"Year of the overhaul" hidden behind a sparrow..

I was so excited about this challenge that I finished this 3 days after the announcement was posted Grin

Ok, so 2008 is my 'Year of the overhaul'. It's time to get everything sorted out....

1. Lose weight (*sigh* such a cliche Undecided

, but necessary)
2. Spring clean the house - this means everything useless gets chucked (I am a hopeless hoarder)
3. Decorate the house - mainly the lounge room and nursery at this point
4. Find a new hairstyle - I would like something that actually looks like I have a style Embarrassed

5. Craft my endless projects in transition - all those ideas in my notebook, jotted down sketches, unused new patterns and endless good intentions must be achieved - and bust my stash at the same time
6. Learn new cooking recipes
7. Start and maintain an edible vegetable garden - boy I need to learn how to keep plants alive
8. Buy a new car - OK by 'new' I mean new for us Tongue

. Our old one is staggering on her last legs
9. Save money - I would love a holiday this year and I'm hoping my DH will make an official wife out of me too Grin

10. Start my own website - the time has come my little friends to talk of becoming financially successful, or at least try
11. Open a virtual or physical shop - still deciding between etsy or a stall at the ritzy craft and art markets in Surfers Paradise
12. Sell $1000.00 of my own work....... Undecided

13. Enter a judged art competition

So, how to craft something to help me achieve these goals? I wanted a pinboard/whiteboard to keep all those little pics that inspire me, I wanted to chart my weightloss but not have every visitor looking at my numbers *shudder*, I wanted a calendar to keep track of my appointments. In addition, I wanted a new piece of art for the wall.

CLOSED

OPEN

I had a nice square canvas laying around so i got a 3mm sheet of MDF and cut it to the same size. Made a frame out of pine offcuts and attached it to the front of the board. I added elastic trellis at the top and cut some corkboard to size and attached that to the bottom.

For the canvas, I removed the fabric and lined the whole front with cardboard, then reattached the canvas. I made two whiteboards out of heavy card and clear contact and glued them in the spaces at the back of the canvas, attaching them to the cardboard lining. A piece of cardboard covered in colourful paper was glued to the bottom support and that made two pockets to slide my ideas notebooks in to and doubles as an additional pinboard.

I attached both parts with two large hinges, screwed 3 eyescrews into the top of the pine frame and screwed the frame to the wall with screws and wall plugs. The canvas 'door' stays closed with a magnetic latch recycled from an old door.

The image on the front was painted by me in 3 colours only, similar to a screen print but with acrylic and brushes. Medium tan, maroon and black. I painted the sparrow in the middle colour (maroon) to place him in the middle distance.

All in all I am quite pleased - I would like to redo the painting of the frames but I ran out of paint, couldn't match the colours and just got sick of doing it Tongue

.
I apologise for not having any 'in-progress' pics but they were all on my old computer that died without releasing any of my old files

An here is my newly decorated ideas notebook, I have a very old clipboard that is decorated in fabulous images so I scanned it, added a few new images and words and printed it out on computer paper. It worked really well and that's why it looks like there is bubbles in the contact, the original has them so they scanned through Embarrassed

One of my favourite quotes is at the bottom of the female devil image: "In all the debate about the idea that God may be a she, few have suggested that the devil may be a woman".[/i]

Hope you like it guys, I'm off to decorate some thumbtacks for my board.....