I live on the Wiltshire/Dorset border in the UK. I am really curious about new ways of approaching art and other creative skills.I'm hoping to share with you my successes as well as failures as I try out new ideas and projects.

You can also find me on Instagram

So please get in touch if you've any suggestions or queries.

This table came from my grandmother, it was given to me probably 40 years ago, i've dragged it around the country never really figuring how to use it properly, it was originally table height but the only thing you could do was to put it in the corner of a room with a pot plant on it - not really my style, but you know how one clings on to things that were precious to others 😥.

A couple of months ago I decided to saw the legs down to make it coffee table height, this worked fine though I still ended up sticking it in the corner of a room.

The acquisition of the pyrography machine & detail sander spurred me on to turn the table into a piece of art.

Its hexagonal shape made it fairly easy to measure out shapes and segment.

I pencilled the detail in then burnt over the designs with the pyrography machine. I decided to leave some wood showing and paint the segments I wanted bright & colourful with a white undercoat.

I really enjoy the painting part of the whole process, just like 'colouring in' really.

Then it was just a case of re-burning some of the edges i'd slapped paint on, varnish it and "bob's yer uncle"!!!

Pyrography Poker

Once on a mission, I'm impatient and impulsive, and though this poker is excellent for wood without any sort of grain & perhaps a novice. It's not ideal for the deep grooves I wanted to achieve.

Antex Craft - Pyro Master

Another reason it wasn't the best buy for me is that I want to change tips constantly and the instructions say to leave it to cool down between changes. I think this is something to do with the thread on the tips that screw into the hot end of the poker. Maybe the copper tip & the steel end cool at different temperatures...I did find that the tip loosened as the gadget heated up so I was constantly having to use pliers to tighten it. Which kinda contradicts the instructions not to change tips while hot!

I also have slightly bent my favourite tip!

So, i'm saving up for something like this, it has 2 pens and apparently there are ways to make your own tips.

Eleoption 220V 50W Gourd Wood Crafts Tool Kit Multifunction Laser Pyrography Machine

Hall Table

A friend gave me an old hall table, it had been living in a shed for about four years. Time to upcycle again.

Trying to remove the 'pretend' leather top was pretty grim. After much faffing about with knives, sanders and copious swearing. I Google'd for a solution,

A STEAM IRON

What a dream,,. it slid off the top with ease, the iron was a bit stained but cleaned up and was good for it's original purpose.

If I had to do this again i'd put a damp cloth between

the iron and the table top.

After drawing the design on the top with pencil, rulers and various sized plates. I burnt grooves into the patterns. The top of the table was originally stained dark so I had to paint a white-ish undercoat.

I then painted the patterns and motif with Acrylic paint, tidied up the burned grooves with my pyrography machine, then slapped some varnish on.

The wording on the top is "The good thing about tables is they turn" which, after i'd burnt the wording in I realised that this table could never turn....😏

Coffee Table Mk 1

So, this old utility coffee table was destined to go to the tip, I decided that rather than just dump it I could have a play, i'd seen some furniture on Pinterest by a company called 'Sticks', very colourful & fun, so thought i'd give it a try.

Firstly, I had to buy a sander, I chose a little Black & Decker Detail Sander and bought it from Amazon. I also had to buy a electric Pyrography Poker so I went for one of the cheapest, Antex Craft - Pyro Master , a decision I am beginning to regret...but more about that in a later post when I do a review.

After lightly sanding the top of the table, I used plates & rulers to mark our boundaries for the different sections of the design, drew a few pictures, including a couple of my two dogs, Tilly the terrier & Bronwyn the collie, then went over the pencil lines with the hot poker. I then just filled in the outlines with acrylic paint & then varnished it.
I love it, probably because it's the first thing I did...

Crazy Patchwork Pouffe

With the leftover fabric from the Patchwork Quilts I decided to make a Pouffe.

I made 2 large circles & a strip (the circumference of the circles) out of 12 inch crazy patchwork patches.

Top View

Side View with tie

Underside with Zip

It worked out quite well, I even had the presence of mind to put a zip in the underside so that I can remove the stuffing for washing!

Patchwork Quilts

After doing the crazy patchwork upholstery and pouffe, I decided I must give machine block patchwork a try, I found a method on Missouri Star Quilt company video, and chose a 9 patch swap, I really like their video's, very user friendly with easily achievable results.

I used a mixture of old charity shop clothes and fat quarters for the quilting, an old duvet cover for the backing and as I couldn't afford a 'proper' wadding I bought cheap mattress toppers for the inner.

Tesco Cheap Double Mattress Topper

I wasn't really happy with the brightness so I tried another one, the patchwork is entirely fat quarters, so much more expensive than the previous quilt, again I used an old quilt cover for the backing & the tesco double mattress topper for the wadding. I like it a lot, it's quite pretty and feminine.

Number 3 quilt is quite different.

I found a method for making a quilt out of second hand men's shirt from

The Thrifty Quilter

I trawled round the local charity shops & bought 7 men's shirts, they averaged about £5 each, so even with the cheap tesco mattress topper as wadding and sheeting for backing the quilt didn't turn out as cheap as i'd liked.

In conclusion, they were good fun to make but unless i'd got a huge stash of old clothes not economic. I was disappointed with the 7 shirt one, not the finished result, I love it, but the fact that the shirts from charity shops were not 'bargains'. (I will probably have a moan about Charity Shops in a future post!)
The other important element was the need to buy a rotary cutter, not fun to cut 2" strips with scissors, the couple of decent rulers designed for patchwork I bought were invaluable, though I initially bought a metric one (as we are metric these days in the UK) but most of the best sites to follow were US based and they, of course, still work in inches. Maths is not my best skill so converting all the patterns & methods from imperial to metric was not do-able.
On the whole though a great project - I shall be making some more in the future.

Crazy Patchwork

Earlier this year I tried out crazy patchwork.

I wanted to make my own fabric to cover a little victorian nursing chair.

I used old clothes, sheeting and the odd fat quarter, sewing them randomly onto 12 inch squares of backing fabric (old sheeting) sewed the squares together & then covered the chair with the homemade fabric. It looks great and because the patchwork is sewn onto the backing sheeting, the fabric is strong enough to be stretched around the various nooks and crannies of the chair.

I really need to get some binding or braid to put round the edges where I stapled the fabric to the frame but it's virtually finished.

Here's a link to a video on Youtube by the Missouri Star Quilt Company giving an idea how to create crazy patchwork

Curiously Creative

Hi, I'm Gill