Sunday, April 17, 2011

Old Jewellery Box Before & After, & Yummy Savoury Sauce

First, sorry there was no Who Made What? Weekends! this weekend! We were out of town the whole of Thursday until late at night and I totally forgot to set it up in advance, but it shall be back again next weekend. :)

What I've been working on in the mean time is an old jewellery box that I've had since I was small.  It's just been sitting in the back of my cupboard for years now 'cause I didn't want to throw it away.
 

So I decided to do a before-&-after. :D  And here's the after:
I removed the little windows from the front and everything inside as well:
I still have to find the right fabric to cover the inside with.
Then I decoupaged scrapbook paper all over the box.  After tons of measuring I cut the paper to fit the roof and the sides etc, and decoupaged it on.  Then I took a brown ink pad, dapped a small sponge on it and rubbed the sponge along the corners & edges of the box to give it a more interesting look (you can see it in the pic above).

And then came the decorations.  I added a gold goodie that was recycled from a wedding invitation:
I made little paper flowers too using another patterned scrapbook paper, a small flower punch & gold brads:
And then for a while now (a couple months actually) I've been looking for self adhesive swirly pearl designs, but couldn't find any.  So I finally decided to make my own decorations by drawing (or dotting) freehand swirly patterns with gold glittler glue.  Here's the left side of the roof:
And here's the right side:
I also glued on that pretty butterfly.

And then I wanted to add something to the front of the "house" because it looked a little empty, so I came up with this cute idea - I used teeny glass bottles, removed the corks and added black, red & green glitter (as the soil).  I have little white organza roses that I dabbed onto with a red ink pad to give them some colour, and for their stems I glued on some of that green wiry things that I removed from some bees that I used in a previous craft project (I knew I could still find a use of these!).  So I glued a little rose pot plant on each corner on the front:
Finally done! :D  I've put it in the dining room and we're now using it to store the keys for the patio doors & gates leading out from the dining room.

Lastly I thought I'd share one of my favourite sauces.  We usually eat it with a crumbly maize meal "porridge" that we have when we have a BBQ, but this time I didn't have maize meal so we poured it over cous cous instead, and it was just as good. :)  It's really yummy & tangy with a strong flavour.
250 g     butter
1 tsp      dry mustard powder
30 ml     worcestershire sauce
125 ml   sugar
125 ml   vinegar
250 ml   tomato sauce
1            onion, finely chopped
1            green pepper (what I think some of you call bell peppers?), finely chopped

Cook everything together in a pot for 10 minutes.  This is a large batch, so anything you don't use can be frozen and it lasts for ages.  Just defrost and heat up before serving again.

How simple is that? :D Enjoy. :)




LINKY PARTIES linked to:
I Heart Nap Time                     The Tattered Tag
Under the Table & Dreaming    Scrappy Gifts
Making the World Cuter           Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Between Naps on the Porch       .

5 comments:

BB said...

Awesome referb! Really cute!

The Allyson Rioux Foundation said...

The jewelry box re-do is awesome!!! Love those gold swirls and dots!! And...the butterfly and flowers!!
Just a great repurpose of this :)

Sauce sounds yummy but I gotta say - that salad looks delish :)

Maria

Sylvia N. said...

Those little flowers in the pots out front are adorable!

Monica said...

This is awesome, Monique... those flowers are so lovely and I do love the papers... such fab creation.

xxx Monica

Bluebirds and Roses said...

Inspiring project and blog.