A Home Made by Hand

by Kimberlee

One of my favorite things is seeing a creative home - I love walking into someone's living space and seeing it filled with objects that are handmade, altered or are used in unusual ways.  I am blessed to live in such a place, and to know & love so many creative people.  Today I'm focusing on some of my own objects, and in a following post, the objects from others.

If anyone wants a tutorial of anything presented here, feel free to ask via the comments section.

 

I love birds.  This garland is made of felt red-winged black birds.  They have bright button eyes.

 

Yes, it's a cow skull.  Many, many years ago, a boyfriend purchased a used car and found said skull in the trunk.  So he gave it to me, and since then it has been lovingly called, "The Room God."  He's been decorated in a variety of ways and, much like the Mannekin Pis, is sometimes dressed for the holiday season.

Currently, he is whitewashed with black horns and carries the motto "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate."

 I wishwishwish I had a "before" of this dresser.  I found it for big trash day on the side of the street in Hartford, CT.  If I recall, it was painted black (badly ) and had herringbone wrapping paper modge-podged to the top, and the knobs were the cheapest white plastic you could find.  But it was old, so it had a solid wooden back and dove-tailed all wood drawers, in short a really well-made piece of furniture.  I took it home, cleaned it up, painted it with several undercoats and this beautiful shade of red, and gave it new pulls.

Then, just a short couple of weeks later, I moved out of this house, and the dresser lived in a small storage closet in a U-Haul in the middle of nowhere in Connecticut for about a year and a half!

My wonderful father drove all the way from Southern Illinois to Connecticut, retrieved it along with several other items, then drove all the way from there to here in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota.  I cleaned it up and added beautiful golden rub-on birds found in the scrapbooking section of Michael's.  It now holds patterns and pattern pieces.

A hanger, purchased raw and painted bright blue.  The deer are fuzzy stickers!

One of my early attempts at flower-making.  ALWAYS keep the magnets from those fridge notepads (best found in the dollar section of Target) because they are great for making impromptu fancy magnets.

The bathroom can be difficult to decorate with wall art, if only that things get easily ruined in the moist environment.  Photos melt to the glass, etc.  This piece of art, which looks like hieroglyphs on papyrus, are simply acrylic-painted stamps on craft paper.  I think I am going to do another, with different stamps, but on fabric instead of paper.  I love this piece because the more the bathroom makes it look older and beaten up, the more authentic it looks!

I found this awesomely shaped branch during a fun time my husband and I had camping with friends.  I cleaned it up with linseed oil, and my father added hangers and hooks.  We have it right next to the front door, and hang our keys on it.  (The candles are from this year's Ren Faire)

This is the rug that wanted to be a bowl.  I love The Generation T books, and this is the braided rug project.  But no matter what I did, the rug desired to become a bowl - so I just let it happen.  It now sits on top of the fridge, holding onions and potatoes. 

Flower Pens.  A classic.

These chairs were part of a dining room set my wonderful husband and I found at a yard sale.  The seating cushions were predictably bad (once again, sorry for no before shot).  Many of you probably recognize this fantastic IKEA fabric - it really brought the chairs back to life!


Thank you so much for visiting me, and I'd love to hear about any of your favorite projects involving altering home objects.