Concrete and flowers

My sister's birthday was in September. I decided to give her flowers in a homemade pot!
Made out of a towel and some concrete, because we all know by now that I'm slightly obsessed with concrete..
The present was well received by my family and my sister, and it was very easy and fun to make.

We have two cats, and one of them, Sherlock, is always very curious about everything new that comes into the house, and he always checks it very thoroughly! 

Down bellow, you can see how I made this pot!
Everybody can do it, you just need
-Concrete
-Water
-Towel
-Buckets

Plastic bags and dish washing-gloves makes the job so much easier!
Do this outside or on a covered floor (Not in your livingroom..), because it is messy!

Step by step: 

1.Cover up your floor and the buckets you will be using by placing plastic bags on the floor and on the bucket (I used one bag in the bucket where I mixed the concrete, and I had one plastic bag outside of the bucket I would use for shaping and drying the towel. Keep your gloves ready!

2. Cut out the size of your towel, I made mine a big square. Now, here I learned something a bit delayed! Dip the towel in water and then squeeze all the water out of it! I did not do this, so the towel sucked all the water out of the concrete and I had to add new water all the time..

3. This is where the gloves come in handy! Mix your concrete into a soup. How much you will need depends on the size of your towel, so just try this part out! You should be able to soak your entire towel in it.

4. So do that.. Soak the towel, just leave it there for a few minutes and also stir a lot, to be sure all parts of the towel has gotten as much concrete as possible. 
5. Now, place your towel on top of your covered, upturned bucket (or whatever else you want to use)
I had to make mine higher by placing a few more buckets under it.

6. Be patient! If it's sunny, the concrete will dry faster in the sun.

7. Turn your new pot, and use as you would any other pot! 

Concrete candles

Lately, I've been really into using cement/concrete for making stuff, and I hear it's quite in on the fashion-side as well!

I've been making some of these really easy candle-holders. They are incredibly cheap, easy to make and really cute.

What you will need is:

Washed out milk-cartons

Empty toilet-paper roll/something candle-sized

Vaseline or oil

Stick for stirting

Cement/concrete (mine is from Coop Bygg, 59NKR for 25KG)

Water

Some tape

Spraypaint

So what you do, is really easy!

First, cut your milk-cartons so they are not as high. Makes it harder to work with, in my opinion.

Put some cement in the carton, and put in some water. Yo can always add more as you go, depending on how big or high you want your candleholders. Stir well, make sure there are no dry lumps. It should be like a thick soup.

-I recommend using a concrete that is as fine as possible. This one is a bit rough, I have now tried over with a finer one, and it's better!)

What I did to make the holes for the candles, were to put tape all around empty toilet-paper rolls, covered them with vaseline (you can also dip in oil), and I just pushed them as far down as I wanted them. If you want them shallow, you can also use candles, but use the candles with aluminium-foil around it! Will make it much easier to take them out later. Trust me!

 I had to tape my toiletpaper-rolls to the carton as they were so light they just floated back up!

Leave it for a day or two, then take them out of the cartons, and let them dry a bit more. It will be faster where it's hotter and sunnier.. 

When dry, tape the part you don't want colored! Tap the tape closely on and make sure to cover everything you don't want sprayed! As you might see, I used 3 different types of spraypaint.
I'm not very particular about which one to recommend, I like them all.
Only thing is that the silver one is a bit.. tame, or flat. If you want it very silvery, I recommend trying a krom-spray.

Chose your colors and spray to your hearts content! 

I had two layers!

African Giraffe approves.

Bubbles and Brushes

My aunt turned 60 this June, and for her birthday we decided to give her a painting course together with her family. The course is in water-colors, and we are served champagne and canapes, and the mood and surroundings are really colorful and inspiring. A local artist, Magny Tjelta Jaatun, is the course-holder, she's very calm and really a very good artist.

Our task for the day was to paint a parakeet. First, we doodled it on a piece of paper with just very soft touches of a pencil.

We had instructions and help through the entire course, and the artist helped us improve our own individual style and product. What really is very great about this course, is that anyone can do it, even if you never painted before!

We had a "lunchbreak" inbetween the layers of paint, in order for the paint to dry. We were served homemade canapes with roastbeef, salmon, cheeses, shrimps and other fancy stuff, and homemade chocolate mousse on lovely plates and cups for our tea or coffee. My sister also brought homemade carrot-cupcakes.

Afterwards we continued painting, adding more layers and outlines, adding details and really creating our own "impression" in our painting. What is really funny is to see how all of us can have the same starting point, and see how different it all turns out!

I am happy with the outcome and I can't wait to frame it and hang it up somewhere! 

Click here if you want to know more..

Here is a collection of all our paintings!

Cement in a pot

Today is my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, mom! <3
I like to give homemade gifts, especially to the people in my family because they appreciate homemade things very much, and that makes me very happy. So this year, I decided to make my mom a homemade flowerpot from cement. I had seen this done on Craftgawker before, and it looked awesome!

The actual process of making it, however, was not quite as expected. Though, it might have been due to lack of the right equipment...

Unfortunately I don't have pictures from the process of making it, but I'll tell you what I did..
First, i had to get the cement. Easy peasy, I thought. Evidently not. shops close early so I cant get in to buy it, and some stores that should sell cement, well.. they don't. So I found at last, on Coop Bygg.
Just add water, the guy said. Nice, I thought. Adding water was the easy part. The mixing was hard, without a cement-mixer or an electric drill. So I was mixing by hand, and after I had blemishes on my fingers and cement up under my nails. And scratches up to my elbows. The floor was full of cement and so were my clothes. And, by God, mixing cement with your bare hands is tiring work!
I had the cement in a big bucket, and I put a smaller bucket (covered in vaseline) in the middle. It dried pretty fast, but then came the removing of the casts (aka the buckets)
I had to smash the inner bucket to pieces because it had got stuck, even if it was covered in vaeline. And then I had to bang the entire outside of the big bucket with one of those soft-like hammers. and turn it upside down, and jump on it.. And I got it out! Woho! It's HEAVY!

But all in all, it turned out pretty great! And my aunt and my moms two friends were impressed so I guess it was all worth it in the end.
Lesson learned, though; buy something to help mix the cement next time.

Short shorts!

I haven't been the most persistent of bloggers as of late. Mainly because I have lacked the time to do creative stuff, and also the lack of a sewing-table (Which I now have. It's mall, but i have one! Go me!)
I have been very inspired lately, but can't always see through all my plans.. 

Anyway, one day I stumbled across this on pinterest, and I wanted to make my own short shorts for the summer!
Just on a sidenote, to all you who seek inspiration for things to craft or decorate or whatever, you really should visit pinterest and craftgawker. I LOVE those sites!

So, I made my own shorts from some old drapes I bought from my local second-hand store (Fretex) a while back. It wasn't very hard, the hardest thing was to get the measurements right so that it would fit (I have little experience in sowing pants, and making my own pattern wasn't as easy as I'd have thought.. (Apparently my... backside.. is to big, so I had to add some fabric to the back so that it wouldn't be too low..

In the end, it didn't turn out half bad.. 

17th of May

Tomorrow is Norway's National Day, the 17th of May.
This year is special! This years, it's 200 years since Norway got it's declaration of independence.

I had some ribbons laying around, and I figured I'd try making my own jacket decorations for the special day tomorrow!


The materials are super easy! Ribbons, some old buttons, safety pins, a needle and some thread!

Project in the making

I took up working on an old crochetting project that I've been working with on and of for maybe 3 years. Mostly because I packed it away and forgot about it!

Now, I am making the last pieces of it, and finally! After all these years, maybe I will complete it!