Apartment inspiration:: A little Anthropologie comes to Sydney.....

Recently we went looking for some deck chairs for our balcony.  So we headed to our local Freedom store *yawn*......Umm hello.....what is this we find? Did Freedom magically turn into Anthropologie overnight? Colourful rugs, cushions, knob handles, prints. The store that usually sends me to sleep with their bland (safe) colour choices simply blew me away!  Here, have a looky at just some of the pretties that caught my eye:

See what I mean? Gorgeous huh! I love these colours and the little touch of handmade and mix of interesting textures and designs. Si porfavor!

My obsession with Doilies is satisfied for another hour.....

Oh cozy, yummy teal wall....how you inspire me!

So of course now, I come back to our apartment and want to grab one big paintbrush and give the whole place a makeover - crafty stylee! 

oh and we never did get the deck chairs. How could we?  After this colourful assault on our senses, grey just felt so...meh.

Re upholstery project - Foot Stool Redo

Its finally finished!  The foot stool that I rescued from The Bower last year now has a brand new look.

This was my third re-do project.  It was also the hardest one so far as it required a lot of careful sanding, at least 100 nails to be removed from the previous owners re-upholster job and lots of measuring before cutting. I did however get to use a mini-sander and  that was the highlight for me.  I had never used any power tool before so that was fun.  Also (and this is a first for me)  no fingers were harmed in the re-do of this footstool!

sand.clean.repeat.sand.clean.repeat......are we done yet?

To guide you along, there are some very helpful tutorials online.  The one that helped me the most for this project can be found at Instructables titled "How to Reupholster a very old footstool"  a step-by-step tutorial (with photos).

Here are two of my other re-upholster projects, both chairs.  This chair I bought from The Salvation Army for only a few dollars:

This chair (in all its chocolatey-brown goodness) has been with us for 11 years. So it was time to give it a new colour and some floral print. 

Before: Excuse the mess....we were in the middle of renovations.

I highly recommend giving a basic project like this a go.  Not only are you giving something old a new lease on life, but you also get to be creative and we all have a little creativity inside of us just waiting to come out!