The Interior DIYer
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Living room makeover – update

Parting is such sweet sorrow. But in this case, it was well overdue. One Sunday morning I had had enough of our blackboard wall, so I painted over it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ruling out the possibility of a blackboard wall in the future. I haven’t tired of them fully just yet – it just wasn’t working in our living room and it was time to cut the cord.

After the elimination of the blackboard wall, I added a few pieces to our living room to make the scale of it seem less overwhelming. To give you an idea of the scale, our TV is 50″ and that bell jar is the size of my torso. Unfortunately medium sized objects get lost on our shelf and make it look cluttered. Go big or go home seems to be the motto here. 

I then tried my hand at painting for the first time in a long time {that is, ‘artistically’}, except I’m not happy with the result. Please, do not look directly at my painting. It is much like the sun and will burn your corneas right out of your head. I will be making changes to it for the better. 

I also managed to successfully fill our massive cloche / bell jar – yay! I stuffed it with a hookah I bought during our Tunisian travels, which had otherwise been gathering dust in our storage cupboard. For the moment, it’s a perfect fit.
An oldie but a goodie from our cupboard was this little gargoyle. I made him from clay as part of my final art project in secondary school, close to 10 years ago {oh god, I feel old}. I spotted him the other day and thought he aught to take his place on the shelf. He’s been waiting long enough.

And on a slightly different note, I’m hoping to invest in either a studio light or take a photography refresher course with the aim to take better interiors photos. I’ve mentioned before, our apartment is like a cave, which is why I avoid taking full room pictures because they look like they’ve been dragged through a puddle. And I’m getting tired of it. Fingers crossed I find something. In Dublin. And soon. 
Happy Thursday homies! Just one more day … xx A
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Attacked with tape – review

Last year I blogged about my poor man’s version of washi tape – electrical tape. It’s been my go-to for a number of projects around our home. My favourite being our cat food tins, as seen above. I covered both head-to-toe in black and white electrical tape. Pretty straight forward, and a quick fix for an otherwise massively ugly orange tin.

I also covered a small Pringles tin for my desk in work …

… and I recently covered my rather boring 2013 agenda, which had a massive brand name and date on it. Thanks, but no thanks.
{I think} the beauty of electrical tape is that it not only is made to last {i.e. the cat tins have been covered for a year now, and the tape hasn’t morphed, slid or peeled in any way}, and it comes in different colours. I’ve seen blue, red, yellow, green and orange on my travels. And for around €1 per roll in home hardware stores, you literally cannot go wrong. 
You can check out my original tutorial here. Although it’s pretty self explanatory – apply tape ad nauseam.

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DIY bell jar

As of recently, my new obsession curiosity with bell jars and cloches may be quite apparent. If not, it will become blatantly obvious after this post. 
I was shmoozing the internet machine the other night when I saw a tip on how to clean out old candle jars. This got me thinking about cloches, and how my leftover Yankee Candle jar may be a not too distant relative of a cloche – it just didn’t know it yet.

Below is how I turned a doomed candle jar into a cloche {or ‘bell jar’} …  

Step 1 : burn out your generic / Yankee Candle until rendered otherwise useless. Mine got super sooty which only increased the amount of winning this DIY got, since it makes the after picture look 8,000 times better. 
NOTE: this will work best with tumbler shaped jars. Meaning, straight up and down. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with trying different shaped jars. You won’t find jar racism here. 

Step 2 : add a metal object to said jar – I used a large heavy spoon. This is so when you pour in boiling water, the glass doesn’t shatter. This bit always terrifies me – slowly pour in hot water almost to the top. I had to get hubby to pour the water in. That’s how much this freaks me out. But it turned out fine, so you shouldn’t worry.

You’ll notice the wax begin to float to the top of the water. This is good. Leave your jar to sit for about 45 minutes. Allow the water and wax to cool.

Step 3 : once the wax has reformed and is cool enough to handle, pull the wax off the top. It will still leave a rim of wax, but this can be taken care of easily. 

Step 4 : clean and scrub and clean your jar. The leftover wax can be cleaned off quite easily with a bit of elbow grease and soap.
LABEL REMOVAL TIP: most labels should peel off easily enough. Some may need some scrubbing action, but the really tough labels need the nail polish remover treatment. Use some toilet paper or tissues and use on jar as if you’re getting rid of nail polish. This worked a treat for me.
Step 5 : fill jar with whatever lovelies you prefer, put on the lid, and gently turn over. You can also go sans lid by tuning over the jar onto your hand, and then gently placing it onto shelf or surface of your choice.
And there you have it! Quite a simple and effective DIY if I may say so myself. Happy crafting, homies! xx A