Insomnia stricks again ...

I keep waking around 2am which is great for stumbling and checking out Pinterest, however it's going to be a nightmare for going back to work next week.

It's given me time though to indulge myself in capturing some bits and pieces around the flat as we start to get organised:

Our one organised corner.  The shelves are made out of recycled scaffolding boards by Mr BL, the chair was being thrown out at the theatre he works in, the doll was a present from my best friend and the phone was from the junk market - £5.  Mr BL fixed it - he's so clever!

A couple of old boxes we've picked up at the junk market - the top one is an old Police ammunition box.  Great for hiding away games controllers and wires.  I picked the vase up at the Salvation Army shop for 95p; it's going to be drawn on I think for my Etsy shop.  But for now it's holding some lovely sunflowers :)

So there we go - the ONE corner we have sorted! ha ha.

While I was sorting things out I noticed this weird 'connection':

This box we picked up (where? You've guessed it - Deptford Junk Market) ages ago and it houses more wires and tools. Note the number on the side.

This tea crate was one of two that we found on the street where we used to live.  Note the number on the side!

 I know it's only a coincidence but a weird one nonetheless.

I thought I'd also share a couple of bizarro purchases from last week before I got sick:

We discovered this weird Kewpie praying Spiderman doll in the Salvation Army shop - really a bizarre mixture of ideas.

 

Found these 'aura goggles' on the market - £1.  They were produced by the British Metaphysical Society in the 60s and are just fascinating.  The only place I could find something similar was here and they sold for $49.99 - one of our friends wants them - not sure we want to get rid of them.  They're also quite steampunk in a way I guess.

Yesterday my Zuzzle Bind-It-All turned up - the instructions on the disc and the booklet are rubbish so I turned to trusty Youtube and found this awesomely simple tutorial.  I was binding within minutes and only really messed up a couple of times being my usual over-excited self.  I haven't really done anything ground-breaking but I was fairly pleased with my first tries, creating some little 'art journals' for when I feel 'arty'!

Add caption

The covers are vintage bingo cards I picked up on the Market.

Random pages taken from an old scrapbook I found on the market - mostly of playbills and adverts from the 70s and 80s.

I painted some of the pages with oil pastels and water colours.

And finally on another 'crafty' note a new addition to the Belle-Laide collection and a 'second' which ended up being just a test plate that I kind of liked!

Mucha inspired

Just a doodle - I kind of like it though.  I'm really not a very good artist! ha ha.

Well there you go - my little life in a nutshell.  Hope you managed to get to the end of this!

Upcycled Fridays #2 : What to do with old newspapers and magazines

This week has been super crazy - hence the late posting of Upcycled Friday which is actually being posted on Saturday - BAD POLLY.
We had a 'pre-Ofsted Audit' this week to prepare our school for Ofsted in the Autumn term.  I wasn't seen on Tuesday however I got a phone-call from the Head Teacher on Tuesday evening.  Apparently the Inspectors hadn't seen enough 'good' or 'outstanding' lessons and asked to be directed to teachers who would show them this.  So I KNEW I was being seen on the Wednesday and had to pull out a great lesson.  It was thankfully - not outstanding because my class are over enthusiastic and however hard I tried I could NOT get them to hold their hands up without calling out.  The Inspector was really impressed with my lesson though - he told me that I'm an extremely skilled teacher who is enthusiastic and engaging.  Apparently I'm 'peppy' - whatever that means.  However I just need to work on my classroom management skills.  That's ALWAYS been my problem.  I find it very hard to keep classes quiet and not because they're off task - they're always trying to answer the questions that I'm asking.
Anyway - after that - my body has kind of collapsed in on me and decided that I need to sleep sleep and sleep as well as make my nose run faster than an Olympic sprinter and create a hacking cough that is waking me up.  I slept from about 5:30pm to 9pm last night - went to bed and slept solidly through to 4am.   That's a lot of sleep.

UPCYCLED FRIDAY #2 - WHAT TO DO WITH OLD NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES

Right - enough background to why I'm so useless - here's this week's Upcycled Friday - and what to do with those old newspapers you have collecting up.  I tend not to have many newspapers lying around as I read most of my news online - however I do love my magazines and I have piles of them all over the place.
This idea was influenced by this dress:

This was designed by a young girl called Yuliya Kyrpo who I am proud to say I know!  When I taught at a school in South-East London she was in my tutor group and in my English class - in fact I was her tutor for about 4 years. She is a lovely young lady and ridiculously talented and driven.  This dress won a competition for recycling the Metro newspaper - a free newspaper in London.  Gorgeous isn't it?

Make some wood:

This is designed by Mieke Meijer and looks pretty sturdy to me.  You can see designs created from this here , and I think this should be the way forward with old newspapers!

Make a gorgeous winged origami bowl - created by the awesome talents of Francene Levinson - all from upcycled magazines.

Turn headlines into art - great work by A J Bocchino.

Make some cute little gift bags - I'm totally making these because I hate buying wrapping paper but I think wrapping presents in newspaper sometimes doesn't look that great.  So making gift bags looks a lot more thoughtful - this blog post from What-cha-ma-craft-it includes a really great tutorial.

So do you have any ideas to share?

What are you up to this weekend?  I'm off to Deptford Market in a few hours (in the rain by the looks of things) then photographing Arun Ghosh and Dimbleby & Capper tonight.  I know both performers and to see them on the same bill is so exciting.  Both are so ridiculously talented and I feel very proud to know them - cannae wait.  Just hope I have some energy later.

Upcycled Fridays #1 : What to do with old games

Ben and I have an agreement that if we have more than 3 of something that constitutes a collection.  Then we give each other 'the look', then we exclaim 'the sigh' and finally we resign ourselves to the fact that we need more space to house yet another assemblage.

Recently I've acquired 3 games from separate visits to junk markets - bingo, lotto and of course my Monopoly set.  I'm still not sure what to do with all the bits.  Whether to keep them all in their current state (this is probably true for the Monopoly set) or whether to upcycle them into something else.

On my old blog I used to share upcycling inspiration so I thought I'd try and make it a weekly thing here.  So welcome to the first Upcycled Friday - and what to do with old games!

Turn the boards into book covers

Via Photoq

Via Booksbystephen

Via Booksbystephen

Via Photoq

Turn the pieces and money into jewellery

Via Effemera

via KyleLoopyJewelery

Admittedly the Monopoly games tokens were originally inspired by charms - however the do look lovely on a bracelet.

Via Texas Tarts

Via Salvage Siren

Create a personalised board game

Via GroovyHolly

Make some art

Via Peggy Dembicer

Via S.T.A.R

Do you have any inspiring ideas you want to share? If so add a link in the comments below.

My weekend haul, my crazy classroom and a lickle competition

I really should be marking some work or editing some photos from an event on Saturday but I've been wanting to share my finds from Deptford Market this weekend - so the rest can wait for a bit.  I'm sitting cross-legged on the sofa watching Come Dine With Me munching on fruit and now I will share ...

So let's start with the books:

I've been intrigued by Haunted since it came out

This looked intriguing - has anyone read it?

I LOVE Mr Fry and have most of his books - but not this one -  well I do now!

This 1940s dog book is full of excellent images and adverts

Brilliant recipes for home-made wines

We are quite geeky and love to collect old AtoZs of London and then sit comparing how much has changed in the city!

I met Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell when they came to a school I was teaching at - so I bought these two books for my tutor group's 'book box'.  The Parliament of Blood intrigued me because it seems to be similar (slightly) to a novel I've been working on - BUGGER!

For some reason this book grabbed my attention and I have no idea why

... but I'm glad I opened it because it's the first Richard Scarry book I've found second-hand.  I used to love Richard Scarry books as a child and this one, despite being battered shows signs of being very well loved.

 Onto the paper ephemera:

I love these shaped birthday postcards - so cute.  I now want to find 1,2,5,6,8 and 9.  Not sure if there's a 10.

Cute kittens!

Random ephemera - a few photos for the Ghosts project we're working on.

I quite like drinking ephemera and this little Stones booklet is so cool - with recipes and games inside :)

Now the random shizzle and COMPETITION TIME!

What do you think this is??????????? I'll let you guess and reveal the answer AND the winner in next Tuesday's post.  I'll even send a prize (a box of random goodies) to the closest guess. To win you need to post your answer as a comment AND follow my blog. If a number of you get it right I'll put your names in a hat so to speak and pick out a random.   HINT: I'm going to take it into work tomorrow and show it to my Year 7 Media Studies class to show them how we 'used to do it' back in the day!

 I love this pair of peacocks made out of tin.  I don't think there is much age to them but they're adorable.  I have an art deco style peacock tattooed on my back and have a real love for them.  In fact this weekend I'll be spending the weekend in the company of a peacock as Ben's parents' have one :)  We've now got to find a home in the flat for them.

Did you ever have a flower loom as a child?  I did and I loved it.  I found this set for 50p :)  BARGAIN!  It didn't have the instructions but it did have some odd colour combination of wools and a really bad wool flower.  I'm guessing they tried it the once and gave up after that!  So I looked up some tutorials on the web and found this great one on Youtube.  The woman collects vintage flower looms and creates her own kits then sells them on.  This is a really good tutorial and as I've said before I find it easier to be shown how to do something rather than read instructions.  So - do you want to see the results?  Of COURSE you do!

Instead of using wool I had some old thin curtains that someone had given me and was never going to hang them up so I decided to rip them into strips and use that instead of yarn.

These ones were made out of a silvery/purple curtain the same person gave us.  They make quite cute rosettes for presents I think.

Well done you for getting this far with my blog post :)  I thought I'd also share a story from the crazy world of teaching.
I have a Year 11 class who are difficult to say the very least.  Basically it's a class where you have the worst behaved, most excluded kids in the year group, and I have to start and end my week in their company.  I've grown to like them in a weird way.  However it's now 4 days before they leave to go on study leave, as the course they're doing is 100% coursework they're slowly starting to filter away to other teachers during our lesson time in order to prepare for their exams.  Today was the last lesson I have with them and I was trying to get the 'strays' to finish as much off as possible so they can go off and do their Maths, English and Science revision.  One of the students took 1 1/2 hours to write about 5 sentences and THAT was with me sitting next to him to make sure he did it.
Anyway - I was updating the spreadsheet on the smartboard so that the kids could see what they had left and I heard a bit of commotion behind me.  Freakin' out thinking that a fight had broken out (not unusual for this class) I turned around and saw the same boy who took forever to write 5 lines, standing there with his flies and button undone on his trousers and the trousers lowered.  Apparently he was 'just sorting' his trousers out.  Seriously.  Well he's now on an 'early bath' (which means he only comes back for exams now) and the school is investigating the situation.  He just kind of stood there like there was nothing at all wrong in what he was doing. 
To say this is the worst thing that has happened in my classroom with boys and their hands down their trousers is, unfortunately, not true.  I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations.  Ahhh the youth of today eh?