Niki Fretwell: September 2013

Monday, September 30, 2013

October Dates

Just back from a fabulous break in Mallorca, feeling refreshed and ready to take on the workload of hand-making items for my shop and the fairs, as we head towards Christmas!

October promises to be a busy time, with lots of events already filling the diary...

The first is the Friday Flea Harvest Fair in Shepton Mallet Town, Somerset.

Friday 11th October - 9am to 4.30pm.

My shop will be open as usual and, weather permitting, my stock will spill-out onto the Market Place.

The second date for the vintage calendar is Monday 14th October - 10am - 4pm for the Vintage at the Village Hall Fair, at the Corn Exchange, Blandford Forum, Dorset.

Finally, I shall also be offering my wares for sale at the Autumn Vintage Bazaar, Cheese and Grain, Frome, Somerset on Saturday the 19th October, 9am to 3pm.

I'll be back soon with a sneaky-peek of some of the goodies I have sourced or handmade for the fairs so far...

Have a great week,

Niki x

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

My latest crafts projects have been a lot of fun to create, as they are all quite different from one another. I enjoy the challenge of making something from scratch, but also to make something old, useful again, or more beautiful, has its own rewards...

This little stool was given a re-paint with a cream eggshell...

And a new wooden top was cut and fitted, which I re-covered in a thin layer of foam and a pretty vintage floral fabric.

Two mannequin torsos where bought from a flea market...
(I'm not quite sure what the slit was for, which was cut into the side of one of them.)

I decided a little decoupage was in order, to hide the various holes...

I used some fragile pages from an original magazine from 1906.

After several coats of protective varnish, here's how they look now.

They took a while to do, but I feel they were worth the effort. They'll look more in-keeping when displaying genuine antique and vintage pieces such as necklaces and scarves.

I've stitched some peg bags...

One from a c1950's floral.

This one is made from vintage hand embroidered linen and a floral fabric for the back.

And another made from a pretty sweet pea print.

A handmade cushion, where I reused a section from a damaged hand embroidered linen table-runner, and combined with a flowery fabric.

An old box file had been awaiting its make-over for a while...
I decided to use the pages from this damaged Observer book to smarten it up.

An hour or so later and it was done.

A bit of patience was required for this project too. I took a plain oval mirror and a broken china posy ornament.

This one I picked up at a sale, missing its posy bowl, so their were no guilty feelings that I was about to vandalise something precious!

A few sharp taps of my hammer later and a collection of flowers and leaves were ready to work with.

I've made these mirrors before - I use linseed oil putty to bed the flowers into, which takes approx 28 days to harden! Here's the finished mirror drying off.

It inspired me to do something about this old leather-work barbola mirror that I've had for several years.
The leather flowers have become very dry and damaged over their lifetime and bits have dropped off...

Taking a small pansy posy ornament...

I used the same technique as before to fill in the gaps between the leather flower garland on the mirror frame.

Then its left alone to dry for a month!

Finally, a make-over for a small side table, which had been through the wars a little...

After painting the table with a couple of coats of cream eggshell paint, I thought I'd continue with my latest passion for decoupage using Observer book pages. This time I used a copy of the book of birds, which was actually the very first title that the Observer series published. Its a common title to find, but very often the old ones are damaged, so its nice to be able to offer them a new lease of life.

I pasted the pages onto the two flat areas of the table and when dry, gave them several coats of varnish to make them durable.

A one-off piece of furniture for the bird lover.

Thanks for stopping-by...I hope you've enjoyed looking at my latest projects.

Some of them will be in my shop tomorrow.
Enjoy the rest of your week,
Niki x

ADVANCE NOTICE: My shop will be closed on September 26th, 27th and 28th due to family commitments. I shall be open as usual from Thursday 3rd October. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Shelf Stacking

There's been lots of things happening at home this month, but I've also fitted in some crafting time, so wanted to update my blog with a taster of some of my latest handmade items. I have several other 'work-in-progress' projects, which I shall show once completed.

A little handmade hand bag, made from a cheerful vintage fabric and old wooden button.

In fact I loved the fabric so much, I made a cushion from it too...

One of my patriotic hand-stitched brooches.

This miniature mannequin started out as one of those modern pieces designed for the dressing table. I stripped her back to her 'bare bones' so that I could give her a simple makeover.

First I had to give the torso a coat of cream paint...

And then using some printed tissue from a vintage sewing pattern (which was missing a vital piece, so was no longer of use)...

I decoupaged the surface of her.

This antique picture frame was given to me by a friend. It was missing its glass, so I decided to revisit another old idea from a few years ago and make a notice board from it.

I painted the frame and then added a pad of foam, overlaid with an antique French rose fabric. A length of lace stretched across provides a place to tuck in notes and messages, or photos and postcards.