Watercolours, decoupage and pyrography!

After so many weekends of entertaining guests at home and going out a lot, last weekend I decided to relax, read a book and do some crafts.
On Friday I went to Ikea. I needed some frames to put in my triptych of jelly fish my friend Ian sent me from England.

I loved them on his blog and wanted one but he sent me all three as he is such a kind and generous person!

Look how beautiful they look in the frames which will decorate the beach house of course.

Another reason I went to Ikea for was because I had booked the Decoupage Workshop organized by Ikea and the ladies from Ftiaxto Elina and Valia.
I have done very little decoupage so far and really wanted to try.
Here is what we made under the instructions and supervision of Valia and Elina.

Ikea offered the items we decoupaged and the napkins.

All in all it was an interesting workshop. I plan to go to more in future if they organize some.

You can see how to make the clock here.

 And then on Saturday I decided to put in use a lovely tool we had bought in a very reasonable price from Lidl months ago. The pyrography tool was great and I loved what I made.
I used some leftovers pieces of wood from the new shadow puppet stage hubby made.
I sanded them a bit to have an even surface and then using the pyrography tool with all the different edges I burnt out the patterns.
I really loved the results and plan to make more.
I have always been inspired by Geninne's and Alisa Burke's pyrography beauties. So here are mine.
Empire State Building

 The little wooden huts in Turku Finland at the Craft Village.

The Dandelion

Greece in summer.

Feathers

The owl

If you don't feel like making any pyrography pieces I have a friend Dimitra who makes really beautiful ones on her Decorasylum etsy shop. Have a look!

(photo taken from Decorasylum etsy shop)
( I have in no way been compensated by the shops, firms, blogs mentioned in this blogpost.This is not an advertising blogpost.)

Promoting friends work-some recent purchases (January to April)

As you can see I cannot cope much with my blog but I am willing to try.
Here are some purchases I made some months ago.
An Icaros porcelain egg cup from the neighbourhood antique store. It is broken on one part so he gave it away to me for 0.5 euro.

A woodburning Iron set from Lidl. I have plans for the summer with my driftwood.

A pair of lovely mask earrings from Efzin creations.

A lovely original from Decoasylum

I framed it in a bigger IKEA frame than the one you see here and is now at the beach house but forgot to take a picture.

I got carried away and ordered this set of sea themed figurines from ebay which is unusual for me.

I found this Karaghiozis shadow puppet print at this Greek etsy shop coocoovaya and loved it.Also got the owl pin and sent it as a gift.

I reordered the Karaghiozis in a bigger sized and framed as I have shown you in another blogpost with our framed art wall.

 And then got it framed and it looks lovely!

 These I had got from the Amymoni bazaar. I am not sure I had shown them.

These lovely spiders I bought from the Dans Le Lakehouse etsy shop. I follow Tanya's blog and love it. And Tanya was so sweet to give me an one for one offer which was so great!

 I got this from a new shop I happened to find from Italy.It's called Vijolcenne. It's painted on a piece of wood and it's gorgeous.

 You can see it on my Easter table here too.

(Yes I know that is quite an old post but I am too busy lately!)

The second week of the Easter holidays.

As we were busy with the doctors' appointments all this week, we didn't have time for much else. Apart from doing house chores,
we walked the seafront promenade a lot, us and thousands of others, enjoying the magnificent views,

I made egg salad following a recipe I found in this blog.It is a good way to use up Easter eggs, Add boiled eggs, shredded carrots, red pepper, dill, green onions, mustard, mayonaise, salt and pepper, olive oil and apple vinegar.Delicious!

I prepared some mail to post next week,
I got prepared for school that starts tomorrow,
I put away the Easter decorations and decorated my big table for spring,

we went to IKEA for some frames we needed,one for this oil painting a friend of mine made for me,

 and one for the watercolour I bought from Dimitra of Decorasylum, and her etsy shop,

I made some soap following this recipe by Zina of Efzin Creations here,
I used olive oil soap base, lavender essential oil, lemon essential oil and yellow food colouring as well as a bit of lavender flowers from Portugal.

 I liquidized the soap base in the microwave, added the rest of the ingredients and poured into the soap molds.You have to do the pouring very quickly!

 Here they are, so easy, great looking, smelling wonderful!

We went to the beach house,

and had coffee with the family.

Whoever starts school tomorrow, have a great new start!