Spray painting the fuck out of a bunch of shit

So there are a few bits and pieces I've been meaning to spray paint for a while now.  Mainly because spray painting is literally the funnest kind of painting you can do. The least funnest kind of painting, if you're interested, is varnishing or staining wood, especially if you're required to sand it first. Eugggghhh so terrible. 

I originally bought this cute teeny tiny chrome paint for £3.45 from Wilko, but definitely don't buy this unless you only want to paint like one thing because this will last about twenty seconds.

This one is more expensive at £4.95 (also from Wilko) but it's a million times bigger and literally exactly the same as the small posh sort. Don't let the shitty colour on the cap fool you, it's awesome.

As I said I had a bunch of stuff that I wanted to paint but it was mainly a mirror, a waste paper basket, and a bunch of plastic storage boxes. Lets start with the mirror since it was the biggest pain in the arse as it was the only one that required preparation of any sort.

I bought this mirror for £5 in a charity shop when I was about 17, and I've been lugging it around with me ever since. The frame was cream when I got it, but because I've moved house about 10 times since then, it's all chipped and scuffed and looks like shit.

Ideally you want to use masking tape and newspaper to cover the mirror part of your mirror if you're going to paint the frame, unless your fancy pants frame detaches from the mirror, in which case definitely do that and save yourself some hassle. 

Anyway I didn't have masking tape or newspaper in my house, so I used regular sellotape and old copies of Heat magazine. It worked pretty much the same, except the sellotape was harder to get off the mirror afterwards. P.S. Please don't judge me for reading Heat magazine.

And here it is afterwards, lookin all fly. And in case you were wondering, yes, that is a pink unicorn onesie hanging next to it.

Next was the waste paper basket, here it is before I painted it. I was originally aiming to go for a kind of ombre look, but as you can see it came out terrible and I had to paint the entire thing.

It's the worst!

Not quite so terrible!

Here it is looking futuristic as fuck in the corner of my bedroom like a robots lav.

Lastly we have the storage boxes. See those ugly as hell blue and green boxes under the sofa? Those were the ones I wanted to paint. The blue ones weren't *too* bad, but the green ones looked fucking grim. When I was 18, I spent a night in Reflex drinking pitchers of this luminous green cocktail probably called 'The Hulk' or something equally moronic. Anyway, the next morning my shit was the exact same shade of green as those storage baskets. That morning was pretty hungover and terrible, so it's not something I particularly want to be reminded of on a daily basis 7 years later. I only bought them because they were cheap as fuck from Wilkos, being £2.50 and £2.00 for multi-packs. Time to paint that shit.

The paint came out really nice on the plastic actually, and it was all shiny like tinfoil. I'm still sort of paranoid that it's going to chip off, but I had a good go with a fingernail and it seems pretty permanent.

Here they are being all metal-y and looking cool against my black rug.

So find yourself something to spray paint that isn't a brick wall, yeah?

Glue the thing to the other thing DIY part 2

I've still been trying to figure out what the fuck to do with the rest of the 100 plastic daisies I drunk-bought on amazon a while ago. Seriously, even after this I still have at least 70, I might have to start sticking them to lampposts or something just to get rid of the little fuckers. 

But anyway I had this plain black frame lurking around my house for ages that I'm 99% sure is from IKEA because I love IKEA and buy everything there. I've been using it to hold a picture of me and my friends back before life repeatedly punched us in the face.

So the frame is fine, but just a bit boring really. Time to glue some shit to that other shit. I used this very high tech, state of the art £4.43 glue gun from Amazon, and the plastic daisies I spoke about before.

If you start with the corners and then divide the sides into sections before filling in, you're much more likely to get evenly spaced daisies.

Easy right? I love how 90's it is, considering that photo was taken in 1998, and that inexplicably 90's stuff is super fashionable now. Does that make me fashionable? For being actually alive in a coherent, memory forming way during the 90's? Probably that makes me less cool and fashionable actually. 

Whatever, bitches. Peace out.

Nautical t shirt DIY

You can tell I'm not really a 'selfie' person, can't you? Sorry, but I just can't bring myself to ask a mate to help me take photos of myself and I can't figure out how to use the forward facing camera on my shitty phone. Deal with it.

UPDATE: I finally caved and got my mate to take some awkward as fuck photos of me in the field by my house. Look how uncomfortable I look, and appreciate my noble sacrifice.

When I was last in IKEA I got these fabric markers for £1.75. You can't seem to buy them online for some reason, but you can find them in the fabric section of the store or probably in any craft shop. I only ended up using the blue one for this particular project.

I also got some £2.50 white t shirts from Primark. I bought a women's large and a men's medium, because I'm a grunger at heart and love baggy t shirts.

I started my stripes just under the armpit. The first one I did was really neat and straight when I kind of wanted the stripes to be messy and look hand drawn (shouldn't really be difficult since that literally what I was doing).

So I ended up making them more jagged and cross hatched. I also ended up making them sort of wonky and not uniformly part, but that wasn't intentional, just a result of not being able to draw a straight line.

You just carry on like that until you get to the bottom of the front. I should also probably mention that this will eat up the ink in your fabric pen.

When it came to doing the back of the shirt, I folded the sides over a bit to continue to lines from the front.

Do you see what I mean about not being able to draw a straight fucking line?

Anyway Then you can fill in the stripes at the back so they make one continuous line, and you're done ain't ya.

Plastic bag yarn DIY

Okay, so I had about a million plastic bags lurking in one of my cupboards, that I have literally never used. If you're one of those people who has the foresight to think "Oh I'm going shopping so I'd better take a plastic bag with me to re-use and be all environmentally conscious or whatever", then I commend you. Even if it does make you an insufferable little goody-goody. Anyway, I've come to accept that I'm never going to be that person.

I thought I'd make some yarn out of it, then I could knit or crochet it into something. Not clothes obviously, but like tote bags or storage baskets or something. I haven't decided yet. 

All you need for this is a shit ton of plastic bags, scissors, and obviously the ability to do something with it afterwards, otherwise you're just making yourself some plastic string and that would be fucking dumb.

If you lay out a plastic bag, usually you'll see that they're like folded under at the sides on the bottom.

But if you cut a thin strip from the bottom, you can fold it out.

Here it is folded out with the cut bottom seam.

Next you cut the bag into strips, which you can tie together and wind into a ball.

Boom! One on the left made with ASDA bags, one on the right made of Sainsbury's bags. I do my main shop at ASDA, and only buy wine and cigarettes from the Sainsbury's local by my work. Clearly I've got my priorities in order right?

IKEA Decor Maths

RAMSTA diamond string lights - £12

+

BRYNE net bed canopy - £7.50

=

Ultra-fem sex tent.

You don't know what you're missing when you don't have a sex tent.

Easy button-less zip-less cushion cover DIY

Listen, I think we can all agree that buttons and zips are a pain in the arse to sew. They're just super fiddly and annoying and I always manage to cock it up. I guess I'm just not that good at sewing. 

Whatever. Who cares. Don't judge me.

For this DIY all you need is about half a metre of fabric, a square cushion insert, and the ability to cut and sew in a straight line. Piece of piss right?

I used £1.35 cushion inserts from Wilkinson's, and the ridiculously named named margareta fabric I got when I was at IKEA last week. I bought 0.6 metres for £4.20 thinking that it would be enough to cover the two cushion inserts I'd bought. But of course it fucking wasn't. I was about four inches short lengthways. But you know, that's life I guess. Full of disappointment.

Okay, so the first thing to do is measure whatever cushion insert you're using, then basically cut out a rectangle the following size:

Length = (size of cushion) + 4 cm

Width = (size of cushion) x 2 + 14 cm 

My Wilko one was 40 cm, therefore:

Length = 40 + 4 = 44

Width = 40 x 2 + 14 = 94

So my fabric needed to be a 44 cm x 94 cm rectangle. Get it?

You should be able to wrap your fabric around the cushion with an overlap. 

Then you need to give the edges of the length a 2 cm hem.

Here is mine all pinned and that. Sew that shit up bro.

Next you turn the fabric inside-out, and fold it over so the lengths overlap by 10 cm. Sew both sides, turn it the right way out, and that's it. It's like a pillowcase so you don't need any fastenings.

Here's the back

The front

And ready for impromptu naps on my tiny sofa.