Newly Listed: Tree of Life Embroidered Ottoman

Olive wallpaper, Removable wall mural, Crow, Peel and stick, Raven decor, Leaves, Botanical, Peel and stick by marWALLous

Tree of Life Embroidered Ottoman, Hand carved wooden Furniture, Queen Anne Legs, Black, Green, Pink Pouf Bohemian Wooden Furniture by StarHomeStudio

Vintage Ornate Green Mirror late 1930's Wooden Frame Floral Frame Vintage reversed Painted Mirror by StarHomeStudio

Happy New Year, Happy New Ottoman!

 

Happy New Year everyone! Boy what a year! I don't thnk the first 6 months of 2021 is going to be any better as long as there are selfish and uncareful people around this pandemic is going to take a while.

But enough of the negativity! We ended 2020 by finishing this beautiful and very cheerful ottoman.

Creativity is what is keeping us sane.

I'll be blogging more again now that our new home and workspace is finally getting in to shape. I have to blog about what we have been up to soon, it was much more work and costs than anticipated and we are still not completly done but we are getting there.

About the ottoman. We wanted to create another funky cat ottoman as we sold the previous one we made. To match the green and black cat we created a green and black velvet patchwork which took a crazy amount of time to create.

The cats are vintage embroidery.

The pouf was a vintage brown piece that I painted in a fun way in matching colors.

This piece makes me happy, that's a good start of this year. As we are in a 3 days lock down (to prevent New Years celebrations) I think it is going to be a creative and inspiring weekend!

How was your New Years Eve?

Colorful Makeover

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are a ton of furniture projects in our atelier right now, I'm happy to say that the number went down to 9 :)
These lovely wooden feet were a score of our last USA travel at a thrift store.

And we choose all the materials and colors according to this lovely embroidery.

The feet became unrecognizable after their colorful makeover.

I built the body of the ottoman from salvaged wood. Normally the body doesn't need this much wood, but for this model it is required.

Last finishing touches!

Tadaaa! The upholstery was a challenge, the various layers, piping and the fact that the fabrics are striped made it very difficult, but the result was worth the trouble!

This pouf will definitely catch everyone's eye :)

I love the quirky cat :)

Except for the foam and webbing inside, all material is either vintage, salvaged or upcycled.
Available at StarHomeStudio.

Tile Patterns

I love the artistry of Morrocan tiles, their shapes and patterns are amazing.

You'll be even more amazed by them when you see how much work they put into creating these tiles, please check the video, you'll never look at these tiles the same way.

Inspired by those tiles I wanted to create a mosaic of some of my Ebru (marbled papers) for our end of year exhibition, if you missed it I've been attending a course these past few months. I spray painted an IKEA box cardboard in gold and then glued my hand cute 'tiles' with Mod Podge. I love how it turned out! I did it in the size to fit an old frame that I found in our attic :)

I made another one which is more inspired by the grandmother's garden quilt pattern but looks a bit like tiles too. I do love the Morrocan tile inspired better but I'm happy with both. I used Ebru pieces of those that had mistakes so I cut from the imperfect ones.

It took way longer than anticipated, like always :) I'll be listing them at the shop after the exhibition.

And continuing the tile vibe, we made this smashing ottoman as well, love the outcome and it actually took less time than the paper mosaics :)

Some cool hair pin legs, MDF wood and a tile patterned fabric with fabric buttons to bring it all together.

It is soft, comfortable and colorful and pretty big with a width of 27 1/2'' (70 cm)! Available at StarHomeStudio.

From Trash to Treasure

This ugly coffee table has been waiting for a make over for over 2 years.

Its previous owner tried to 'fix it', which only made it worse.

The glass was all scratched up and the middle shelf was damaged so I took those off. My initial plan was to cover the top with all kind of found boat wood and driftwood to create a surface like a sold coffee table I made. And then adding driftwood branches to fill up those gaps in the legs and to strengthen it but it never really clicked so the table kind of hung around for all this time.

And then I decided to just make an ottoman of it and forget about its original purpose.
I cut off the legs to get rid of the ugly gaps and nails and to shorten it as foam will make it higher again.

I also cut of the sides to make it ready for upholstering.

I wanted to sand the feet as they were actually beautiful wood under that ugly brown but they were so badly painted that I just couldn't get it all off and had to paint them. So I want for something a bit crazy to make it different.

With fabric under and plywood on top, then foam, batting and a beige fabric it was ready for its pretty Kilim I found among our Kilim stash.

Tadaaaa! I used a foam thickness that would make the Kilim the exact correct size, without any cutting beside the corners.

So happy that I went with my instincts and made an Ottoman out of it.

It is very long 42'' (106 cm) so perfect for in front of the couch, or at the foot end of your bed or in the hallway to take off your shoes :)

I used brass bead caps and nails for a prettier finishing touch.

This Ottoman / Bench is available at StarHomeStudio among other one of a kind furniture pieces.

Tender Loving Care

I scored this cute but sad little side table with hand carvings a few weeks ago.

It clearly used to be beautiful, all made of heavy solid wood with inlays on the top and hand carvings but it was not protected against the sun and other outdoors elements.

We removed the top, cleaned off the leftover varnish and reinforced the skeleton.

I then painted it with 5 colors of paint, layer for layer from dark to light to let the carvings pop.

Elastic webbing on the top instead of heavy wood.

Foam and betting.

And beautiful vintage Kilim pieces, as you can see I used the paint colors to match the kilim.

Nothing is straight or perfect as all materials are handmade and vintage, but we are embracing the imperfections :)

Available at StarHomeStudio!