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Everything stops for tea.. So sorry for my absence, but I have been a little busy. I have been painting in my friend Yolanda's lovely home. This is her patio, where she wanted to create the feeling of a wonderful tea room. The vintage table and chairs are being painted a distressed white. As you can see in the photograph it got painted just in time before the rain came down! Yolanda had this fireplace made to her own design, and then I painted it with the numbers and gave it an antique wash. It really is a most unusual feature in the room. Some more numbers on a bespoke bathroom cabinet, (my friend has a thing for them). In  the downstairs cloakroom I framed a mirror with an antique letter by Josiah Fairfax (totally fictitious of course), and added a couple of postmarks. I love it when I have free reign to do something that is fun and original. In the Master bedroom, which is very pared down and elegant, Yolanda wanted a quote of some kind to break up the white and add some charact...

Just a quick little post to let you see the phone covers we got from the talented Wendy at  15 Coast Road . Initially I got the camper van for my husband because he loves them, and the red phone box for me. My daughter was not to impressed that she was left out, so I asked Wendz if she could make one with a dog on. No sooner had I asked, she was on the case and whipped up Fred the scottie dog, so everyone is delighted. Thank you Wendz! Check out her wonderful blog, full of wit and wisdom and great charity shop bargains, and her Etsy shop for all her wonderful makes. Also, I thought you might like this idea for plant markers from Martha Stewart Magazine. Wishing you all a wonderful week, with love, Linda x

Things have  been a little hectic around here for a little while. Lois (my daughter) has had her room decorated. She told me from the offset that she wanted none of my 'vintage stuff', she wanted a modern room. All white walls and woodwork with touches of black. I was a little worried that it would all be too stark and severe, so we agreed on adding a few splashes of red and a sunny yellow. I found a canvas of New York with a lovely yellow taxi and we used this as our starting point. I painted a small blackboard on the wall and stuck blackboard stickers down the side and wrote the days of the week on them. I got the stickers as a giveaway from the lovely Samantha at  The Nest . Samantha makes the most wonderful cushions from burlap with great wording on them, and sells them on Etsy.She also has a marvellous eye for interior design and doing up old unloved furniture, and turning it into something gorgeous. I made a little collage of her room on Picnik, probably my last visit ...

I planted an old blue and white dish with some miniature Iris, they were beautiful but fleeting! I have been painting pine furniture again, this time it was some lovely old pieces that my client has collected over the years. A lovely pitch pine cupboard, a wardrobe with leaded lights and a charming school desk. The stool I had painted for a different room in a duckegg blue, but it was being moved into  the grey room. I primed the furniture with 2 coats of primer, then painted with 3 coats of Farrow and Ball's Pavilion Grey, followed by a charcoal grey wash and 2 coats of acrylic varnish in a matt finish. I thought it would be fun to paint the desk and stool with a Paris postmark. This gorgeous Armoire was painted in Duckegg blue with a brown antique wash. The decoration on the walls was done by me for a previous client a few years ago, but my new client kept it because she loved it. It was a lovely surprise for me to see it again. I hope you are all enjoying the Spring weather (or ...

A lot of people are a little bit 'sniffy' about stencilling! If you have lived through the 80's and 90's, when everything that moved (or didn't) got stencilled, then I can understand you feeling a little reticent. Also a lot of the stencilling that was done was rather badly done, with leaks and dribbles and smudges. I started painting furniture in the late eighties and didn't have the confidence to hand paint things then, so I used stencils, first bought ones, then as I gained confidence,I cut my own. Eventually I learned how to paint directly on to the wall, but that took time. I have to say though, that I still have a soft spot for stencilling. Recently, I thought that I would check 'The Stencil Library's' website, as I hadn't been on it in quite a number of years. I knew that they were still going strong because of the magazine coverage. I was thrilled by what I found, as they have really moved the whole thing on with both modern and vintage d...