New shoes, new chairs

On Thursday afternoon I had the opportunity to sneak out of work an hour early, and car repairs in Phillip had me in the area. Perfect for a quick scour of my local ops - Salvos and Vinnies, both within 100m of each other.

Salvos close earlier than I thought they would (4.30 daily) so I only had a couple of minutes before closing time, but Vinnies is open till 5pm (every weekday), so I trudged on over after getting kicked out of Salvos to find myself a new pair of purple leather flats, $4.

I'm pretty pleased with them.

Vinnies also had a cute set of Vue multicoloured cocktail glasses, which I was heavily tempted to buy for a christmas present for someone.... anyone.... especially at the bargain price of $15 for the set. In the end I left them there, but might just have to head back tomorrow (if someone hasn't already swiped them up).

I only had my phone camera on me, and in the absence of a bluetooth to transfer the pic to PC, all I can offer is this hilariously dodgy picture of the picture on my phone. Hehehehe. Hope you can kind of get the drift.... the glasses are cocktail, coloured, slightly textures, and 100% fun.

And remember the cool chairs that I picked up on eBay?

I could go on for an hour about the process of ripping, tracing, pattern-making, pinning, cutting, trial-and-erroring... the first cover that I made was with cheap $3/m fabric picked up from the Chifley church fabric sale, which was good for a test run on my first go, but probably not the best fabric for upholstery overall. My second attempt, however, turned out much better - having smoothed out some kinks in the pattern I made, and also investing in nicer quality upholstery fabric.

It turned this:

(As much as I like orange, the covers were musty, badly stained, and clash with absolutely everything in my house...)

to this: A bit sedate, but with a gorgeous tweedy texture and a hint of colourful stripe in the weave which you can only really see close up...Success!

Time to tackle chair no. 3. I'm thinking of a similar texture fabric, but maybe in green tones.

Hope your weekend thrifty finds are fun and rewarding!

eBay finds - a DIY project

As many of you were trawling through the various garage sales and markets on Saturday, I woke that morning with a clear knowledge of exactly what I was buying that day.

Hurrah! It was eBay-win-pickup day.

Having spied some fabulously 60's Parker-esque chairs on eBay two weeks ago, I had my battleplan all set out. Add to watch list - check. Bide my time and wait patiently for auction end - check. Swoop in within the last couple of minutes of the auction, fighting a short but brutal bidding war with just one other bidder - check.

Two minutes and $72.30 later, the chairs were mine for collection.The orange fabric isn't quite to my liking, so that will have to go. I intended that the green fabric should go too, but it's a suprisingly sedate colour in person (and when it's not wedged in the middle of a citrus-coloured furniture sandwich). So the green might stay. A quick internet hunt for Florence Broadhurst-style print fabrics show that I would be paying more for one metre of fabric than I paid for the three chairs themselves! Scratch that idea. AllClassifieds.com has shown me that there's meant to be a big fabric sale on the 29th November at Calvary Chapel in Chifley (10am - 3pm, McLaurin Cres) so I'll be hunting there for some medium-weight prints to reupholster these orange beauties - otherwise, I have a nice selection of internet fabric purchases lined up, all ready for negotiation with the man of the house..... stay tuned.

As long as my procrastination brain cell doesn't peer pressure the rest of the team into going on Chrissie holidays early, I'm hoping to having brand-new-old-non-orange-chairs to complement my Parker sideboard and dining table. Updates to follow! And look! they even recline.Some tips for other eBay thrifty hunters out there - searching for items within Canberra is ridiculously unreliable, as eBay's 'search by distance' function seems to place certain ACT postcodes well outside the ACT. I know (through my own trial and error) that the eBay system seems to think that 2600, 2601 and 2903 are all located somewhere in country NSW. Terribly frustrating for both buyers and sellers, but complaints seem to fall on deaf ears. Try searching from a few different postcodes to cover the bases... but if you come across the gleaming polished teak of a piece of genuine 60's Parker... the battle is on. You'll have ME to contend with ;)

[photos courtesy of eBay seller dblfizzion]