I’m 30. I work in marketing in a shopping centre in Perth. I’m a professional creative who has learned strategy and gets along quite well in my career. This blog is my outlet for all things non- work related
I’ve always thought about it, but never followed through on labelling my own wine bottles. I mean, if you’re going to drink it in a couple of days, what’s the point?
Well, sometimes it’s not all about you, Eryn.
Personalised wine bottles are perfect for gifting, especially if you can think up a cool name for your ‘product’. I went with Eryn_With_A_Wine.
I love urban art. I love coming across little pockets of beauty in the urban landscape. My love affair started when I was travelling Europe. There are so many little pockets in each city, from Belgium to Belfast. My hus-bang and I would make a competition of looking for the Space Invader in each city we visited (I usually won, being the more observant and more competitive one). Did you know Perth has its very own Space Invader? If you haven’t seen it, it’s on a bridge over a very busy city road…
Perth has been following suit with the Form project, and some other cool little initiatives from people who own big, blank walls throughout the city. Have you taken a walk around Leederville? Or down Beaufort Street? Go a little bit more residential and there’s art as far as Rockingham and Bunbury.
My own little urban art project I refer to as ‘urban lite’. There are some awesome spray paint colours available at The Butcher Shop, but having used spray paint in a community project before, I wanted to use something a little more forgiving for my own indoor wall.
British Paints have this awesome product called ‘Retouch’. It’s designed to be used to re-paint nicks in walls in the average house, and it only costs $9.95 at Bunnings, but what it can also be used for is ‘urban lite street art’!
After much deliberation, I decided to make a Banksy- inspired piece. Have you seen his panda? I’m not as enamoured of panda’s as I am of squirrels, so that was my animal of choice. And, for my witty stab at ‘the man’, I’ve chosen to go with ‘Do or D-I-Y’ as my catch call.
Don’t shake the can, man! There’s a big warning label on the box, but I wasn’t able to help myself and gave it a good old shake, so I had to go and buy another one.
When the can gets cold, it stops working. Don’t panic. The atomiser just needs to warm up again. Stop and wait, then go again.
British Paints Retouch ($9.95, avialable at Bunnings), black paint, stencil paper, pencil, pencil, scalpel, cutting mat, tape.
Approx $30 with all new paint.
2 hours.
If you’re coming from the video and wanting to know how I made my stencil, read on...
I’m not the best at drawing squirrels freehand, so I took an image from the internet and stuck a hot glue gun on it, then put that next to my text, then printed it out.
Stick the print out on a window with good lighting, and tape the stencil paper over the top. Trace the outline of the image onto the stencil paper.
This is where your imagination comes in. I looked back and forth from the Banksy panda while I drew the lines on my squirrel. I used jagged lines on the tail to show the fluffiness of the fur, and took liberties with the hot glue gun because you can’t have too many fine details in a stencil before losing the intent of the image.
Use your scalpel to cut out the positive space in the image (the stuff you want to have coloured).
I don’t know why I do it to myself, make a video. It’s all super fun while I’m making it (because- of course- I’m a wine bag), then when I get to loading the videos and putting them all together I start to cringe. Did I say that? Did I make that face?
But by then I’ve put in all this effort to make the project and tape it, so I just say to myself ‘Eff it! Just put it up.’
And here we are!
One part I missed out of the video was my garbled attempt to tell people to drink responsibly on the break. I make these videos as a tongue in cheek alternative to the boring crafting vids out there; the wine is a prop, not a crutch. Although it’s a delicious prop!!
I’ve received many a bottle of wine for Christmas. I think they’re the perfect thing to get when you don’t quite know what someone wants. But for me, I like to put a little more thought into the present and add something hand made to make it special.
So the wine decorations were invented!
$25 (including wine).
30 minutes sober.
Christmas bells, .5m chain, jump rings, 1 x curtain rod holder, wooden letters 2 x ‘H’ and 2 x ‘O’, gold paint and a drill.
Drill a hole in the letters with the smallest drill bit you have. I backed my letters with a thicker piece of wood and drilled right through, a trick I learned at Perth Wood School. It provides support for the thinner wood and prevents splitting.
Paint the letters on both sides with spray paint.
Split your chain into three or four lengths. Make sure that the longest length ends high enough from the bottle of wine that the letter ‘O’ is suspended.
Using jump rings, attach the ‘O’ first, then the ‘H’ to make sure they don’t overlap. Attach to the curtain ring using a jump ring. Do the same for the second HO string and the other three lengths of chain.
Using jump rings, attach your bells along the chains.
Wine charms. They’re a controversial thing for me, because I’m not naturally a person who loses track of their wine. If anything, I’m more likely to purposefully pick up someone else’s glass because it has more wine in it than mine.
So, stop the wine-napping with these really easy, reusable and customisable wine charms. All you need are some earrings and a bag of alphabet beads.
You can watch the YouTube video here. Watch it. It's amusing.
The project cost should be under $20, I got my earrings on sale. The whole project took under 5 minutes to make.
Although you’re in trouble if a lot of your girlfriends have names beginning with K. K beads are like gold dust.
Choose earrings that feed back in on themselves and don’t have a clasp, and make sure the holes in the beads are big enough to feed through the earrings.
Also, make sure you don’t get massive monster shoulder brushing loops that will fall off the base of your glass.
It’s easy, simply make a word and thread that word through the earring, then attach to your glass.
If you decide to switch to beer during the night, you can use the earring as intended and make it part of your attire. Depending on how much wine you’ve consumed of course…
Wondering where I’ve been the last few days? Doing something I never thought I’d ever, EVER do! Making a You Tube video.
I’ve been working a lot with the wonderful In Shot Productions in my non-blog time (eg- work), and we came up with this brilliant idea for a You Tube series called D-I-Wine in which I make wine related DIY videos and get hammered at the same time.
And boy did I get hammered.
For a 3 minute video, there was about 20 minutes of shooting and a whole bottle of wine consumed in that time period.
One thing I noticed from going over the footage, I smack my lips A LOT when I’m drinking. Feel free to share if you notice any other personal foibles that make you want to hit me.
Going into it I was scared that I’d completely fail. You know those funny people in your life that are only funny in group situations? Then they get on a stage and completely bomb out? I was thinking I was going to be one of those people.
I think I’ve come up with something that is an adult contemporary answer to the shiny, bubbly DIY girls or the badly taped mummy vloggers.
I’ll let you be the judge, feel free to tell me I’m a complete tool in the comments! I’ll be sitting in the corner having some Panadol.
Recent Comments