RANDOM UPDATE

Over Christmas we made some furniture for our new, much nicer house. Haven't gotten around to posting pictures til now, but here they are.
We built a towel ladder,

 Then we built a seat for the lounge, here it is as work in progress, not sanded yet.

I'm especially proud of this one, key bench/coat rack thing,

I'm trying to use natural finishes as much as possible, here are some shellac flakes, before being dissolved in methylated spirits. The finish turns out really nice, golden and shiny, but is not resistant to heat at all.:( It seems pretty waterproof tho.

Not getting around to doing much since i have been working full-time/overtime after Christmas. Don't know how other people still have hobbies/a life besides their dayjob and keeping their house clean which is a priority for me.

Anyways, here are some messages for the like 5 people who read my blog sometimes,
Sandy, when you guys get some black (double) knit fabric in can you let me know? I have been looking my fuckin eyes out all over Melbourne and frankly I am pretty sick of it and thinking of migrating(not sure that would help though).

Soner, i know you asked me ages ago, but yeah, when you click the link on the left hand side with all the little pictures of my dresses on it, you get redirected to my website/shop. Depending on your browser settings it should open another window.

Snowbrush, Thanks for asking, I am ok, just really freaking busy! Anyways, yes i used to follow your blog, but not anymore coz you're always so mean to your lady. But don't take that too personal i don't really read blogs in general, almost never. And Yes the pet moved outside. I also blocked the door now, so there shouldn't be any new pets coming along. Hope you're well too.

Christian, Hi!:)

And Hi Louisa, I'm glad you like my blog. Leave a comment!:)

Love Coney Island

And Hello of course to all the other readers. Leave a comment and say Hello! Always nice to meet you guys!:)
You can follow my Facebook page, i set one up for my label,
http://www.facebook.com/lyptis
That would be awesome!
Its a bit bare coz i just set it up, but it won't be for long if you're leaving some nice comments and pictures(NICE pictures) on it.:)

SATAN AND OUR INVOLUNTARY PET

We moved house over the weekend. Saturday was fairly stressful I thought it would be more fun, just shifting everything and the old house looked so depressing half empty, but the new one wasn’t quite set up yet.
I hate that part of the transition, when you’re kind of in the air.
Sunday was far more relaxed, setting up all the furniture, putting it into it’s place. Great. Love the new house, wooden floors, no carpet. But beige walls, i don’t know what’s up with that, but i have to adapt i suppose.

On my first day here i heard my neighbour call his dog, he sounds like Satan, has the most angriest, raspy, creepy voice i think i’ve ever heard. I assume he owns a German Shepard. He also has a very strong like for 70’s/80’s radio stations he listens too very loudly while playing with his power tools. Mmhh, ...fucking white trash.

The last tenants of our house must have been Chinese, this stuff hangs on three doors. I kinda like it, i wudn’t put it up myself, so it’s different. Also Chinese people seem to be quite superstitious in general. You know all this red and gold and number eights and cats and whatnot. I'll leave it up, maybe it brings good luck or something. I think i’m a bit superstitious myself.
If anyone can read it, let me know what it means.

Here is the breakfast we had on the first day, to keep us going.

Me with my favourite tool of the day.

Ah, and some other favourites of mine. How could you move in somewhere without those.

Clayton, where i live now, seems to be full of wildlife, it’s only one suburb up from where i used to live, but there is/was fucking Redback paradise in our garage, snails are like all over the place on the patio and slugs. And fucking spiders, mosquitoes, bug things wandering through the house like it's a fucking bug pilgrimage.

That’s also how we got our involuntary pet. I dubbed her Frieda(after one of my best friends baby daughter, it was the first name that came to mind, Christian this is for you:)
And Yes, Frieda crawled her way inside the house with a slug friends of hers.

What did you on the weekend? Do you have any little or big projects going?

WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH MY LIFE

This weekend we are moving into a new house. We were actually planning on moving (back) to Berlin in spring next year, in April, but then we postponed it for another year.
We have been doing this for probably the last 3 years and i'm feeling truly sorry for my 3 friends back home who i'm always telling i will be back soon.
I have been living in Australia for almost 5 years now and i'm not sure if it's life in the suburbs, Australian culture or my dead end jobs, but my brain feels like it has been soaked in fabric softener for too long and it's not a nice feeling.

But we decided to be sensible and stay another year, need to save up quite a bit of money to move there and not stress about it. But i REALLY wanted to move into a new house. The house we got now.. where do i start..?! We actually found a new one quite quickly this time, i loved it straight away, it's got floorboards, a nice kitchen and bathroom, it's fairly big and bright, it's got a patio and even partial solar power. Now, that is pretty cool.
So now it's all comparing fridges, carpet cleaners and electricity providers for me. Not too exciting, but i'm looking forward to getting it all organized and settling in.

My label has been on the back burner for a little while now, actually a year, since i started working full-time again. I'm getting a new studio, it's smaller, only one room, now i got 2, but i'm sure it's gonna be nice. So once i set it all up i might be able to focus on some new stuff.

I also booked a new craft class, just for me. It's an upholstery class and i'm pretty excited about it.

It's gonna be great to do up some old chairs i got around the house, i also wanna get myself some cool sanders for Christmas. Awesome. Stay tuned, because i am planning on putting up before/after pictures.

I also told all my twitter friends about my new upholstery obsession and my lovely friend Kerri decided to book the class with me. I'm so excited. Now we can drool over fabrics and power tools together.

 

So that's basically it, i'm staying here for now, got a new house, a new studio and hopefully some pretty upcycled furniture soon. And i also wanna do a dressmaking class, once i find one that fits my schedule. 

  

You got any exciting new plans?  Let me know, i'd love to hear about them.

I took the photos in New York. I Love NY. And i miss it. I call the pictures 'Studies in Steel', i love steel too.

PILLOWS AND A KITCHEN MAKEOVER

The other day i decided to give our kitchen a makeover, before that, it had only a table 2 chairs and an armchair in it.

I decided to chuck the armchair out(local charity shop) and put the sofa in there.

Its much more cozier now, we dont have a living room, u see when u turn 3 of ur bedrooms into studios there isnt much space for one!

So now we can spend more time in the kitchen, one of us can cook while the other one sits on the computer or does sudoku(and its not me doing that).

The couch is quite small its a little 2-seater from ikea, nice tho.

Only problem is, the arm rests are made of wood, so fairly hard and uncomfortable.

Ive got LOADS of scraps left over from all my sewing ventures, its a shame throwing them away, but normally i cant use scraps of a certain size anymore(if i dont want to make my customers wear quilts), so i bagged them all up and chucked them into the storage room(i normally have them in bags too).

Now i finally decided to make something out of them. U see there were these 2 skirts i made and apparently they didnt want to be skirts and get send out into the big wide(sometimes scary world) they are quite homely and shy and like to stay comfy.

So when i made them into skirts i realized a bit too late that the fabric wasnt stretchy enough for the size i made them and i cudnt wear them AT ALL, so i thought i turn them into pillows, clever idea i thought, i'd stuff them with all these scraps i had left over. I knew it wud be a bit hard, but it wud do.

So now our new matching pillows live in our kitchen and keeping me company whilst typing stuff on my computer and protecting my bones getting hit by nasty wooden arm rests!

Great being resourceful and making things, isnt it?!:)

Have u turned something funny into something useful lately?