Paper Trails

After we left Callington Mill precincts, we travelled up the main street of Oatlands to "Alan's Verandah" the next venue for the historic skill of wood graining and a discussion of other faux finishes and decorating styles of the Victorian era.

What happened next was nothing short of "historical porn" and an unexpected meeting with a genuine wallpaper guru, Alan Townsend.

We did legitimately dabble and ooh and aah with some paint finishes like flame cedar and birdseye maple but then what followed was a history lesson that sent me to 7th heaven.

We were invited to tour the mid 1800s timber constructed cottage and peer at it's most intimate layers, and I DO mean LAYERS!

Layers upon layers, decade upon decade.....

Tragically beautiful and exquisite in it's decay.

So the very basic construction of this cottage, and in fact other similar timber cottages of it's era, is timber weatherboard exterior with some stone foundation and the interior walls are a patchwork of split shingle-like timber rather than commonly known lathe and plaster. These interior walls were never meant to stand alone but to be thoroughly swathed in decorative papers.

Upon these crazy patchwork timber bases were laid the first layers - newspaper. A very effective and indisputable dateline for the cottage's construction. Next came the fabric layer. Whatever was cheap and recyclable. In this one front room is found hessian, the very coarsest and cheapest material and also some recycled mattress ticking. Then upon that is the decorative paper. Drafts are excluded, the room "insulated" and then decorated. 

Alan is a professional researcher and historian and sensitively handles and documents the life of the building on it's preservation/restoration journey. Large segments of "art" paper is collected and saved, the floral 1970s wallpaper treated as deferentially as the faux stone paper borders of the late 1800s.

And not just the wallpapers, but also the layers of floor coverings from many decades that chart the years of various property owners and fashion stages.

I wish I could have reproduced the colours faithfully for they were truly beautiful.

Can you imagine the plethora of documents and interesting ephemera tucked into these layers? I couldn't and I was totally flabbergasted at the range of invoices and documents.

Marriage certificates, lengthy shopping invoices, doctors bills and fashion pages.

  

So much history is revealed about the community and the way of life of the town and attitudes of the eras. It speaks also of a time when paper and fabric (things in general really) had a real value and nothing was taken for granted or casually wasted. He said he has also found the practice sheets of copperplate handwriting of young students copying over and over religious verses simultaneously learning their moral code and handwriting in one lesson.

Alan is currently working on techniques to renovate the space of each room but also keep it's history intact and enfold it's precious layers. As you would imagine, several decades of wallpapers tends to distort the planes and corners are lost to rounded swells and even the very foundations shift and twist over time too. Any other person would have stripped with gusto and brought in the plaster sheeting. He is a far braver man than I and most skilled.

Only a creative eclectic like Alan could live within this chaos as he learns and works with the house. His crazy mix of superb antiques and art juxtaposed with the slow and complex decay, but slowly and sensitively he transforms the space back to a home.

It is quite an extreme form of "shabby chic" don't you think?

We were truly privileged to meet Alan and bask in his enthusiasm and freely shared knowledge and experience.

My favourite quote of the day from this historian was "By all means, people should enjoy their homes and express their style, change the paint scheme and improve their comforts but resist stripping and removing. Above all, avoid removing anything, leave it for the telling"

 Here is a link 

to experience more of the world of historic recreation and wonder of Alan Townsend.

The Crafty Bits for the Shower/Party

I would not have believed how simple these effective poms are for decorating. We kept the colours in theme and they are very light in weight to hang which is important. Being a garden party there was no shortage of great points to hang from including the underside of the shade umbrellas, gateways and garden arch.

Here is a you tube link that shows pretty concisely how easy it is.

Old silver trays were purchased for a couple of dollars each and coated with blackboard paint. Their beautiful scrolled edges and engravings made lovely signs for the garden and I'm sure they will come in handy again and I may even use them on the market stall. Some were screwed straight to garden stakes to point the way and for hanging signs we drilled a couple of holes in the top and threaded with garden twine.

Leftover hessian/burlap from Christmas was used on the invitations, party favour bags and wrapped around milk bottles of flowers to keep the theme running through. Lots of up-cycling and recycling.

We also placed a couple of tall Fowlers bottles in my gumboots and filled them with cut agapanthas and placed them at a gate but I didn't get a photo but I mention it because it was a very effective idea and simple to do.

There were guests from many walks of Emma's life and we definitely needed name tags so we simply cut carrot shapes from bright orange paper and folded some narrow strips of green tissue and cut it finely but not quite through to the base so that it created a feathery look and then sticky taped them to the back. People either used small safety pins or pegs to attach them.

Disclaimer: only poor quality silver trays of dubious and debilitated surfaces were harmed with blackboard paint in the creation of this production.

Ditch Plastic Wrap

July is (virgin) plastic free month (are you all getting a bit over the focus months?) and I thought now was an appropriate time to talk about our last 12 months without cling wrap and foil wrap for that matter.

About 12 months ago we ran out of cling wrap and duly placed it on the list (which never goes with us) and week after week and month after month went by and we just kept forgetting it. We didn't use that much of it anyway but it caused me to have a bit of a think back to my grandmother's time.

Somehow they got by without all this plastic wrap which is yet another expense in my frugal kitchen and a drain on the environment from start to finish.

So we decided that if our grandparents managed without surely we could too especially with some modern additions in our drawers.

Above is my third drawer, the classic dumping drawer for all things food wrapping and bagged. 

Mine used to contain foil and cling wrap but now it has; greaseproof paper and waxed paper, rubber bands recycled and saved, kitchen string, saved packets from flour and sugar for cake tin lining and wooden skewers and matches because where else do you put them?

These sandwiched sized keepers are the reason we used very little cling wrap in the beginning. The sandwich sits perfectly in there and the containers come in handy for all sorts of left over storage.

Here too is the accumulation of a lifetime and commonly and affectionately known as "The Tupperware Draw". Because the product is so hard wearing, it literally has had a lifetime of use and replaced plastic bags, freezer bags and cling wrap.

Our grandmother's commonly employed a plate over a bowl or vice versa. This stops food drying out and keeps dirt and vermin out.

Recycled food spread jars can be used for storage of food stuffs of course but what about jars without lids or ramekins or cups? These can be covered with a square of paper tied with string or secured with a rubber band. Vacola also have snap on lids that can be used again and again on opened preserves so you can store partial jars easily in the fridge. The beauty of these lids is that they also make empty out of season jars useful again.

You can use all sorts of cloth covers

Especially useful in my kitchen is my stash of tea towels ready to use and washed again time after time.

I don't expect people to all of a sudden go completely plastic free but it would be great if we could use this month as a focus to become aware and maybe reduce. 

I would like to think that maybe 10% of you who read this might one day run out of cling film and just decide to NOT put it on the list.

Of the remaining 90%.....

maybe 10% of you may put greaseproof paper ON your list and maybe you will reduce some of that cling wrap.

The benefits to the environment are obvious but you should also get excited about how much money you'll be saving each year too.

Crafting Card Night

Last night Five ladies gathered around my table to make Valentines cards

They are being distributed to the elderly of New York who receive meals on wheels.

A random anonymous sentiment of love and caring for someone else.

It was organised through the Etsy "Share Your Love" meetup but it's open to anyone.

Share some Love.

Custom Made Backgrounds

I am having a wonderful time at the moment creating some really cool backgrounds with some metallic pigments and ink. My Aunt is visiting from QLD and has brought her Cuttlebug with her and I have been embossing scraps of card stock before she goes.

From the plain embossed card stock I turn it into a shimmery metallic finish by mixing a small scoop of Perfect Pearls (copper and blue patina)and a full dropper of Ranger Distress Ink (Tea Dye and Old Paper) and mixing them in mini misting bottles. I shake it well and spray onto the card and then dry it off with my heat tool.

The colour combinations with these pigments and inks is endless and the finished product can be a feature or a background, scrunched, torn or cropped. To bring out the high relief you can also rub the top gently with another ink pad or sponge.

It is hard to see the coppery glint in the photograph but it adds another dimension to other things too like the key detail which is a cut out from plain black card. Using the same treatment "antiques" the key and adds a very subtle aged effect and patina to plain cardboard.