New art deco look of an old table

Great idea if you have some old table and a lot of old magazines or advertising in your mail-box. This "how-to" and table itself was created by my namesake Iryna. There are almost no explanations how to do some steps but a lot of pictures are really helpful.

First step for every renovation project is cleaning up and removing old finish using sand paper.

Next - take your magazines and tear pictures you like.

Using glue attach them to the table

Blot table with black acrylic paint:

Cover your table with couple layers of finish. Of course you should let each layer to dry before to put new one

Your table is ready

Table and maps... if you like to travel

I don't know about you but I always bring from all my trips pack of maps. So here is a great idea to get rid of them and decorate some old table.
First take the table and sand it. Then clean up all dust.

 Take maps you like and cut them to the pieces. Cover table with glue and put pieces of map like it shown on the picture.

If your table is not square cut paper a little bit like it shown on picture above. Try to avoid bubbles and wrinkles when attaching paper to the table.

Let table dry and cover it using finish. Better to use water based finish because oil based makes spots of grease on your maps.

Let first layer of finish dry, sand it with finest sand paper and cover it with finish one more time. That's all. Now you have perfect table that saves your memories about wonderful trips you had for long-long years.

I found this table here http://yaliliya.ru/post133612264/, but I believe it's not original source, so if you recognize your idea - let me know, I'll be glad to put your name as author name of this travel table. 

Rupert McKelvie’s Missing Pieces Table

Except of furniture renovation and all other handmade I love putting together jigsaw puzzles. Today I found my twin soul who loves furniture and puzzles as much as I do - Rupert McKelvie. He is a British designer mostly working on furniture design and other home decor.

Once upon a time he had jigsaw puzzle set with missing parts, so he decided create something useful and complete from these pieces. I believe it took a lot of time to put this puzzle-table. There are 4800 pieces from Arc de Triomphe, Winnie the Pooh, night sky and Taj Mahal puzzles.

Rupert McKelvie says "I was all too aware of the frustration of nearing the end and realizing there were ‘missing pieces’. It became something that would never see completion". So as we can see some times frustration can easily transform to inspiration. 

I have put puzzle with train into the box long time ago because I lost a lot of pieces, so now I am thinking to create something like this awesome table :)

Cupboard Door-Gone-Art Desk

Author of this idea is Autie. She invented and created these funny and useful tables from real junk.

 

Guess what is the source for these tables? Doors from old cabinets. Kids love art and their own craft table inspires them to do more and more. Children can seat on the floor and draw because of short table stands. Table top that can be opened is another great idea. That gives you space for paper, pencils and other crafts. 

As I mentioned before for creating such kid table you need doors, stands, paint, base, sand paper, screws, drill and everything you think will be useful for decorating.

First step is sanding of doors, you should remove old paint and/or finish. Clean up the door. Attach stands. If there are no door hinges you should attach them too. Now it's time to decorate. You can do whatever you want, for example you can use decoupage as Autie did.

Step by step instruction  and more pictures can be found here www.u-createcrafts.com. This web page contains huge amount of all kind of handmade and decorating. 

Palette and brushes earrings

Usually I don't post jewelry. I like handmade jewelry a lot and many many really cool earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces can be found on Internet but there are a lot of another blogs about all this things. Actually more than half of my jewelry is handmade but here I would like to post only one my set. I just got it from Kiev

They are COOL. When I've first seen them I said I must have it. I didn't even care what it was. First I thought that it's a pendant :) But who cares what it if it's so cute. Not only my eyes like them, my ears also like these earrings because earrings hooks are silver, not metal. I'm allergic to metal so I am really glad to have such a creative jewelry made from high quality materials.
The author of these art-earrings is Julia, she lives in Kiev, Ukraine and her earrings make me want them all. They are one of the kind and I've never seen something like this.
These earrings I also just love

So eventually this post is also about furniture:)
More Julia's art creations can be found on her web page http://www.julees.com.ua/ or in her LJ blog http://julee-s.livejournal.com/. All her works are simply beautiful.

Furniture for car lovers

All my previous entries were some kind of "girly". This post for men. I am sure the heart of each man will be touched by this furniture. Actually my heart is broken too. What men love so much? Almost so much like a girls? Cars. I believe most of them will be even glad to sleep in their beloved cars and .. now they have such opportunity. This sofa is designed especially for car fans:

There are two young designers from Poland - Andrzej Sapierzynski and Lukasz Siodmok. And they are geniuses. Do you know a boy who does not want such armchair? Do you know anybody at all who can stay calm when see it? Probably I am overreacting but I always do when I find something breathtaking.

For such sofa and armchair you definitely need some special coffee table

Amazing. That's all I can say. And this is not everything that they can do with cars and furniture. These guys designed office desks and standing lamps and can do custom design for you. There is even a picture on their web-page with some explanation how they create such things. So if you liked it and want to find out more go to http://www.la-ds.com/. 

Broken Stool = Mosaic Table

There was the following stuff, to be honest some kind of garbage:
1) broken stool without a top
2) cut circle from table top
3) some Polymer Clay circles-flowers
4) two ceramic tiles - white and light blue
5) rods
But if we put everything together.... we can have perfect stylish mosaic table:

All steps of this transformation you can find on the picture below. First of all attach circle from a table top to the stool. Scratch table top and cover it with tile glue. Put on the glue polymer flowers and pieces of tiles. Before you start putting mosaic on glue put it together on the another table. Glue is drying fast so you have only about 15 minutes to transfer your mosaic from one place to other. If you don't use ceramic tiles you can use which best fits your material. When done with mosaic, efface the surface and cover it with oil based finish twice.
Next steps are not required, there is the place for you fantasy and view of your future table.
Take piece of bagging and remove some threads from it. Attach it to the ex-stool. Curve rods and nail it.
Add paper-mache roll to the table edge. Cover everything with bronze spray painting. Put some craquelure and cover everything with black painting. Now you have nice bronze cracks. Cover places you painted with water based finish.

Here is more detailed picture of table stands:

Thanks gashula for sharing this master-class with us. By the way she also makes nice handmade dolls that can be found in her blog. 

This master class was originally posted here.

Unusual and creative office spaces - 2

Last week I posted some unusual and creative office spaces. I still have a lot of work and looks like one working weekend is following by another, so lets continue with finding something funny, relaxing and a little bin crazy in offices. Let me start with this perfect wooden table:

It was created by Marlies Romnerg, grad of Utrecht School of Arts. She named this unique piece of art - Diar diary 1.0. It's real computer embedded in wooden desk. I am really inspired. Let's continue with desks or cars... or desk and car in one piece:

Unfortunately I did not find the creative soul who designed this. Sometimes pictures go through the web from page to page and it's really hard to find out original source. This is true for the next desk as well. Work desk in shape of piano looks really classy and fancy. 

Do you want your work place to be mobile? So you can use this idea: home office from the cart.

You can find the guide how to create this one here. It's in Russian but these are mostly pictures so it will be clear.
Still need more mobility? Here is whole portable office:

It's named Kruikantoor and designed by Tim Vinke. Looks like he also created the following one, but I am not 100% sure. The furniture below was created from palettes:

I believe it's enough for today, if I continue to work over weekends I will continue to look for some creative office spaces, just kidding. I believe enough is enough at least I didn't see anything that looks really good on internet except that I've already shown.

Sourses: www.marliesromberg.nl; vov4ip.ru; www.impactlab.net; future-designs.ru

Modern Arks Furniture

Happy New Year to everybody! I am back and I have a lot of new perfect art works finds, a lot of new "how to" stories, collectibles and vintage stuff to share with you.
I found this furniture on internet long time ago, but as everybody I was too busy with Christmas, New Year and my Birthday. I'm glad that I left all these holidays behind and I can get back to my blog and my work. So the first form Modern Arks Furniture shop will show you the main idea of all furniture you can found in this store: vintage boxes and "Modern Arks" base

Unfortunately it is sold out. Modern Arks re-purposes items to create one-of-a-kind pieces. Furniture, artwork and other goods are created by mixing a modern design aesthetic with beautifully recycled antiques. The character of these historic relics remains intact, while creating a new and useful product that is truly unique. 
The following coffee table is really cute. It is made from  large depression era shoe crate and combined with the "Modern Arks" base  featuring Eames style, mid-century hairpin legs to create a truly unique coffee table suitable for any decor. The use of authentic antique crates ensures that no two of their coffee tables are alike and re-purposing these historic wooden crates ensures they are appreciated for years to come. This box features german writing on the top of it from the residents of the Harmony society in New Harmony, Indiana.

The Modern Arks Furniture also creates original artwork using wood and ink and are constantly creating new pieces that fit with our established aesthetic. This is the good example of their art works and this sentence makes me think about my life for couple minutes:

I hope you are interested in this shop and like items from it as much as I do. More items for sell can be found on etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop/modernarks. They also have the web-page http://www.modernarks.net/.

Old sewing machine = new unique personalized table

Source http://www.livemaster.ru/topic/. Author - Anastasiya.

Today in 'how to' rubric I would like to told you how to create table from old Singer sewing machine stand. This is a final result:

And here is start point

Materials and tools:
1) Spay paints: white(for table top) and black(for metal stand).
2) Sewing machine stand
3) Table top (the size used for this tutorial 40 inches long and 15 inches wide)
4) Moulding (the size depends on table top size, for this one was used 140 inches moulding)
5) Glass
6) Small nice thing like beads, shells, anything you would like to put under glass
Step 1. Take sewing machine stand remove rust and apply black paint. All painting works should be prepared outside - to avoid covering everething around you with black not removable dust. Apply 2 layers of paint. Let first layer completely dry before putting second one.
Step 2. While your paint is drying take molding and cut it.

Step 3. Put together part of molding (create frame). For this cover molding sides with wood glue or use hot glue gun. After it reverse frame and attach parts together using furniture stapler. Also you can order or buy any frame you like to avoid performing all these manipulation with molding or reuse an old frame.
Step 4. Take liquid nails adhesive and cover line inside frame. Take table top and put it inside frame. If there are some slits add glue.

Step 5. Cover table top with white paint. Put 3-4 layers.
Step 6. After glue and paints are totally dry reverse table top and put together table top and frame using furniture stapler.

Step 7. Measure sizes inside the table, go to store and buy glass:-)
Step 8. Paint table top and frame. 
Step 9. Attach table top to stand using screws. 
Step 10. Put on table top beads, shells, photos....

Step 11. Put glass on top of table. You are done.

Good luck! And don't forget, if you want to share with us tutorial/idea/how to/lessons you created you should just click here