Household goodies

Well, as you can see by the chair, I am a big fan of recycled materials. Here's a few other pieces I created for my house made out of odds and ends!

coatrack
My entry way desperately needed something on the left wall, so I decided it would make sense to put up a coat rack. But I couldn't find anything I liked, so I opted to just make one. I picked up an old cutting board for $1 at a thrift shop, and decoupaged an old artsy piece from a magazine onto the back. Those knobbies are actually from the dresser in Anthony's room that I refurbished. Since I had bought new knbos for it, I had these leftover, and their worn look fit in perfectly with the style I was looking for. Tres Shabby Chique!


windchimes
I have an insanely big backyard now at the new place, with a beautiful old cherry (I think) tree right outside the living room window. It's lowhanging branches were begging for ornamentation! So, again, I went shopping for windchimes, only to be dissapointed with cutesy-poo crap or overpriced pieces. The solution lay an a box of mismatched silverware I had in the garage (I never throw anything away!).
The main piece is a pie server, which I bent up for hanging. Those danglers are three forks that got the tangs bent around with my trusty pliers. Since the plain copper wire I had looked too, well, plain, I embellished each thread with beads I individually knotted on. Those pretty glas beads are from two broken necklaces I owned (again, packrat!!!). Cute, no?


Jewelry Box
I think this was originally a cigar box, and ugly as sin. I had it from ages ago, and I don't even remember what it first held, although it delightfully smells of lavender. It had a nice shape to it, so the german book got to do double duty. After I decoupaged the pages onto the box, I rubbed in a bit of silver craft paint to give it an interesting patina. The gothy pic of the queen on the top is from another art magazine I tore up for decoupage/collage purposes. The inside was lined with a bit of scrap felt.


Fireplace Insert
Nothing is uglier than a non-used, empty fireplace! This piece was originally going to hang on the wall, but since it's currently incomplete, it's temporary home is our den's fireplace. It started it's life I believe as a kitchen drawer, although I found it on the sidewalk! Took off the hardware and painted it black, turned it on end and decoupaged the interior with some cool religious tidbits from my collage box. The candles inside were another thriftstore find, catholic prayer candles, which are interestingly printed in Spanish.

Sorry for the crappy pic, the den has very bad lighting...

The Chair!

Okay, I had this junker chair just sitting in storage, and i wasn't really sure what to do with it. It was a plain dark wood, but the stain was badly scratched and faded. The padding on the seat had long since fallen off, too, although structurally, the frame was pretty sound. So, now that I have a workshop (which I really should post pics of my fabu new workspace), I've finally gotten around to playing with it.
I started by removing the tired seat, and it now has a cushy and oh-so-plush velvet cushion ready to be attached. But the chair itself needed something special. I had found an old german-printed book in a thrift store ofr 50 cents which I was dying to do decoupage with, so the entire chair is getting the treatment. I painstakingly cut all the pages from said book and trimmed it down to just the printed spots, and then began decoupaging in very small pieces to cover the chair. I don't have that much left, although it's taken 2 weeks so far just to get this far. The struggle has been the curved detail on the backing of the frame.
By the time it's finished the chair itself will be a great piece of art all in its own!


The Chair, almost completed.


Detail shot of the back.