Thrifty Thursday- In the Picture

We've recently finished decorating our hall. In fact the carpet has just been laid - yippeee!  It's a very long hallway and now needs some artwork. But my budget for it is pretty much zero, so I have been busy with the paintbrush recolouring some frames I already had so that they would fit in better. This horse picture was £1 a long time agon in a charity shop. The frame is really nasty cheap pine, and it has acrylic instead of glass, but with the black paint it suddenly looks quite classy.

I usually use artists acrylic black paint on my frames as I like the matt black finish and adhesion is good with this paint. Two coats is usually enough although I sometimes do three. Give the frame a light sand first and then clean it with a cleaning wipe, or some sugar soap and a lint free cloth before painting to make sure there is no grease on the frame. 

This frame came from Lidls in a sale bin and was only £3. But it was a silver colour. I thought I'd be smart and use some blackboard paint that I had bought a long while ago, BIG mistake. The paint was oil based and had separated really badly, I did my best to mix it and afer three coats with a days drying time in between, it still looked bad and some bits just weren't going to dry properly, and so I had to wipe off what I could with some White Spirit and then used my usual artists acrylic paint. I'll know next time! The three chairs came from the wonderful graphics fairy. I printed them out the right size onto some lovely pearlised paper and stuck them in the frame. I think the finished effect looks much more expensive than £3 don't you?

I didn't have the heart to paint the frame for this one. It is a beautifully embroidered picture I bought at my local auction for £8. I really love it just as it is so the frame will have to not quite go!

Thrifty Thursday

I promised I would tell you about my encyclopedias.

I have three Arthur Mee Children's Encyclopedias from the 1920s that I have had since I was a child. Whoever had them before me had cut bits out of them, but I loved them just the same.They are full of fascinating snippets of information, and things to make and do. They hark back to a more innocent age of childhood. I always used to wish I had more of them. Then one day at the auction I saw a complete set and managed to secure them for just £1!!! I was smiling from ear to ear that day I can tell you! They now reside in this lovely glass fronted cupboard which also cost me only £1. 

Because I now have a full set, and the fact the previous ones I owned were already chopped, it gave me a license to chop some more, and so I have been using these, plus another set of outdated encyclopedias for some collage and decoupage work.

I am also going to scan some of the images to use as clipart in my cardmaking. I also own a couple of 1895 Oracle encyclopedias with some lovely images, so I will share some of them with you from time to time. 

I almost had another bargain today while out at a Charity shop with my dear friend Cheryl. I saw the most perfect coffee table. It was large rectangular dark wood with a glass top and a drawer. It would have looked fabulous painted off white. I took a moment to think about whether or not I wanted to spend £15 on it, but by the time I had walked around the shop and decided to go for it, someone else had bought it! Well, I guess it wasn't meant to be mine. Sigh!

Very soon, I'll be showing you how you can make a pretty little bunch of vintage paper flowers just like these ones. 

Every week, on Thursday I hope to show you something I have either made or bought for a snip. I love my local Thrift Stores/ Charity shops and Auction House. It makes sense to me to buy second hand where possible. My house is furnished mostly from pre-loved items, and I am always on the lookout for a bargain.

Here are some lovely laces and trims that I bought last week in a tiny little charity shop in the next village. The larger bundles were only 50 pence and I paid less for some of the others. I'll be able to use them for cardmaking, sewing and crafts. They can be so expensive to buy new, so I was really delighted with these.

And here is some marmalade I just made. This was my first attempt at marmalade, and I'm pleased to say it turned out delicious. I bought 2 ruby grapefruit for 25 pence each, three lemons that were going for a snip and a couple of oranges that my husband said weren't particularly juicy for eating. With one bag of sugar, I made 8 jars of chunky marmalade. (The jars are recycled of course - wouldn't have it any other way!) I thought that the flavours would all just kind of meld together, but as you are eating it, you get citrus explosions on your tongue of the three different fruits - I have to say it's tangilicious!