How (or more to the point WHY) Did She Do THAT!!!

It's been a while since I last brought you one of my expert guides hasn't it?

In fact it's been a while since I brought you anything much!

Well, this week I'm looking to rectify that and I'm going to start by giving you an expert guide in not one but TWO different areas.

Firstly - do you remember last year when I decided I was going to make all my own Christmas decorations and I got a load of old toilet roll inners, covered them in silver glitter paper, cut them up and made paper chains?

Well, that didn't go so well really - they all popped apart and I was just left with loads of scraps of glitter covered cardboard.

BUT!!!

I'm not one to let a little thing like complete failure put me off so I decided that this year I would ....  Wait for it ....

MAKE ALL MY OWN CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS!!!

After the HUGE success of my pom pom garland for my niece (and that fact that I found a load of white wool) I thought I'd make some pom pom snowballs.

Only I got bored after making one.

But I found a great use for it:

And I got excited again so I thought I'd give it another go and make a pom pom snowman for Miss Mac.

Here he is ...

She LOVED it said there was no way she was hanging that in her bedroom, it would give her nightmares!

Ungrateful child - It's no worse than the decorations I found in Sainsburys!!

Now that IS the thing of nightmares!

So anyway, I'm going to carry on making my own decorations and I might even bring you something later in the week that will surprise you!

Moving swiftly on ...

I'll bet at some point everyone has had (or still has) a piece of pine furniture.

I've got lots because it's inexpensive and everyone needs furniture don't they?

Anyway, I'm not a HUGE fan of pine despite having so much of it and I'd been feeling my house was rather ....  ginger!!!

The thing that was bothering me most was this:

No, NOT Miss Mac (although she can be fairly bothersome from time to time).

The pine cabinet behind her.

I know, all GOOD bloggers take proper photos as they go alone with projects but well, I'm not one of those so I had to dig around for a photo with the cabinet in it before I did anything to it.

The first thing I did was remove that trim at the top, it was too frou frou for me and it immediately looked much better without it (luckily it was only held on with a couple of screws).

I wanted to paint it but SD really didn't like that idea so I decided it might look nice if I stained it a light oak colour:

NOT the colour I was going for at ALL!!!  Also NOT the colour it said it was on the tin!

I hated it even more.  Obviously AFTER staining it I did a bit of research and discovered that pine really doesn't take stain very well and you are supposed to use some kind of sealer before staining it to stop it absorbing the colour unevenly.

Fortunately SD hated it too and agreed that I could now paint it (all the while telling me mournfully that he had quite liked it the way it was before I'd done anything to it - VERY helpful SD!!).

So now I'm painting it.

And painting it ...  And painting it AGAIN!!!

I think I possibly should have sealed the stain before painting it ...

That bloody colour KEEPS bleeding through as it dries giving it a pinky tinge ...

Not to mention the fact that there are 8 paned of glass in each section which means there are 96 - I said NINETY SIX!!! edges to paint each time!!!

It's a complete nightmare.  I haven't masked the glass off because I'm rubbish at doing that and I either mask over the bits I need to paint or end up pulling half the paint off with the tape so I've got a couple of razor blades from a friend who resprays cars so I can chip the paint off the glass when it's dry.

Having said all that (and really - DON'T ever do it yourself!), I do like it much more that I did before although I now wish I'd left the top and the knobs natural wood and just waxed them.

Who knows, I might actually get it finished at some point, maybe in time fro Christmas ...