Discovering Instagram...

I do enjoy being extraordinarily late to a party you know.

For years and years I have resisted the lure of the iPhone. Mainly because I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't find Apple technology intuitive to use at all, and also because there was a little bit of the twat in me who wanted to be a bit different.

I caved.

When it came to upgrading I didn't like any of the Android offerings so I decided to take the plunge. I still don't find the technology intuitive but the good thing is that in this day and age you're never more than 2 foot away from someone who can show you how to use an iPhone.

One of the first things downloaded on to my phone?

Instagram.

I've had a Windows Phone for 2 years and I have been one of their biggest supporters for a really long time. Or I've tried to be. But the total lack of access to Apps was just slowly killing me. And especially killing me was the fact that I couldn't get on Instagram - I was stood with my nose pressed up against the glass watching everyone else have fun with their selfies and their filters whilst I stood out in the cold.

The forward facing camera is also a new revelation in my life. My old phone didn't have one, selfies were either an impossibility or an extreme pain in the backside involving a lot of guess work and a steady hand. I always thought I wasn't really a selfie person but the sheer number of photos of my face in the below collage seems to indicate that I was just looking for the right means...

1: My first Instagram photo. A family portrait of me and the gerbils. Thank goodness for the forward facing camera or this photo would have been too difficult to capture.

2: Telecons that go on for 2 hours should be banned

3: But tea and knock-off jelly beans can make everything feel better

4: Me and my bestie, Rowan. I love that face so much, I can't believe she is 9 already

5: Some people are culture vultures, I just have culture gerbils. Here is Tyrion Lannister catching up on some reading. (Yes he did later start to eat the book)

6: My first food photo on Instagram. A killer bacon sandwich with spare sausage to help chase away a Saturday hangover.

7: I've been crocheting - what's it going to be, and more importantly, who is it for? All will be revealed.

8: I got my paintbrushes out and started making over a pretty boring side table. And nearly killed myself with paint fumes in the meantime. Why is DIY never straightforward for me?

9: I am determined to get myself back into running. I am. It has been a bit faltering this year but I took myself  out after work for a little 3km stumble and it wasn't all bad. Did I run the whole thing? No I didn't. Do I care? No, for the first time ever I genuinely don't. This revelation needed to be recorded.

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Do you like photos and vidoes of gerbils? If so do feel free to give me a follow @Shippers1983

Adventures in DIY: The Geometric Canvas edition

I wish I could think of a snappier title for this blog post but I really can't.

Back in October I read a post at Oh Gosh that afforded me a ruddy brilliant nosy around Emma's new living room. We all love a good nosy around don't we?

I immediately noticed a gigantanormous canvas above her fireplace and thought to myself, "I need one of those."

Lo and behold that clever lady totally made it herself and not only did she make it herself, but she also posted a flippin' DIY tutorial on how to do it.

God I love the blogging world sometimes, I really do.

So I promptly went out and bought a tiny canvas because I was too chicken to do it on a massive one for my first attempt, dug out all the yellow and grey match pots I had bought to make over some coasters when I was performing major revamping on my Ikea Lack Table, and some Frog Tape.

I dutifully taped off my pattern.

Big huge important note.

I actually found this hugely difficult. I don't know if my brain just doesn't work in the same way as most people's but I found it really hard to make triangles.

I know.

I would make so many and everything would be good and then there would be a random confusion of tape and I would be left with a gap that most definitely had more than three sides. I don't know. Maybe it's just me but if anyone else attempts this please will you let me know if you have the same difficulties as me? Because I really don't want to feel alone in this one.

I immediately started slapping colour on with really very little regard for what I was actually doing and with no major thoughts about colour placement. I decided I didn't want two triangles of the same shade next to one another and then pretty much closed my eyes and hoped for the best and somehow it all seemed to work out, even though I only had two shade of yellow and two shades of grey.

I very patiently waited for the paint to dry, painted my second coat and patiently waited for it to dry and then went about peeling off my Frog Tape which apparently doesn't bleed.

Lying fuckers.

It bled all over the place as you might be able to see on one of the grey triangles in the above photo.

But apart from that...

Ohmygod I loved it. I loved it. I loved it so much that I was furious that I'd bought the world's smallest canvas to do it on and wished I had one three times the size.

The absolute best part of this project is the speed of it. For people who are insanely impatient like me, this is so incredibly satisfying it's hard to put into words. I started this in the late afternoon and it was all finished by the time I went to bed. Amazing.

In fact it was so quick that when I next had a few hours I sat down and made another one for my nephew's bedroom.

As long I'm keeping myself busy, right?

I had a similar cock up with the Frog Tape on the second canvas but as long as you have a small brush and some white paint (and a steady hand) you can get any wibbly edges tidied up pretty quickly.

How much would these make awesome presents for people? They would think you were a) a genius and b) had spent hours on it when in fact neither are true.

Brilliant.

So go and show Em some appreciation for her canvas which really is a work of art, plus her pictures are much better, mostly because she hasn't taken them with her phone, or at the dead of night because she was too over-excited to wait for better light to take a photo.

I've a lot to learn when it comes to this blog photo stuff...

Adventures in DIY - the Ikea Lack table edition

When we moved into this flat of ours it was unfurnished and whilst that sounds great in theory - a great opportunity to start building up a stock of furniture of your own, rather than being stuck with your landlord's cast-offs - it doesn't quite hit you quite what unfurnished means until you're standing in an empty flat realising that you don't actually own any furniture other than a super awesome comic book table that you made yourself.

Luckily for me Heather came to my rescue - she had an armchair that she no longer needed and then threw in an Ikea Lack table just for funsies.

At the time I didn't think that I really needed a table but clearly I was an idiot and it is our main coffee table. It is where my laptop rests when blogging, where cups of teas are left to go cold, where we sit back and put our feet up - in short, the centre of the room.

After writing this post for BEDM about creating some kind of colour theme and bringing all our furniture together under a beautiful banner of grey and yellow I decided that I really ought to do something about it instead of just talking and pinning about it.

I'd seen a multitude of blog posts and online tutorials about the wonders of Plastikote spray paint. You don't just paint stuff any more it would seem, you spraypainted stuff. That's what all the cool interior kids were doing and it was so easy peasy lemon squeezy that anyone could do it.

I decided I would do things by the book this time around. I am not a patient person and that's why painting and decorating is hard for me. You have to wait for a really long time until everything is done and comes together. I am always a person who likes to skip to the end immediately. But I steeled myself and reminded myself that I was going to do this properly and that meant priming first before anything fun could be done.

I got me some primer and set myself up with my newspaper and happily primed away, feeling terribly smug with myself.

Then I realised that I was going to have to wait for it to dry and I wouldn't even be able to begin spray painting for possibly days until there was a break in the weather or time to do it.

So I cracked on with a mini project - painting some brown coasters using some tester pots in varying shades of yellow and grey that I had picked up from Wickes. No priming this time. I needed to see some quick results.

The next day, with my spray paint clutched in my hand I ventured out on to the grassy area outside our flats which provided me with lots of room to wield my can. I had used the Plastikote website to work out how much spray paint I needed and had gone with their Fast Dry Enamel in Buttercup Yellow.

I felt a little conspicuous as a stood out on the grass, shaking my can which seemed to echo ominously and telling myself over and over again that no-one was looking out of their window and wondering what the hell that girl was doing with the spray paint.

It turns out that I am seriously lacking when it comes to calculating how much spray paint I need. One can of spray paint only managed to cover the top of the table and the outside of some of the legs before running out completely.

Brilliant.

But I felt good about how good it was going to look when it was finished.

We took the table back upstairs to the flat and I went to the B&Q website and ordered two more cans. Only to be phoned up two days later and told that they had run out and would only be sending me one can of spray paint. Ok, fine, I can make my peace with that.

Except that when we opened up my one can the nozzle had broken off in transport. We decided we'd try and fix it and The Person dutifully stepped forward to sort it out. It mainly resulted in spray paint going everywhere, mostly all over our hands.

Half the can was wasted and what I had managed to spray had come out in glibs and globs and left splatter marks all over the table top and I still didn't have enough to finish the legs of the table.

I immediately threw a bit of a shit fit which very nearly culminated in tears and was only saved by the fact that I managed to stroke two random cats whilst waiting for the table to dry.

And back up the stairs we trudged with the table and I hit up Amazon this time to order yet another can.

This can arrived and guess what? The nozzle had broken during transportation.

At this point I was ready to turn blue in the face and blow up like Rumpelstiltskin but The Person assured me that this time he knew how to fix it and would do so with minimal loss of spray paint. His hands again ended up covered in paint but the results were slightly less catastrophic and I set out with one mission in mind - just to get this bloody table finished because there was no way on god's earth I was going to come outside again for the fourth time that week and be the Crazy Lady with the Yellow Table on the Grass again.

The finished result is by no means perfect. Spray painting is not as easy as they make out and it is hard to get a good technique going and not end up with big drippy bits of spray paint. The splatters on the top of the table are still kind of visible but probably only really to me.

And if it hadn't have been for having to order replacement spray paint twice the whole makeover would have taken hardly any time at all - the paint is touch dry within 45 minutes so if you got up first thing in the morning to prime and spray paint you could easily have it done in a day.

The cost of this is a bit of a hazy one due to a number of reasons:

• Can 1 - free because somehow the man at The Range forgot to charge me for it, even though I definitely saw him scan it.
• Can 2 - £3.98 because B&Q refunded me the delivery cost seeing as they could only send me one of the two cans that I wanted
• Can 3 - £5.76 p+p

I'm not entirely sure how these DIY mishaps seem only to happen to me, it doesn't really seem fair but obviously the God of DIY doesn't shine his kindly face down on mine.

And my coasters look pretty damn cool either sitting on my new table or placed on the side tables that we have, slowly but surely starting to bring the whole scheme together.

At the moment I'm not entirely sure where I stand on painting vs spray painting. Unfortunately the speed and easiness of spray painting something has been tainted by the fact that I had to make multiple efforts to buy enough to cover my damn table, but it definitely isn't as easy to get a smooth coverage as everyone makes out.

My main lessons from this experience?

1. If you want to do picture frames or other small items go for the 100ml Fast Dry Enamel, otherwise, you're gonna need a bigger spray can
2. Don't buy your spray paint online - no matter how well it was wrapped both of mine from two different suppliers broke in transit
3. If it does turn up broken, just send the damn thing back rather than trying to fix it yourself
4. If you do fix it yourself be warned that spray paint does not come off your hands easily
5. If you are not lucky enough to have a garden and have to do this out in public like I did, build up nerves of steel to cope with the abject paranoia that everyone is looking at you as if you are a total lunatic
6. You have to spray paint outside. Being outside means bugs get spray painted on to your shit. I don't even know what you're supposed to do about that one
7. I might want to consider calling in a professional for all other furniture makeovers I want to undertake.