UFO - Ikea drawers

Are you sitting comfortably?
Once upon a time ....... we bought six Ikea Fira drawers.  They hung around for a while, I decorated one as a gift and one for ourselves, leaving four awaiting processing.  They waited ... and waited....

I think they are now around 15 years old, Ikea don't even make them anymore, though they still have a similar item, with different dimensions.  The good news is - I have finished another one!!!

I coloured the wood edges with promarkers and intended to cover the top, sides and drawer fronts with some of my precious Venice paper.  This required two sheets, I only had one of the brown colourway I wanted to use, so had to go for a green pattern instead.  The drawer fronts were fine, but unfortunately the paper is quite delicate and the larger top piece just wouldn't lie flat onto the item, I ended up ruining the paper .  So a swift change of plan was needed ....... I painted the top and sides instead, which meant I could have used the brown paper for the fronts after all LOL.  But I am happy with the green, it has turned quite well :-)

Now to decide what to do with the next one, they are all going to be different LOL.

Cross stitch UFO - finished!

I bought three of these Sunset kits, by Derwentwater I believe, several years ago at a stitching show in Brighton.  They have each taken about three years to complete, not because they are large ..... or difficult ..... but because I lost enthusiasm very quickly on each of them.  I even bought three frames, framed the first two and put all three frames on the wall so the empty one would act as motivation!  Didn't work ...... :-)

But finally I have finished, here it is:

Here are all three in their long-awaited glory - difficult to photograph because they are on the stairway wall, so I can only get the width of the stairs away from them to take the picture!  But I think you can get the idea :-)

There are several more in the same series and they are all lovely.  But for me, three is enough :-)  I have many, many UFO cross stitch kits, so it's on to the next one!

UFOs (UnFinished Objects)

I have several UFOs stashed away in various places, many of them stitching projects, but there are other things too :-) One of them, a decorated box, has been lying around for months, taking up space on my craft table and just generally getting in the way - it wasn't worth putting away because I "was going to finish it soon". Finally, after a good shove by Sy ("do it NOW!"), I put the final touch to it, which consisted of two coats of varnish. Yes, that's all it was awaiting, for all that time. Procrastination is my middle name.........

Anyway, the box itself is a wooden one, painted and decoupaged. I wanted to use some Christmas images which I had bought as a pack a couple or three years ago and not really made use of. First step was an acrylic primer, then two coats of cream emulsion. Then I chose my images and overlapped them on top of the box, sticking them down with PVA glue. When dry, and when I had made sure all the edges were firmly stuck down with no air bubbles under the image, I started to varnish. It would have taken fewer coats had I not overlapped them, but I did like the effect, so six or seven coats later....... the top was done. Because I had used a polyurethane varnish, the box had a yellowed tint to it, a really nice effect, but it did mean that the bottom half of the box looked noticeably different from the top even after 4 coats. That's when the project ground to a halt, as I kept putting off doing those final two coats! But now it is finally done, and I have plans to do some more decoupage, I had forgotten how much I like the effect.

Now all I have to is think what I am going to put in the box, come next Christmas......