The year of the shelves has begun

At the start of the year I unofficially christened 2024 as the year of the shelves. I think MOH thought I wasn’t serious, but actually he knows me well enough to know better, and so it’s good to report that the year of the shelves is officially underway.

One of the things that’s obvious about moving to a new build is that you’re the first person to live there. That means there’s a lot of things you usually take for granted that just aren’t there. I think I’ve spoken before about light and curtain fittings and toilet roll holders, but today it’s shelves.

These aren’t the first shelves for MOH since we moved as we ordered some self-assembly freestanding shelves for the utility room and pantry at the end of year, and which tested the patience of a very patient MOH. I’ll share these here soon, as they look great and have made both of these areas incredibly usable.

MOH’s also recovered sufficiently, so it was time to reintroduce the need for more shelves. We have three spaces identified, plus the shelf above his workbench in the garage, but first up was the bathroom cupboard. It’s a big cupboard and will be great for storing towels but to make the best use of it, yeap - shelves. We’ve already added a open shelf unit for cleaning stuff, toilet rolls and such and a washing bin (both from Ikea) but even so, we weren’t making the best use of the space.

I wanted some simple slatted shelves, which MOH said he could make. When we bought the wood for the hooks for tools in the garage we bought extra knowing that there were more shelves on the horizon, which given the price of wood was a smart move. It also gave MOH enough to get started, but getting started meant nailing down the details, which is where my handy drawing came in.

While it may seem overkill, it was a great way of explaining what I had in my mind’s eye, and helped MOH envisage the end result. It also meant I didn’t have to answer 101 questions like did you want it like this, or that as he went along. And it meant that I was in for a fab surprise when I got back from my last gelli plate printing class to this work in progress.

I perhaps need to get out more, but it was just what I wanted. Sadly though he was out of wood so we needed a trip to get some more, and I found myself pondering life choices after spending way too much time in the screw zone, where you can pick up ‘pick and mix’ screws to fill a pre-determined sized and priced bag.

But it wasn’t long before the bathroom cupboard started to look like this.

And then this.

Originally my plan was to lightly paint these white, hence the white blocks (which I made MOH buy specially!) - but seeing the shelves in situ I changed my mind. I like the natural look of the wood and so we’re keeping them like that for now at least - there’s an option to paint them at a later date, but right now that’s a long way off.

Don’t they look great?

It looks even better with the towels on, and as well as it being another job jobbed, it’s another space that now has functional, practical and good looking storage, and means our towels are now stored together. It also highlights that we have a penchant for cream and blue towels!

After a suitable shelf-break, next up for MOH is some shelves to maximise the space in our pantry! He really can’t wait…

My garden in January

It’s been interesting to see what’s happened in our new garden this past month, as I said in December’s update I have more pictures than perhaps I’d normally have at this time of year. That’s because I’m keen to learn, record and share what the garden has in store for us. Though, it’s still January and it’s been pretty chilly, and wet and I only managed to get out into the gardening once, and that was on the penultimate day of the month!

But early in the month it was good to spot this colour from the hebe, the purple leaves as well as the vivid purple flowers - what a treat in what can be a pretty dreary month, and a month that’s not my favourite.

That said, the euphorbias we brought with us from our London garden seem happy enough. They are still contained in the pot they moved in, and I’m not sure yet where - or when - I’ll unleash them. They multiply a lot, and are already spreading in the pot, so I’ll need to remember that.

In December I finally got around to potting up some daffodils, and so it’s great to see them pushing their way through the soil. The ones I didn’t get around to planting also sprouted and have gone a little bit awry without the soil. They too have now been potted up, though I’ve needed to be gentle so they don’t break - I’m hopeful they will continue to grow, as they’ve been pretty resilient so far.

There’s plenty of plants in the border near the garage, and the elephant ears above are doing really well. When the weather, and ground, is a bit warmer I need to plant the elephant ears we brought with us alongside one of them which is doing less well.

One thing that’s quite different from our previous garden is the amount of bird visitors, we have far fewer here. In London we had robins, blue tits, great tits and plenty of pigeons, as well as a blackbird or two. Here, when we first moved in there were a couple of wagtails, and we’ve seen a robin occasionally. We’ve also seen a blackbird a couple of times, hanging around the crab apple tree no doubt looking for food.

The two days after the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch we had a crow visit around the same time of day, but nothing any more regular. In an attempt to look attractive to smaller birds, and encourage that robin we’ve bought a hanging bird feeder and filled that with fat balls. We need to get something that the blackbird will appreciate more though, and work out what that is, where to put it and how to make sure it’s only attractive to the intended species.

But we’ll work that out, though grateful for any advice you have.

The tulips from dad are also poking through the soil, and they’re also in pots so that I can move them into view from the house when they’re flowering. The ones we brought with us are also coming up and it’ll be great to see them again.

It’s good to see how the plants are growing, and I love the pale greeny pink dots that promise flowers to come.

And look how much those daffodils have grown in a month…

The mahonia has changed too, the bright yellow flowers are less prominent but in their place berries with a blueish tinge are starting to form, so it continues to be a plant to watch.

The fresh growth on the red robin tops are living up to their name, and look great as we look out the window. These were a plant on my wish list, so I’m really pleased it’s here already.

January is also the time of year when hellebores start to make their presence known - the one we brought with us, a deep, deep red which came from my FIL’s garden is showing signs of new growth which is a relief as it had looked pretty unwell beforehand. I also spotted that we have one planted, though I’m not sure why the leaves are tinged with grey/black, possibly its been affected by frost, I’m not sure. I don’t know what colour this one will be, but my guess is a greeny cream, though I could be completely wrong - I’ll let you know.

And finally, we have a new tree. It’s small, and has plenty of growing to do. Our council here offer up to two free ‘whips’ for residents, and while we already have five young trees in our new garden we took advantage of this offer with a single silver birch. I’ve put this into a pot to give it the best chance, as where I want to plant this needs a bit of prep work which we haven’t been able to do just yet, but soon hopefully.

Getting started with Gelli Plate printing

If like me you’d not heard of this before, it’s a fun way of printing using a brayer roller and a flexible (gelli) plate to create prints with layers of colour and texture. You can buy gelli plates online, and while they’re not cheap (an A4 size plate is currently about £30) it should last many years. And if you’re wondering why gelli, then it refers to the gelatine used to create the printing plates.

I’ve only recently discovered this fun craft after being intrigued by a local Adult Learning class, which I’ve since signed up for. My course has four two hour sessions and cost me £18 - I wasn’t sure what to expect, but reasoned that I had nothing to lose. Attending one two hour session for that price is good value, four sessions is exceptional. As it turned out, it’s good fun and I’m definitely heading back next week to find out - and create - more.

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a ‘printing’ workshop and this one looks to have more immediate results than lino printing, which I’ve tried before and have done a couple of times since learning.

Equipment for Gelli Printing

Apart from the gelli plate and brayer - I don’t have my own yet, and these are provided in the class I’m taking - the other things you’ll need to get started are paper (and lots of it), acrylic paints and some wet wipes. You might also want to wear an apron as removing acrylic paints from clothes can be tricky, not something I’ve tried yet, and hopefully I won’t need to either!

I had five basic colours - white, black, yellow, pink and blue - and this was enough to get started, though after a few prints I knew that I was keen to add more variety to my paint range. After the class I stopped off at The Works and picked up a set of 20 colourful paints to add to my newly growing paint stash. I’ll be looking out for the perfect tin to store them in soon too no doubt! I also picked up another pad of paper - the £2 bumper pad for kids’ drawing sort, as I think that will also be handy.

My first print

Like everyone else in the class I was keen to get on and do some printing. The advice was to start with our lightest colour, so for me that was yellow as white paint on white paper was unlikely to be that exciting! I wish I’d got a picture of the gelli plate, but it is weird - quite tactile, definitely flexible and well, squidgy in a solid sort of way.

After dabbing on a couple of pea sized blobs of paint it was time to use the brayer (or roller) to spread this across the surface. Here a light touch is everything, and you have to work quickly - especially in a warm room. Then your paper goes on top of the paint, and using your hands you smooth the paper over the gelli plate. This transfers the paint to the paper, and voila once the paper is lifted you have your print.

This is mine:

After an hour or so of chat, this was quite exciting - though I take your point, that it’s not really that exciting. But the point of this was to practice how much paint to use, and for that it was effective as my next print was barely there yellow, which I quickly printed over with pink.

As you can see there’s some texture and some missing parts, but that’s ok and is part of the beauty of this kind of printing. It isn’t perfect, and you’re never really sure how it’ll turn out. If that’s an issue for you, then gelli plate printing might not be for you!

Using two colours

This is where I felt restricted by my paint colours, and why I added to my repertoire so quickly. There’s many combinations you can do with the basic colours, but with more colours the combinations is almost endless, though the challenge will be to work out the balance on what looks good, and what’s too much, and to avoid over rolling and ending up with ‘sludge’ no matter what colours you start with.

The gelli plate is still the same size, so with two (or more) colours you need to reduce the size of the paint blobs you add to the plate so it’s not awash with paint. I tried with yellow and pink, then some blue and finally some black - with mixed results.

Because of how the gelli printing works you don’t need to clean your gelli plate in between prints, but it’s definitely worthwhile rollering off the excess paints in between applications. That’s not onerous at all as you can use a single sheet of paper for that, and it can result in some textured and very usable prints too.

Cleaning up afterwards

No special equipment is needed for this either - soap and water to wash the brayer roller, and we used a wet wipe to remove any paint residue that remained on the gelli plate. That’s my sort of cleaning up!

Using my gelli print artwork

Clearly these gelli prints aren’t masterpieces! But even these will have plenty of uses for my other crafts, the obvious ones are card making and collaging. I can see that once I’ve learnt more about adding texture these will be even more useful, and it’s likely that a single gelli printing session will generate prints for a good while, as well as providing the opportunity for a mindful afternoon.

I’m interested to learn more about this craft, and how texture can be added with items such as bubble wrap, packing tape (I have a fair bit of that leftover from our house move!) and especially leaves and more, I’m sure I’ll have one or two items in my craft room to try out too. I’ve another three weeks remaining in the class, so I’ll share more as I learn new skills.

But it’s definitely a promising start introducing me to a brand new craft, and I can’t wait to see where this takes me.