Up-cycling

Up-cycling... who knew?!

About a month ago I bought this beauty for £10...

I was inspired by my favourite app, Pinterest, to up-cycle an old filing cabinet for my new home. After searching through countless blogs and 'how to' videos I decided to take matters into my own hands and give it a go using my own imagination. 

Originally I wanted to paint the whole thing yellow as it's such a happy colour and thought it would look lovely and keep me smiling in my new home. The idea was to then glue floral fabric, which complimented the yellow, to the drawers to give it a shabby chic feel. However, the paint failed, probably because it wasn't paint created for metal! And so my brain started to process new ideas and suddenly I had a thought. 

I bought around 2 metres of floral fabric, a dark colour with bright pinks in the flowers, and some mod-podge (Modified porridge me and a friend call it - which it absolutely isn't by the way!) The mod-podge was the adhesive of choice I used to paste the whole thing and then press fabric on to it. I decided the drawers would have to have a different pattern or colour, otherwise the whole thing would look to stocky! I purchased some more floral material and before I knew it I had a completed, up-cycled filing cabinet... 

I don't think I could be happier with this and I cannot wait to get it into my new home. 

AmieJ Crafts

As mentioned in my last blog I wanted to provide you with an introduction to my new project AmieJ Crafts, my crafty and fun hobby which keeps my plenty busy. 

It all started when scrapbooking became my new hobby and passion. I would will away hours decorating pictures and pages, storing away my favourite memories creatively within a book. I have made several now, for myself and others. I just love getting crafty with paper, photos and glitter! After using Pinterest to inspire more scrapbooking ideas and layouts I discovered something else; crafting. 

Crafting is the most varied way to have fun and get creative. I love all things cute and sentimental that I decided I would use my new found interest in crafting to create gifts and keepsakes for people. These seem to make a lot of people happy which, in turn, made me very happy. Crafting therefore became my perfect hobby. 

I was creating keepsakes and other gifts alongside designing and printing my own greeting cards. I began to sell my products on local FaceBook sites and my products were becoming quite popular - as popular as they can in a small town anyway! I was then advised to set up an Etsy account to share my creations with people across the globe. This sounded completely overwhelming at first but now I am all set up. My idea was turning into something physical so I decided it needed a name; AmieJ Crafts was born. (I am sure I don't need to explain how AmieJ was formed…) I did debate a quirky name but felt my products didn't need something comic to make them sellable so I went with a more 'does what it says on the tin' approach. 

This is one of my crafts in time for Father's Day - 

A message in a bottle with a twist keepsake.

I feel really proud and excited to have set up this wonderful world of crafting for myself. I wanted to spread my excitement through showing the public my products and they appear to be receiving great feedback and interest. I am so lucky to be able to do something I really enjoy and share it with the world. 

This is a card design inspired by the small pencils they hand out at IKEA! 

Please check back from time to time to see updates on my crafty creations :) 

You can visit my Etsy shop here: AmieJCrafts

Or stop by my FaceBook page: AmieJCraftsFB