The Tip Shop Project #2 - vote for your chance to win $500!

(To read the original #1 post and actually understand what the heck this is about, click here.)

The project is done and over and it looks fantastic!!! I think the most impressive thing to show you, first of all, is the classic before-and-after shots. So...

This is what the cupboard looked like when we first bought it:

So yeah, as you can see, it was just an average piece of furniture. Some kind of television cabinet or something else entirely unremarkable.

 And then we made it awesome!:

I think my favourite thing about our work is the irony. The outside of the cabinet is white and clean and covered in illustrations from vintage kids' books that we sourced from the tip shop and then chopped into bits. BUT THEN - you open the doors and it's like SHAZAM, and you get hit in the face with all the lush reds and golds and the velvet and shine. Now it's a drinks cabinet, with a pull-out tray for mixing, shelves for glasses and draws for bottles. Subtle lighting reflects off the red paint to coax you inside as well... the whole thing is really quite shifty. I like to think of it as an adults' tardis. Some kind of naughty optical illusion. You could have this baby sitting in your bedroom and even a nun wouldn't suspect a thing - three little pigs on the outside, Bombay Sapphire and Captain Morgan and Bicardi on the inside. 

Doing it up was truly a team effort. Actually, it was a lovely family project made by a mumma and a pappa and girl. First we sanded and washed the whole thing, then we painted the outside white and the inside red, then came the chopping: piles and piles of books to cover a total of six panels showing on the sides of the cabinet. Then we put in new shelving inside and covered the inside walls with velvet-and-pins panels. Next was the goldleaf cover on the inside and a few coats of varnish on the outside. My mum blogged about the process too.
 

 

So now the important thing is to vote for your favourite piece in the competition! When you place your vote you have the chance to win $500 cash! And the winner of the competition recieves $500 cash too, so PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE vote for our piece!! We decided to go to Stradbroke Island for a few nights if we win - wanna join us? Kidding. Although I guess you could if you wanted to.

 

 

 

 

On a serious note, there are eight other wonderful entries. I don't mind if you don't vote for us - as long as you vote at all! Nancy Brown is an artist we're friends with who does wonderful workshops with Multicap centres for the disabled and she gave an old table a new life with carrot-bodied print-made dragonflies! That sentence made no sense, better read her blog.

The winner will also have their work shown at the state library, so hopefully I'll show you a nice snap of the family in front of the winning peice. Lol. Alternatively, drinks at my place?

The Brisbane Tip Shop Project #1

I spent almost four hours today at ‘the tip shop’. The what shop? The tip shop. Tip, as in, rubbish tip. And shop, as in, the place where you buy things. The common misconception is obviously that I would be buying rubbish, but as I found out today, the tip shop is more like a roughian gold mine.

So first I need to explain how I came to be at this remarkable place. My wonderful artist mother found out about a competition being run by the Endeavour Foundation people who run the tip shop and the Brisbane City Council. You had to apply (then be accepted) and what happens is that you are allowed to pick any one piece of furniture for sale at the tip shop, then you have about 3 or so weeks and a $250 stipend to totally re-vamp it, and then you present it and the winner of a publicly-voted ‘people’s choice award’ wins the competition and pockets a tasty $500!

I KNOW! Its just the greatest most wonderful competition I’ve ever heard of, and I agree with you that it’s almost too good to be true, but it’s real. The tip shop needs some positive publicity to bring recycling issues to light, and it’s a brilliant way for the council to remind people that awesome things can be done with the old tables and couches and cabinets that we grow bored with.

I didn’t even know this place existed, and that’s kind of embarrassing because I’m such an avid vintage and op-shop lover. Apparently it only opened a year or so ago, so maybe my ‘but I was away!’ excuse can get me off the hook here. There is a wonderful tip shop on the Sunshine Coast near where my brother lives, but it’s only open on the weekend and it’s always PACKED with people. I think this new one (read: you know, new for me) in Brisbane at Acacia Ridge is going to get very popular very quickly.

Anyways, my mum entered us as a team! So we turned up bright and early at midday, and behind a high steel fence, within a big industrial shed, was a treasure trove of oddities and retro furniture and bikes and books and walking frames and wheelchairs and kitchen sinks and mirrors and fish.

We latched our eyes onto a big solid wood cabinet and immediately began brainstorming all the radical things we could do to it to make it awesome. Trouble was, that it had a big ‘SOLD’ sticker on it! But nevermind that - the ideas we came up with involved drinks and children’s books’ illustrations and maybe even LED lights… so we need a cabinet! We’re heading back on Monday for anther look when new stock arrives (which is every Monday, by the way) and I’m sure we’ll find a big wooden thing that fits the bill. I can’t give away too much right now, but I am totally stoked we get to keep the finished piece at the end.

I think this project might just be one of the most superawesomest things I’ve ever taken part in creating.

The things that made today even better than it possibly could have been, were that 1) I bought THE GREATEST ASH TRAY YOU’VE EVER SEEN:

It has a golden bull/cow on it! I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

And 2) I bought about approximately one squillion books. Not including the catchily titled ‘Deer Hunting with Jesus’:

  

And let's be honest, if vintage furniture like this doesn't get you excited (and you know what I mean by 'excited') then what will? I mean, where else? are you going to find this shade of 70's Olive in velvet on a footstool?

All in all, I think if you’re the kind of person that enjoys op-shopping a Lifeline and Vinnies and Endeavour shops, then you MUST (read: ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO NO OPTIONS) visit the tip shop. Let it surprise you by not being at all rubbish. I guess I’ll keep you updated with how our project progresses, and probably post more pictures of the awesome things I buy from the shop every time I go back there. I’m sure that will be nice. 
  

to do #1 done.

Oh man... I just spent more than 6 hours collage-ing. 

 

 

Now onto #2 on the list??? Damn. It's well past bedtime.

I think I'll have at least a nap. Then maybe go out early for some McDonalds hash browns...

Also, I've updated the 'links' tab. Just in case you're interested. Some good stuff there.