and air conditioned! Primarily for furniture and bric a brac, they have some gorgeous things in there. Our sofa hails from here, this massive, bed like thing and it was only £30.

Oxfam
Amazing shoes and clothes- I snapped up a pair of Reef flip flops from there today for £3.99, they kinda, mostly fit me, even though they say a size 10 and I’m a size 6. Just a few inches sticking out the back. I wonder if I can snip that off…

Cancer Research
They have the longest rail for dresses ever seen (each one around the £5 mark) and the BEST tunes. One of my favourite things about charity shopping is the eclectic music and how it is perfectly acceptable to singalong. (No?)

British Red Cross
Huge selection of clothes and lovely crockery. They always seems to have some nice retro bits in here too.

Working for Charity
Tiny shop with a small selection of things. The things were LOVELY but, dare I say it, a bit overpriced. I saw this tea set and thought “OOf, I’d stretch to £15 for that” as it was so beautiful. Turns out they wanted £58. Yep. £58.

What the?

The ongoing charity shop pricing dillema. See, on one hand I agree that they have a responsibility to their charity to get as much as they can for an item. On the other hand, I feel like they play an important redistribution role too – making beautiful and good things affordable for those less well off.

Shelter
This is quite a new shop and swanky with it. It’s a Next Generation charity shop – making charity shopping more clean and appealing to the masses. (However, personally? Give me a rumble in the manky old jumble anyday.)

There it is, The Golden Mile – for some of the best charity shopping in London. The prices reflect those of other Capital charity shops – no 50p china plates here- but for sheer volume and overall thriftiness Streatham is Where It Is At.

Having a little one, I have to plan my charity shop traipsing carefully- ensuring Ramona gets a chance to run wild either before or after. Being a scorching day we trundled round the corner to Tooting Bec Lido, this fabulous old school pool, where we bumped into a wonderful friend, scoffed ice cream and splashed our merry wee hearts out. Heaven.

And Now, Roll Up, Roll Up- Time for the Charity Shop Blog Hop!

I am well excited about reading everyone’s write ups- be it local or exotic.

Please link back here (with the image if poss) and visit all the other linker-upperers to share a comment– hopefully you’ll find even more charity shop lovers than you knew of. Hurraahhh!

Just click below where the links (and photos) will be displayed in all their glory…

And finally, if you are on Twitter use the hashtag #charityhop (see what I did there?)

Craftiness, DIY, Finding things, Thrifty

Punk Lamp: Upcycling with old zips

28 May, 2012

A few months ago a derelict, half burnt down house around the corner threw open it’s doors. The new owners needed to clear out the junk that had sat there untouched for 30 years. You can only IMAGINE what kind of state I was in when I arrived. Breathless with eagerness. Sweating with hope.

I sprinted into the darkened corners, fear of rats melting in the face of frozen scenes of the Seventies. I was on the hunt and returned successful. A set of drawers, several singular drawers without the set, a few rusty door knobs (you can’t BELIEVE my luck so far, can you?) and a bag full of ancient zips.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them until I was sitting next to a lamp I had kind of upcycled (okay, yeah, just tied ribbon onto) and knew it had to go through it’s third re-invention.

Forgive this shockingly poor picture, it is the Before shot and you KNOW these have to be badly lit, blurry, involve scummy crockery. Also, I had already begun picking off the ribbon before remembering to snap it – I realise it looks a little like a half plucked chicken-lamp.

I had a funny comment on a post the other day, where we were discussing the rich, quirky history some secondhand items must have. I said “If only the furniture could talk, eh?” and Inkomplete said “I sometimes make up stories for mine.”

Well.

Meet Deakin, the punk-chic lamp from Peckham.

This lamp is a wealthy lamp, heralding from a plush and exquisite mansion in St James Park orphaned but rescued by us in his teen years in 2009. Deakin quickly shed his stuffy heritage, embraced his feminine side and went through a kitch be-ribboned look in his early twenties, as many do. Deakin has reached what some would call a mid life crisis, but what he calls an “awakening.” Deaki is now an anarchist; squatting with some ancient Peckham rockers, only a hat-tip to his old, more elegant life in a small rosette.

I just hand sewed the zips on. And pushed a bit of my homemade chalk board paint (you haven’t seen that Homemade Chalkboard How To? But you must. It will blow your minds) in a navy colour around the base. I thought using chalkboard paint would add another dimension but also didn’t want to cough up for expensive tile paint.

The beautiful thing about adding tile grout to your acrylic is that it adds an abrasiveness which means it will stick to ANYTHING, where as normal paint would peel right off a shiny ceramic surface.

So, what d’ya reckon about Deakin eh?

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*sings to the tune of Three in the Bed* Doooo remember to take a look at Magpie Monday!

and also *sings to the tune of The Happy Wanderer* Vote for Meeee, Vote for Meeeee, Vote for Meeee, Vote for Lu-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-stic (Yeah, that one didn’t quite work, anyway: I got through to the finals of these amazing blog awards, in the Craft and Thrift section and I’d lurve you to vote, thanks so much!)

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