Flea market finds

I love, love, love flea markets! It's absolutely fantastic to find an interesting and unique item or maybe something that you've been looking for a long time. In these photos you can see a few items from my flea market collection. Some of them are perfect the way they are but some of them need a bit of work to become beauties. When I found the small wooden case I knew instantly that it would be perfect for decoupaging. You can see in my previous post how it looks now.

The two chairs at the bottom also need a bit of work. The green chair wants to have amazing light grey upholstery. And the white chair, it's quite cute as it is now but I think black colour would really highlight its interesting shape. At the moment I don't have time for these two chairs (I actually have two more chairs also waiting to get some work done, so four chairs altogether!) but I think I will concentrate on my chairs later this year when I have more time to spend at home.

Decoupage

Decoupage technique is one of my favourite techniques. It's so easy to transform boring and ugly items into something interesting and beautiful with this tehnique. I've used different kinds of papers for my projects. My favourites are black and white pictures and news paper articles. Today I just can't think of anything else to write so enjoy the pictures!

Wall paper

I wanted to create something unique for the walls in the hallway of our apartment. I've had a lot of decoupage projects and from that I got and idea to use the same kind of technique for a wall. I found old encyclopedia in the recycling centre and decided to use pages from those for the wallpaper. I chose the pages carefully, I wanted to have different kinds of pages, some with texts and some with a lot of pictures and maps.

I used normal wallpaper paste for the pages and the same technique to use the paste as if I was installing normal wall paper. Of course it's easier to use such small pieces as book pages, but it takes a lot longer to cover the whole wall with them. The end result is totally worth the effort though!

Light

The autumn is here and it's been raining all day in Helsinki, so I thought light and lighting would be a good subject for today. It's actually quite amazing how light can transform any space into something beautiful as well as something awful. If you use light in a wrong way you can ruin an awesome interior. In my previos homes I have not paid a lot of attention to lighting but in this new home I want to create the perfect lighting for each room.

In the living room we have this beautiful ceiling lamp, which creates interesting shadows. It's dimmable so it's easy to set the right level of lighting, and dimming also saves energy. These days it's possible to get dimmable LED lamps. It's a shame they are quite expensive but on the other hand LED lamps last very long.

Candles are a perfect way to create warm and cosy lighting. I've just been buying regular candles from the super market, but now that I think of it, the ingredients in regular candles are not so nature friendly or at least not so animal friendly. That's why I'm going to buy soy candles next time I'm going candle shopping. I'm not sure if it's possible to buy them in the super market, but I'll find out.

Candle holders

I found these wooden candle holders in different flea markets. Their wooden look is a bit out of date and together they look very messy. But with white paint it's easy to make them look fresh and beautiful. Of course you can use any colour you like. My first thought was to use black, but in our new apartment white works better. And white candle holders are also perfect for Christmas.

I have a lot of leftover paints from previous projects so I'm just using them for my new finds. When I have used all the old paints I would like to start exploring ecological paints. If you have any good tips and experiences about ecological paints, please let me know!

Travelling

I'm going to do a lot of travelling in the next two months and I wanted to have a nice toiletry bag, and a bag for make-ups. I also needed a normal bigger bag, that is easy to carry and made of recycled materials. I found this lovely bag made of old canvas fabric. The other parts inside the bag look like they are new, but you can't always have it all. I love it, it was just what I was looking for. I bought it in this very lovely interior shop in Espoo (next to Finland's capital Helsinki), called Cafe Latte Spirit.

Today I decided to make new toiletry bags. My fiancé gave me his old jacket months ago because I told him he shouldn't just throw it away. I was sure I could make something out of it, and today I noticed that it had four perfect pockets for toiletry bags. I just cut them out and added an interesting print to each of them. And they were ready!

How to make unique picture frames from old boards

This is a story of how to make picture frames out of old grey boards. My fiancé's family has a summerhouse in the archipelago of southern Finland. The summerhouse is located on a small island close to the mainland, only a five-minute boat ride away. These old boards used to be a small wooden dock on the other side of the island. I decided it's time for them to have a new life! In these pictures you can see how I detach the boards and remove the nails. Then I left them out to dry because they had been laying on the wet ground for years. Now you just have to wait to see what kind of unique pictures frames I'm able to transform from these old boards!

Globe Hope

Globe Hope is an innovative Finnish design company that makes ecological design out of recycled materials.
- globehope.com

I've bought a few very nice items by Globe Hope. They mainly make clothes and bags, but nowadays also some products for the home. My newest Globe Hope product is a cool laptop case that's made from parts of an advertisement banner, and old seatbelts. The laptop case called JENKKA suits perfectly for the industrial style I'm trying to create in our home.

For their fabulous products they use, for example, hospital and army textiles, worker uniforms, advertisement banners and flags, recycled sails, seatbelts and vintage home textiles such as curtains, tablecloths and bed sheets. These used materials are usually donated to them, when they're not needed anymore.

The apron shown in the pictures is called OIVA and it's made of an old Hungarian army utility sack. It's very useful for all kinds of decorating and renovating tasks, and it also protects your clothes. Obviously when doing something like painting you wouldn't wear anything fancy anyways, like in the pictures you can see my fabulous painting pants!

Cable drum coffee tables

We want to create an interesting style for our home by combining old and new furniture, and using industrial style elements. These coffee tables are perfect for industrial style! My boyfriend found them in a dumpster. They were not in such a good shape and maybe they wouldn't have worked for their original purpose any more. But for our coffee tables they work just fine! My dad helped me remove all the unnecessary metal parts, and then I hand-sanded the surfaces to make them smooth before painting them with glossy white furniture paint.

Home

We moved to our new home this summer a few months ago. I've always been very ecologically conscious but I feel like I want to do more. In this first post I'm showing you our home as it is now. We bought quite a few new pieces of furniture when we moved here. From now on my plan is to buy only recycled furniture. It’s going to be a challenge, but a fun challenge. If you've read my other blog (which is in Finnish) you might have seen some of the photos I was showing here.

I want to bring nature inside but in small pieces. I don't want the overall look to be just wood, wood and wood. I want to combine natural colours and materials to some industrial style pieces. And I love, love, love old furniture! In my work I see a lot of colours every day so in my home I want to have calm and neutral colours but without making it look boring.