spoon dolls...

hello..I'm back again with another little how to..although it's not really a how to because every one knows how to paint a wooden spoon right?

 

it's more of a here's what you could do with a wooden spoon type of post...hopefully just a bit of inspiration.

 

my spoons came from the kids craft section of a supermarket so have little handles but any kind will work, new ones are good but used ones are ok too in fact sometimes the darker wood looks better.

 

I used acrylic paints but poster paints would work too, try to avoid felt tips or pens because they bleed into the grain (even if you paint the spoons first I find they still do) I discovered this when I was making these
Also if you are a bit wobbly with a brush (like me) a wooden cocktail stick works well for painting on small details like eyes etc...

don't worry if you make a mistake...the eyes went very wrong here!! but no problem, I'll show you what I did about that in a bit.

masking tape is always handy for a bit of extra colour.

And remember the one with the bad eyes...well she ended up a masked super hero so I gave her a cape :)

I added a bit of tape to the lower part of the handle and sprayed them with some clear varnish...just so the colours stayed nice and bright.

they are going to keep me company by my desk...
bye for now x x

Peg board tutorial...

 hello... no blog posts for a while, sorry.  I made a decision not just to blog for the sake of it and when it has been 5 years you do run out of things to say...but I wanted to keep the option of posting the occasional tutorial here if I made anything useful. So here I am.
This came about because I needed something to hang my prints on when taking photographs of them for my etsy shop. But they turned out so well I have used them as storage for my shed and little desk area.  Last year I made one for my book which is in a vintage frame and more decorative but this one is so simple.

You will need
Wooden peg board sheet (cut to your required size)
1 length of wooden dowel (the size of the peg board holes) mine was 4mm
White emulsion paint
Paint roller/ tray or brush
Small wood saw
Sandpaper
Acryilic paint in a few different colours / paintbrush
Small screws/ screwdriver
Re the wooden peg board: you can find this in timber merchants and diy stores and they will usually cut it to size for you, however they may charge you for the whole piece even if you you don't use it all so I had mine cut into 4 pieces that would easily fit in the car and I have spares to make extra boards for Mr H's shed and the kitchen. My 4 pieces cost approx £15

ok so it will look like this (unless you are lucky enough to find white pegboard, in which case skip the painting bit!)
using the emulsion paint and roller paint the pegboard white, try not to over load the roller as this clogs up the holes...

if the holes do get paint in them don't worry let it dry a little and then use a piece of the dowel to push into the holes to clear them.

while the paint is drying cut the dowel into 6cm length pieces, (I got approx 30 out of my dowel piece)...smooth the ends with the sandpaper and then paint one end in your bright coloured paint.

When all the paint is dry push the dowels into the pegboard, make sure they go right in so you will be able to hang things on them securely, they will be a snug fit but that's good as it keeps them in place.

To attach to the wall just use a small screw at each corner and fix in place.
You could paint the pegboard any colour to match your scheme or leave it unpainted.You can also find lots of different fixings online like baskets, hooks, small shelves etc to make it really useful..they are usually in garage storage or workshop sections.
Note added ...if you want to hang heavier items on these pegs they might not be strong enough so you would be better with metal hardware like the ones they use in shops :)

That's it for now, thanks for reading x x