Giving old drawer bottoms new life with potato stamps

I was despairing at the sorry state of the my desk drawers (read: procrastinating from work) this afternoon. I got the desk from an ex-housemate and the bottom panel had torn paper coating and was pretty filthy. The front panel (with the handle) also has a bad habit of half coming off whenever you open the drawer. So I took it off completely and set out to find some pretty paper to line it.

I didn't have any suitable paper in my stash, but I did find some plain brown paper. Thinking back to primary school days, I grabbed a potato, cut it in half and drew a pig on it. I then crudely cut the edges off from around it.

I taped the paper to the panel, grabbed some paint and stamped to my heart's content.


I had a little trouble sliding the bottom panel back in, as the paper made it a little bigger. But I eventually got it in, the bonus being that the tighter fit means the front bit no longer falls off!

I recommend you grab yourself a potato and give something new life... hopefully you have better drawing, cutting and stamping skills than me :D

Old Canberran postcard

I won't be discussing every postcard I send out, but I particularly like this one. I've been stashing postcards for a long time now, and am loving being able to send them out to others. This one is old - I think I may have gotten it from my parents.

You can tell its age by several things. First of all, the telephone number on the back is (062) 88-3508 now there have been several phone changes since then. The 6-digit phone number became a 7-digit one, and then an 8-digit one. (I remember this last transition as a child). So that phone number would probably be (02) 6288-3508 nowadays. Also, the style of the postcard. Nowadays, a lot of available aussie postcards seem to be Steve Parish or Murray views ones, and there are lots of fancy fonts, fading effects, etc. No-one proudly proclaims to have taken a "colour photograph" anymore or bother to name small ferries in photos.

So in brief, I love the ridged edge, the colours, the RED BOLD ITALIC title, and the little message in the stamp-box: "I LIKE TO BE SEEN - please don't send me in an envelope".

Four Australian postcrossing postcards sent

I've just sent my first set of postcrossing postcards... I especially like the two top ones. There are a whole series of postcards with stamps on them ("First Day of Issue") which cost AU$1.50 each including worldwide delivery... a pretty good deal considering stamps cost AU$1.35 anyway!

The top left card is from 1920, and the other black & white Surf Life Saving card is undated. The two bottom cards are fairly typical shop-bought ones. The kookaburras on the left can be seen (or rather heard) in the outskirts of cities. I love their call. The landmarks on the right are nice, but don't feature the A.C.T.