Thrifty Thursday: Renovating

This one has been done for a while now but like any desk it attracted piles of crap the second it was usable. Today I shuffled the crap off it and gave it a quick dust down.

We found the desk one night after I'd left Oxfam and picked Stephen up from work. It had a sign saying 'this is free' on it and we stopped to look. Almost immediately the owners came out to give us it's complete history and to beg us, once more, to take it.

Okay then! It then became my project. First I attacked it with sand paper (Father Christmas, are you listening? I want a bloody belt sander this year! My arms ached for days) then I touched up the varnish and gave the side panels and the inside some of this cute wallpaper.

It's my desk. I had grand visions of settling the household accounts on them. Reckoning up the bills, paying the scullery maid. But even if we had a scullery maid Stephen would be in charge of paying her. He can actually tell numbers apart.

So I use it for two things, Guide programme planning and book storage. Both of which are fine by me. Especially with my big stack of adventure 100 booklets on it!

Something about dieing hard...

Crafts are addictive. Before internet shopping came into my life I had two big addictions, knitting and making jewellery.

Jewelery supplies where mainly bought from The Bead Shop in Manchester. The necklace is the result of my last visit.

Only that's a train ride away, a train ride I make less and less often. So I stopped. But now. But now I can buy bead in Huddersfield. And I have. And so the gloomy earrings were born.

The red bracelet is product of some recycling.

Speaking of recycling. The box is where I'm keeping little bags of seed beads. It was going to have a green heart but I didn't have any green glitter. So I used some red. So instead of being the 'I'm super madly envious' box it's the little box of (slightly morbid) hope. Or something.

The ribbon headband is an adorable project from the craftster book. I have a second one made up for Louise.