The Skull Thing and The Storage Thing (a continuing saga!) :)

I'm embracing my dark side and enjoying an ongoing love affair with skulls at the moment so  I started a little painting (gouache and pencil) to bring a little gothesque style to the bedroom glamour! The plan is to mount the finished picture  (and it's nearly done!) onto a canvas prepared with vintage book pages, then create a unique frame using the ancient, well oldish anyhow, art of Quilling! It should look spectacularly olde worlde, lol :) 

So here we have some 'progression' pictures. I found myself a GREAT reference pic for the skull online, and the rose too and got stuck in!

Nearing its completion as you can see and then I'll be fiddling about with rolled up bits of paper till the cows come home and calling it 'Quilling'! 

And for those of you who feel it's all going a tad too dark, don't worry, I have no plans to trendy up and start incorporating stuffed animals into the scheme as I have heard is all the rage (erk?) and I believe that I have made this handsome chappy above look rather the romantic :) 

Oh yeah, and I gave some old seagrass baskets a quick going over with some white emulsion paint to get my hair straighteners and hair drier tidied up and its somewhere to hide my hot water bottle ;). They didn't cost anything as I already had them from my 'Beige Stage' bedroom, which if you saw the before pics was probably as gruesome as amateur home taxidermy could possibly be but yet only involved paint! The tall basket drawers now contain all of my extensive costume jewellery collection, in order, my ear rings, my bracelets, my necklaces...............and my necklaces. They freshened up just great. Stay tuned for more later :)

take care 

S

Payday Pizza! Chorizo, Red Pepper, Red Onion with Goats Cheese Pizza

So I'm feeling guilty about not posting enough but my life is pretty hectic just getting it together for me and Mum and my solution is to post more of my home cooking! It's something I really enjoy. Messing around in the kitchen concocting grub for Mum and myself is relaxing and we love the tasty results. Last night, Friday, I put together one of my favourite pizzas for a late dinner. It's a delicious Chorizo, Red Pepper and Red Onion Pizza with Goats Cheese. So yummy with a little rocket salad and a nice glass of Merlot! :)
Friday night is a Treat night! I like to make my own sauce and base, which I prefer to be soft and thick, definitely NOT a thin and crispy girl. This will serve 4 people so here is how I do it....

I used self raising flour (), 1 egg, 1 sachet easy yeast, 3 tbsp olive oil, 3 tbsp water

Combine mix until a soft dough forms

Don't laugh but my Mum doesn't own a rolling pin sooooooooo...............................lol :)  (I washed it first!)

Knead for 5 minutes then leave your dough to rest for 20 minutes to half an hour.

Roll out your dough using your preferred rolling device.

Once the dough is around 10 mm in thickness transfer onto a flat baking sheet

For the tomato sauce I used store cupboard dried goods so tomato puree and dried basil simply because its handy, quick and I always have them in stock!

3 tbsp tomato puree, 2 chopped garlic cloves, 2 tbsp dried basil, 3 tbsp of olive oil.

Combine ingredients until oil is thoroughly mixed with tomato paste.

Thinly spread the tomato sauce over your pizza base using the back of a spoon.

Your first topping should always be your mozzarella cheese. I like to use buffalo mozzarella.

Now slice a small red onion and about half a red pepper.
If you lightly coat the red onion and the pepper in a little
 olive oil they will caramelise in the oven.
Chop the chorizo sausage into 10 mm rounds.  

Now add all your toppings onto the prepared pizza base.
 Place into a preheated oven at 200 degrees for around 20 minutes until the cheese starts to colour slightly.

Et Voila!


You can see the base is soft and thick and I can vouch that it was delicious! The spicy chorizo with the tangy goats cheese, sweet red pepper and red onion is one of my favourite flavour combinations for a soft base pizza! Gorgeous!

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, Who went Skull Crazy? Moi!!!

Well I got a little bit finished, more studs and black paint, with a few vintage mirrors thrown in. I took an inexpensive round mirror and glued it onto a MDF arch shaped mount. I painted it in a black satin finish paint and created a pretty heart shape and border with antique effect silver, copper and gold coloured studs. It worked out pretty well :)

 The whole point being that I wanted a vintage mirror collection for my bedroom! So nails, drill and hammer at the ready I put together a montage of reflections and light framed in metalics. Positioning the mirrors in a corner meant that the light bounces back and forth around the room as the light changes. I also silvered a pair of ornate wall sconces to break it up a little and now all I have to find is a couple of pretty glass perfume bottles to twinkle on them. But on the whole I think it looks pretty glamorous so far :)

I did actually buy something though, my Deer Skull (antelope maybe?) in the picture below is a focal point above the bed and the DIY headboard I have planned. Its gorgeous and solid steel! Nuts!

Ok, that's it for a day or two, I'm about to launch into a Quilling experiment more of which later so have a great day folks. Oh and Nyah the cat and my Mum are just fine although one of them still insists on using the wallpaper in the hall as a scratch post but hasn't killed anything lately. Guess which one? lol.

Bye for now :)

S

Antoine the Antelope/Deer (mon amour francais)

p.s. I just looked at the live blog and realised these pics are rather fuzzy!!! Oh No!!! I promise to get some decent shots and switch 'em over. This is like a 'How to Botch Up Your Blog' post! Apologies to one and all......maybe if you squint?
S :(

p.p.s. Better pics! Not messed about with on the dreadful Instagram. Its starting to come together nicely, can't wait to get the headboard for the bed sorted!