This month I’ve been so madly busy with various projects I simply haven’t had a chance to sit and do crafts with my daughter.
I know, I’m a bad bad mother.
BUT.
That does not mean I haven’t had the Bostik out.
Oh no.
In fact, I’ve been a good GOOD mother. AND I had to go and buy another tube of the extra strong Glu & Fix All Purpose. I LOVE this magic stuff-in-a-tube. Properly LOVE it.
Want to see what I did with it in the last week alone?
Let me show you –
Having fitted the blind, the window space looked bare and uninviting, so I made a padded pelmet and ‘fake curtains’ to soften the lines and create a little warmth – I even hemmed the curtains with glue because I’m such a cheater. Once it was up on the wall, however, the pelmet still looked a little bare, with the dents from the nail gun. So the following morning I nipped down to our local (utterly amazing) warehouse haberdashery and raided their button boxes.
I couldn’t sew them on now it was all in place on the wall, but fear not, I have the all purpose Glu & Fix on hand…
What a difference a few plastic pink flower buttons made! it’s so pretty! And as the glue dries clear, no one will ever know they’re not stitched on lovingly by hand.
Next job was her old ELC toddler’s easel – nothing wrong with it except she’s so tall now that she needs to kneel on the floor to use it, which is just silly.
Also, there’s simply no room to store it in her bedroom.
So the husband got creative with his upcycling – he broke it down, painted it to match her room, and mounted both the chalkboard and the whiteboard on the wall, at a perfect height for her.
it’s brilliant! The finishing touch? A treasured Bert Butterfly which was originally a Christmas Ornament. She fell in love with him years ago at the garden centre Christmas display, and he’s been waiting for a use ever since. He brightens up the chalkboard perfectly – and thanks to the Glu & Fix he will finally not be falling down any time soon (he’s heavier than he looks, and falling off places he’s been carefully put seems to be his main hobby…).
But now the boards were up on the wall, of course there was no handy tray to place her wipe-clean pens and chalks on. The husband invented a genius little wall pot gadget with a small off-cut of wood he painted pink (of course), two pretty jam jars and two jubilee clips. All it needed was a little prettying to finish it off. In stepped me, with an oddment of lacy ribbon edging, and my trusty tube of Bostik glue…
Around the edge of the wood, around the necks of the jars, and they look perfect – certainly pretty enough for her room! And the glue really truly does dry clear – it’s totally invisible, even if you’re using it on lacy fabric like this which it soaked into and right through.
The final project was her new pinboard. We had an old picture frame lurking in the shed, and in the absence of any cork tiles we managed to pick up some reduced-to-clear cork flooring expansion strips at the local diy store. With the aid of the now-legendary Glu & Fix all purpose we filled the frame with strips of cork, and I covered it with the fabric left over from the pelmet.
Then it just needed prettying up some more – the haberdashers had come up trumps with an end-of-reel of perfect embroidered daisies, so I simply separated them up and stuck them in place (yes yes, you got it. Glu & Fix All Purpose again. I told you, I love the stuff).
A quick half hour in our iPhoto library creating some polaroids, and we had a pinboard which she adores.
None of these projects were complicated or expensive, but what a difference they have made to her #TinyRoomMakover.
Thank you Bostik – you certainly made my life MUCH easier!
