Bamboo Poles Painting

I have a shrub of bamboos at a corner of my garden. New shoots appear after each rain, and they grow really fast.

The bamboo poles are rather slender, making painting not very easy. I used acrylic paint to paint on the pole, and it was not easy for the paint to stick on it. It took time for the paint to dry before a layer of different colour could be applied. Even though we had very hot sun, drying could take more than a day.

I got my inspiration from Australia aboriginal art. I was so glad that my son spotted this as soon as he saw the poles.

The yellow pole has a lizard painted on it, the red pole has two turtles, and the blue pole has a snake. These animals are easily found in Malaysia.

 I also put in pebbles to prevent the vase from toppling over. The pebbles were painted black with white 'ribbons' around them.

A Book Shelf of Shoes

I have a TV cabinet which I use to store my shoes.

It is rather unsightly to display shoes in a living room.

I found some very old books which were destined for a pulp factory. I carefully removed the spines of these books and joined them together into a panel of book spines.

I taped the book spines to the glass of the door. It looked like that I was having a library of books in my cabinet. :)

I intentionally had some spines slightly inclined to make the panel look more real.

Palm Tree Leaf Sheath

Found a perfectly shaped fallen palm tree leaf sheath near a shopping mall this morning. It is almost 5 feet long and curved nicely. I scrubbed it clean then left it to dry under the sun.

The colour of the sheath matched my teak-coloured rubber wood cabinet perfectly well. I positioned it with a piece of pebble underneath.

The cones were picked up when I visited my children in Perth in 2011. These cones were in abundance by the roadsides and in parks. We do not have such large cones in Ipoh, though we have lots of palm trees. I also put in  dragon fruits, cabbage and bitter gourd to add some colours to the picture.

Hanging Orchids

Even though Malaysia has many beautiful orchids, real ones! But I never bought a plant, because I just do not want to grow it. But I like orchids.

I bought this posy of orchids at Jusco. It was originally white, and I didn't think the colour would stand out against my pale green wall. Anyway, that was the only orchid that looked real, among a few other red and purple orchids! So I had no choice but to buy it.

 

I used water colours to add some purple streaks to the flowers.

Diamante Photo Frame

For my daughter's graduation photo, I bought a photo frame from Parkson. Of course, there were some very nice frames, but I liked the simple design (rather, no design) and colour of this frame. 

To make it stand out, I used hot-glue gun to stick 4 diamante squares at the four corners. Now, it looks like a million to me.

Ruffled Valance

The renovation of my garden room was completed in December last year, but it took me a few months to get the curtain that I wanted. My daughter patiently accompanied me to drapery shops, though there were not that many in this little town of Ipoh.

I wanted something that allows light in, but at the same time shields the glary afternoon sun. I was apprehensive when my daughter suggested this grey fabric. I didn't like it when I hung it up, too dull, especially at night, when outside was dark.

The ordinary valance has pleats and this would make the curtain looks darker and heavier. I decided that the valance had to be light so as to brighten up the whole thing. I designed this after the ruffles we often see in a bridal gown.

Belt Hanger

 When my daughter came back from Australia, she brought home some belts. My sister, Amanda, had also bought quite a few for me when she went to England last year. With such a 'large' collection of belts, I decided to make a belt hanger for my daughter.

I bought a set of wooden hangers from Ikea, and some metal hooks from a hardware shop.
The hooks were screwed into the hangers. There were hooks on both sides of the hanger.