My little scrap paper shelf

Scrap much or do you just have hoards of scrap paper lying around and no place to store them?  Well that was me before I purchased these handy Kaisercraft shelves. Of course, being scrap paper means you can't just use any old shelves or trays for fear of bending or damaging the paper and at $1.00 - 1.50 a pop they don't come cheap, so of course you want to protect them, especially from the elements of a crazy blogger/crafter/teacher bedroom like mine. So for a few months, it was just a plain old wooden chipboard 12 x 12 paper shelf sitting atop one of my bedside tables like so...

And then inspiration struck, along with the leftover wrapping paper from my Ikea dresser project which had been eyeing me every day from my desk. So I decided to tackle the little chipboard shelves at last. Thankfully no sanding meant I could paint straight away with my black and white acrylic paint. I wanted it to match my Ikea dresser so I used the wrapping paper for the sides and painted the rest of it black and white, in keeping with the colour scheme of the room. Almost there...and sorry about the light streaming in from the window.

And at last it's done or almost. I plan to somehow decorate the top with some other pretty paper as I've run out of the Kikki-K wrapping paper but for now it's no longer a chipboard eyesore. What da'ya think? Oh and sorry about the hideous yellow blinds...the joys of a rental

And here is a Pixlr version of the shelves...I wish I could live in a virtual Pixlr world sometimes, everything just looks so much better.

Weekend painting with acrylic paint

Remember my Ikea dresser redo? And remember the hideous pine stained and varnished mirror above the dresser pictured below? Here's a reminder...

Pine mirror before

Well painting that  mirror frame was high on my long weekend to-do list. Fortunately it was a very sunny weekend and I set about by sanding the bejeebas out of that frame with some sandpaper. It took a few sanding sessions as the frame had many grooves as you can see in the photo.

After sanding for a good hour, I gave it a quick wipe with a damp cloth to remove most of the dust and let it sit in the sun to dry, while i drank some coke zero and dined on Easter eggs.

As soon as the wood dried, I started painting the frame using long brush strokes and black acrylic craft paint;  this required two coats in total. After this, I slapped on a further two coats of clear gloss varnish and there ya go. I'm so pleased with the final result and love how chic this little corner looks now.

Pine mirror after

The beauty of Cairns

You will be glad to know that I completed my walking challenge and reached 100% within 13 days even though the challenge was for 14 days.And I collected a total of $160 towards the charity. Booyeah!

It was particularly tough as I was in Cairns and didn't do much walking at all during the day (mostly sitting on my bootay). So I ended up going for an hour long walk each evening on the Cairns esplanade, which I am in love with btw. I managed to snap some photos on my mobile to share with you. These were taken around 6ish in the evening.