Giving old drawer bottoms new life with potato stamps

I was despairing at the sorry state of the my desk drawers (read: procrastinating from work) this afternoon. I got the desk from an ex-housemate and the bottom panel had torn paper coating and was pretty filthy. The front panel (with the handle) also has a bad habit of half coming off whenever you open the drawer. So I took it off completely and set out to find some pretty paper to line it.

I didn't have any suitable paper in my stash, but I did find some plain brown paper. Thinking back to primary school days, I grabbed a potato, cut it in half and drew a pig on it. I then crudely cut the edges off from around it.

I taped the paper to the panel, grabbed some paint and stamped to my heart's content.


I had a little trouble sliding the bottom panel back in, as the paper made it a little bigger. But I eventually got it in, the bonus being that the tighter fit means the front bit no longer falls off!

I recommend you grab yourself a potato and give something new life... hopefully you have better drawing, cutting and stamping skills than me :D

Matryoshka nesting dolls (squeebles!)

These are the nesting dolls I sent to my partner for the Matroyska Doll Swap! on swap-bot, along with the accompanying note:

Squeebles are born colourless and with no way to express themselves. Their bodies are pure white, and their eyes are black pools , incapable of expression. Their only other feature is their black hair. To compensate for this, they dress in the most colourful clothes they can, they favourite colour being anything fluoro. Also they have no mouth, they express affection by forming nesting groups. Families are usually found in this conformation, similar to Matryoshka dolls!

I made them from fluoro felt sheets (the colours don't show up too well, the green really is obscenely bright!) and some small plastic flower decorations sent to me by Dot with a purchase.

The pattern for them can be found at Maize Hutton's site.

Here is a close up of the smallest one, because I love miniature things!


And here are the Squeebles, innocently surveying the chaos that brought about their creation :)