Arts & Crafts Magazine
Hi everyone - hope you're all set for a fantastic Jubilee long weekend. I'm chilling out for a few days with the family, so I've arranged a fab guest post to keep you entertained.*******Hello! I’m Lucy. I normally post over on Lulastic and the Hippyshake where I scribble about delving into bins for vintage treasures, crafting up old stuff and creating a house out of other people’s leftovers. I have a wild wee toddler called Ramona; a sweet chaos causer who mostly enjoys tipping up my paint/ poking around in my glue, picking out my stitches. I am dedicated to thrifting with all its subversive thrills and massively enjoy reading Lakota’s charity shop adventures. I am well happy to be on her blogdiggidy right now. Yahoo!I just love the blogosphere. There is SO much creativity and imagination bouncing around, people making, thinking, doing, sharing. Frontiers being smashed to smithereens. I read a post this week that did this for me. It could easily have been about feminist motherhood, gentle parenting or global activism. But, actually, erm. It was about making your own coloured chalkboard paint.Lemme say it again without hyperventilating: MAKING YOUR OWN COLOURED CHALKBOARD PAINT!*skips about it total glee*I have just recently found Ecoempire- another blog that makes my heart sing- and love what she did with the paint. I am working on an upcycled summin summin so have been playing around with the paint for that. But in the mean time I have whipped up a little jar of sweets for our pals who are taking us to Bruges tomorrow for a day trip. I love doing things with jars. Such a thrifty way to give gifts, with all the mountains of jars we get through (our own particular mound is primarily due to being such huge gherkin and lemon curd fans.Mmmm. Lemon cuuuuurd.)Anyway, here you go. Prepare to have your minds completely condoogled with craft and DIY possibilities…Yeah, for REAL. It is totes that simple.I am yet to get through a whole tin of blackboard paint so I love that you can just make this up with little bits of paint you have in your cupboard. Someone somewhere also has an old tube of grout- so always ask around.I also painted and superglued a little pig onto the top. I know that is a bit suggestive, giving a jar of sweets with a pig on the top but I didn’t mean in that way, promise. Although one of the recipients loves jelly sweets in an unfathomable way – puts away a whole packet for breakfast even.I can’t confirm or deny but I think, THINK, this pig may be the one that turned me vegetarian when I was a kid. We were traveling through Germany and stopped off for some sausages in a roadside cafe and they put a tiny plastic pig on my plate. I was like “Er, what’s with the pig?” and as I asked the question it all fell into place, the thoughts I had been suppressing my whole childhood. That the beasts of the field end up in our bellies. Clinging to my plastic pig, I vowed meat would never again cross my lips. And it never has. (Apart from a brief period when I used to make salami sandwiches then take out the salami at the last minute so that the bread and butter still had meat juice on it.)I did keep him, that momentous pig. And he looked just like this one.Aaanyway. I can basically HEAR your minds whirring you crafty foxes- do you reckon you might whip something up with this frontier bashing magical coloured chalkboard paint? Perhaps some of Lakota’s place mats?Thanks for having me, a total pleasure to be read by you. (And if you’re ever in extra need of a whimsy craft fix or a gaze at a charity shop haul do pop over and say hi!)