How I Got The Perfect Entertainment Unit For Free

This post has been on my to do list for way too long but I'm finally getting around to it with my new 2018 blogging goals. We are in the process of doing a huge amount of work to the house at the moment so my mind is abuzz with reno projects. We're currently painting the entire interior of the house (in white of course), this is all while we're going to be completely redoing the bathroom and laundry and while we rip up the carpet and DIY the wood floors. I'll have a lot to share on this blog this year obviously but I'm starting off with this little project I did a while back and all it cost me was $0.00.

New Year, New Blog

This is my first time blogging here since January. With that little revelation, 2018 is going to be better. Much better. 

I have taken a step back from blogging for quite some time and while I'm not ready to come back to it with everything I've got I am going to be doing what I set out to originally for this blog. 

This blog was always supposed to be about updating my home through DIY renovations. Somewhere along the way the dream got lost and morphed into something else. Since I haven't felt inspired to update the blog in the longest time, I'm going back to the beginning and starting over.

What does that mean?

What you'll see:

• More posts
• DIY posts
• Home posts

What you won't see:

• Lifestyle posts
• Blogging posts (with the exception of this one - as I tell you what to expect)
• Social Media posts
• Heavy presence on social media (I will be updating Instagram but that's it)
• Marketing
• Advertising (Kirsty Girl will become an ad-free zone)
• No display ads
• No sponsored posts
• No guest posts
• No affiliate marketing

Follow me as I update my home and this blog in 2018.

How to Organise Your Bookshelf When You're a Decorator and Bibliophile

After ordering far too many new books recently and swapping the bedrooms in the house around, it was time to organise and arrange my books. There were a couple of problems with this. 

Bibliophile & Decorator Problems:

1. I have too many books to fit on the shelf

2. I actually want it to look pretty

Question: 

So how do you organise a bookshelf when you're a decorator and a bibliophile?

Answer: 

Organise by colour!

It's All About the Wrapping at Inky Co.

 I am a wrapping fanatic as I'm certain a lot of you are too! I'm always buying little bits of ribbon, string and twine and recycling things to create beautiful wrapping. Well this time, after many many moons of feeling awful about buying cheap wrapping paper which is of course completely un-environmentally-friendly, I decided that it was about time to buy some that wouldn't make me feel so guilty and here's what I found:

Indoor Garden

As some of you are aware, Andi and I have been experimenting with indoor gardening (as well as outdoor gardening). Check out this post about our hanging indoor kitchen planters. So far we’ve been having a lot of luck especially with succulents. Andi planted some in a Keen’s Curry tin. We also have a chilli plant, some lavender, rosemary, thyme and mint in the kitchen.

How to Make Clay Tag Christmas Ornaments and Decorations

These little white heart clay tag ornaments are really simple and easy to make and you definitely don’t need to go searching tutorial after tutorial to get it right.

Christmas Decorating {Christmas Tree and Stockings}

Depending on what kind of blog reader you are, you’ll either think I’m super fast or really slow with my Christmas decorating. Well here you have MY first ever Christmas tree in my new home. I have been very excited about getting the tree and made Andi rather unhappy with me by choosing the largest, most expensive tree I could find but I just HAD to!
I’m not a big fan of plastic ornaments so I decorated with burlap ribbon, red and white ribbon and made big red bows out of red satin. I also made little white clay heart tags, there’s a house and a cat to come too and of course a tutorial!

I have always loved the idea of hanging stockings and Andi decided some stockings would look great hanging from the lights either side of our antique green mirror and of course I went full steam ahead with the idea, searching for hours to find the perfect Christmas stockings. I got these beautiful socks from Etsy seller, Ben Loves Birdy. These are Pottery Barn red cable knit stockings that were personalised with our names. I love them!
Linking up with: 504 Main, A Delightsome Life, A Diamond in the Stuff, Alderberry Hill, A Night Owl, A Stroll Thru Life, Be Different, Act Normal, Cheerios & Lattes, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Claire Justine oxox, Coastal Charm, Common Ground, Cozy Little House, Crafts a La Mode, Create with Joy, Cupcake ‘n’ Bake, DIY by Design, DIY Dreamer, Domesblissity, Ducks ‘n a Row, Elizabeth & Co, Feeding Big, Green Willow Pond, Happy Go Lucky, Hickory Trail, Home Maker on a Dime, Ivy & Elephants, Katherines Corner, Kathe with an E, Lil Luna, Live Laugh Rowe, Liz Marie, Lolly Jane, Mop it Up, Love Bakes Good Cakes, Milk & Cuddles, Mostly Homemade Mom, No Minimalist Here, Our Delightful Home, Petals to Picots, Pursuit of Functional Home, Salt Tree, Say G’Day Saturday, Savvy Southern Style, Serenity Now, Shabby Creek Cottage, Share Your Cup, Sincerely, Paula, Six Sisters Stuff, Someday Crafts, Southern Lovely, Sugar & Dots, The Best Blog Recipes, The Trendy Treehouse, This Gal Cooks, Too Much Time, Weekly Creative, We Like to Learn as We Go, While he was Napping, Charm of Home, French Country Cottage, House on the Way, Primp Junktion, Romantic Home, Diana Rambles, Dukes & Duchesses, Ginger Snap Crafts, Katie’s Nesting Spot, Life we Live 4, Redoux, Say Not Sweet, Sunday Showcase Party, Tatertots & Jello, Knick of Time

DIY White Painted Side Table

Andi received this little side table from someone at work for free… score! I had the perfect spot for it in mind. The colour definitely had to change though… to white of course!
I started off by sanding all the edges down to the raw wood so I could sand again after the paint job for that shabby look you know I love!

Duke decided he wanted to help too and I couldn’t stop laughing at him. Eventually he calmed down and decided to have a rest… he did work very hard.

After sanding down the sides and corners the painting began. When we bought the house there were about 10 cans of white paint in the shed… it was fate I tell you! So this whole project didn’t cost me a cent! Woohoo!
I think I ended up applying about 5 coats of paint to get rid of the mahogany colour. If it was plain wood I would have just whitewashed it and it would have been much quicker!

Afterwards I lightly sanded over the edges again for the shabby look which unfortunately you can’t see in the photos, I had to edit these shots a lot as you can see because we have been having some crazy wild weather in Aus lately and there’s no light for good photos!
The perfect spot for my dragonfly lamp and yellowstone bear!

Oh look, you can see a tiny shabby mark there in the corner of the leg!
^{Linking up with: 504 Main, A Delightsome Life, A Diamond in the Stuff, Alderberry Hill, A Night Owl, A Stroll Thru Life, Be Different, Act Normal, Cheerios & Lattes, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Claire Justine oxox, Coastal Charm, Common Ground, Cozy Little House, Crafts a La Mode, Create with Joy, Cupcake ‘n’ Bake, DIY by Design, DIY Dreamer, Domesblissity, Ducks ‘n a Row, Elizabeth & Co, Feeding Big, Green Willow Pond, Happy Go Lucky, Hickory Trail, Home Maker on a Dime, Ivy & Elephants, Katherines Corner, Kathe with an E, Lil Luna, Live Laugh Rowe, Liz Marie, Lolly Jane, Mop it Up, Love Bakes Good Cakes, Milk & Cuddles, Mostly Homemade Mom, No Minimalist Here, Our Delightful Home, Petals to Picots, Pursuit of Functional Home, Salt Tree, Say G’Day Saturday, Savvy Southern Style, Serenity Now, Shabby Creek Cottage, Share Your Cup, Sincerely, Paula, Six Sisters Stuff, Someday Crafts, Southern Lovely, Sugar & Dots, The Best Blog Recipes, The Trendy Treehouse, This Gal Cooks, Too Much Time, Weekly Creative, We Like to Learn as We Go, While he was Napping, Charm of Home, French Country Cottage, House on the Way, Primp Junktion, Romantic Home, Diana Rambles, Dukes & Duchesses, Ginger Snap Crafts, Katie’s Nesting Spot, Life we Live 4, Redoux, Say Not Sweet, Sunday Showcase Party, Tatertots & Jello, PoPP, Lilyfield Life, Time Washed.}

Harry Potter Magic Potions Jewellery & Bookmarks

These are just a few of my newer designs in my new shop Keepings, I’m particularly fond of these because I discovered how awesome engraving my little pendants is rather than metal stamping them. I found this out purely through necessity because I couldn’t possibly stamp that many letters into the pendants. I’m very happy with how the engraving turned out instead!
This one is of the Felix Felicis potion for luck and the next is Amortentia, a love potion. So far I seem to be the only one making them in the accurate “mother of pearl” colour rather than the obvious red or pink. Unfortunately I couldn’t pick up the sparkles in any of the photos. I used a type of glitter that is extremely small which looks better in real life but it’s too tiny for photos!
I have a bookmark and a necklace in each. What do you guys think? See them here.



Linking up with: 504 Main, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Coastal Charm, Common Ground, Cozy Little House, Crafts a La Mode, DIY by Design, DIY Dreamer, Green Willow Pond, Live Laugh Rowe, Lolly Jane, No Minimalist Here, Say G’Day Saturday, Savvy Southern Style, Serenity Now, Shabby Creek Cottage, Share Your Cup, Weekly Creative, Ginger Snap Crafts, Katie’s Nesting Spot, Life we Live 4, Redoux, Sunday Showcase Party, Tatertots & Jello

Keepings by Kirsty Girl, Custom Bookmarks and Adventure Time Jewellery

I am so super excited to announce that my new Etsy store, Keepings is finally OPEN! Woohoo! It’s been a long time in the making and I had a long day uploading everything yesterday so I would really really LOVE for you to stop over even just to say Hi! I definitely need to make some more friends over there and would like to follow all of you on Etsy too so if you have a shop or just an account let me know about it and I’ll be following along with you!

So far I have a couple of different types of products for sale though I have way more to come!

These are my customisable bookmarks for sale. I got the idea after searching for jewellery on Etsy a while back and wanted to be able to pick and choose certain charms from different listings but couldn’t. So I decided to do that myself! I think these would make a really great gift! I even made one special for my Mum last weekend for Mother’s Day! I choose white velvet with her name metal stamped on top and the little k on the brass heart that you can see above. I personalised it with a music note because she’s a huge music fan and the four leaf clover because she’s an Irish lass!

I also have Adventure Time Jewellery for sale! I love these guys, don’t you!?

Please come on over and say Hi if you ever use Etsy. Even if you don’t look at my stuff I’d love to be able to follow my blog readers over there too! Who couldn’t use more followers right?
Linking with: 504 Main, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Coastal Charm, Common Ground, Cozy Little House, DIY by Design, DIY Dreamer, Green Willow Pond, Live Laugh Rowe, Lolly Jane, No Minimalist Here, Savvy Southern Style, Serenity Now, Shabby Creek Cottage, Share Your Cup, Weekly Creative, Ginger Snap Crafts, Katie’s Nesting Spot, Sunday Showcase Party, Tatertots & Jello, Say G’Day Saturday

Hanging Kitchen Planters

This was the first project that involved any drilling into the walls of our new house so it was a bit exciting! We painted the hangers white, originally they were a shiny green like the planters themselves but stood out far too much. They’re pretty heavy duty and designed for outside use but they look wonderful in the kitchen all shabby white now! Plants always make a big difference to any inside space but I didn’t realise how much!
I love them!
In the first pic we have some salsa chilli’s… they look too yummy. We also hung some blue and yellow flowers and made a herb basket with coriander, parsley and thyme, some of the herbs that get used a lot.

Linking up with: Katie’s Nesting Spot, Live Laugh Rowe, No Minimalist Here, PoPP, Time Washed, Ginger Snap Crafts, Primp Junktion, Green Willow Pond, 504 Main, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, Common Ground, The Charm of Home, LambAround, Serenity Now, Fishtail Cottage, the Rose Garden, Tatertots & Jello, The Weekly Creative, diy on display

Hemp Stamped Necklace

For Cookie’s birthday I made her this necklace out of eco friendly hemp, green and copper drop beads and alloy charms that I stamped the letters of her name in to. I am working on a line of hand stamped items and jewellery for my new etsy store. While it’s not up and running yet it should be very soon! I am excited! I will be listing items for sale here too so stay tuned!
What do you guys think?
Sharing at: Knick of Time, DIY Dreamer, Primp, Green Willow Pond, DIY by Design, Cozy Little House, Ginger Snap Crafts, Live Laugh Rowe, No Minimalist Here, Share Your Cup

Birthdays, Beginnings, Butterflies & Bird Baths

The other day I had my Birthday and I got super spoilt! It was great of course! What I am really excited about are these metal stamps and tools that I received. I have been practicing and I can’t wait to begin creating. I have a lot of ideas! There are some exciting things happening over here at Kirsty Girl. Stay tuned!
Check out my gorgeous new bird bath too! It’s under my bird house.. can you spot it?

Linking up with: The Shabby Creek Cottage, No Minimalist Here, Share Your Cup, Green Willow Pond

DIY Twine Wrapped Glass Jar

I am such a saver of glass jars. Do you guys do that to? I have been experimenting with them recently and have a few projects to show you. This is my first though. I needed something like this for the bathroom and I didn’t want to sit just any old boring glass container on the bench. This is super easy to do. All you need is glue (I used wood glue), twine and any old glass that you have sitting around. I used a garlic jar, cleaned first of course! Paint on a thin layer of the glue using an old paint brush and slowly wrap the twine around the glass. Starting off is the only tricky bit, once you get it going it’s a breeze and will be finished in no time.
You could do this to practically anything, old tins, vases, anything you have handy that needs a re do!
Linking up to: Share Your Cup, No Minimalist Here, Time Washed, Savvy Southern Style, Primp Junktion, 504 Main, French Country Cottage, the Charm of Home, Common Ground, the Shabby Creek Cottage

Shabby Mail Holder

I couldn’t even tell you when I got this mail holder. It has been sitting around my junk bits ever since I was a little kid. It came to me as a completely blank canvas. Over the years it has been blue, green and now white. I painted it with a really old tube of white acrylic and sanded down the edges and corners. Now you can see all those old colours showing through. Not only does it look great in my new kitchen but it has been doing it’s job and tidying the bench up excellently!

Linking up with: Shabby Creek Cottage, No Minimalist Here, Savvy Southern Style, Primp Junktion, Time Washed, Diy Dreamer, Cozy Little House, 504 Main, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, French Country Cottage, the Charm of Home, Common Ground, Share Your Cup, Green Willow Pond

1930’s Vintage Kitchen Dresser

Andi and I picked this baby up after finding it on Gumtree the other day. We weren’t after anything for this spot or a new cupboard but once I showed Andi, we both had to have it. After getting it home we scrubbed it down. The last person to paint it didn’t do a very good job and the paint work was sliding right off it. We may paint it again down the track but for now we’re just enjoying it as is. So is Duke. He will never sit still for a photo but he decided to pose for me. The dresser matches his eyes.

Yawn! Of course I love this shot. hehe

Linking up with: Knick of Time Interiors, No Minimalist Here, Savvy Southern Style, Under the Table & Dreaming, the Scoop, Coastal Charm, Cozy Little House, Primp Junktion, Pearls & Lace, Share your Cup, Green Willow Pond, French Country Cottage, Common Ground

Limousine Cow

This is a painting I’ve just finished of a Limousine Cow. I love him. I’ve been watching a lot of Deadwood lately and listening to Alberta Cross so I was in a very country kind of mood for this one. I have wanted to paint a cow for a long time now and I finally got around to it. I’ve never painted an animal before!
I actually painted this one in Acrylic for a change, rather than the usual oil. I practically got it finished in a day, rather than months and the cleaning process only took 10 minutes instead of the usual hour. I think I’m a convert. I’m crossing over to the dark side.
Hope you like him!
P.s. Cows are not food or milk machines they’re beautiful, feeling beings that inspire art. Click the Vegan Tasmania link to learn more and cut out meat and milk from your diet. Thanks!

Beach HeArt

While walking along the rocks at the beach last weekend I found this sweet thing and wanted to share with you! Pretty. I wonder who made it. I thought it looked pretty special and deserved a couple of photographs. <3

A Photo of a Drawing of a Cat

I took this the other night after doodling this catty picture. I have no patience when it comes to my oil painting so I’ve decided I need to draw more and create more pictures in general, and hopefully some kind of patience and skill will reveal itself to me.
As you may have noticed there was no linky party yesterday. I have decided to stop hosting the parties. I don’t know whether this will be forever but there are certain aspects to the blogging world that are too easy to get caught up in.. and as a result you forget the purpose of the blog in the first place. I know many bloggers write about this but it’s true. I do not blog to blog. I blog to put down my photos and paintings. More content and less Alexa Rankings for me.
If you’re a blogger too, I hope you’re still enjoying yours! I am.

Blue and White Daisies

These are a couple of photos I took of the daisies my little sister, Chicken brought home for a science experiment.

We put some water and drops of blue food dye into a vase and watched the white daisy’s turn blue!

Pretty!