After last week's episode of Kirstie's Handmade Home I tuned in again this week to see if the programme was going to live up to my expectations this time. I'm pleased to say that I loved some parts, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want Kirstie to be in charge of designing my bathroom!
The focus of this episode was bathrooms and it seems that Kirstie wanted to make her three (yes, three!) bathrooms as opulent as possible. She went along to visit Anouska Hempel and was given the rare opportunity to take cameras into her bathrooms. The main one was a chaos of blue and white. There were some beautiful items, but it looked so over the top. One or two things, at most a handful would have been fine, but there seemed to be so much clutter!
Kirstie's activities this week included making strained glass, hand printing wallpaper and making candles. I've not seen stained glass being made before, so it was really interesting to see how easy it seemed. I'd always imagined it to be so much more difficult. You could apparently buy the kit for "only £200", but to me that seems quite a bit of a first hit financially.
I've always wanted to have a go at candle making and after watching Kirstie tonight I have asked Mr C to think about a basic candle making kit as a possible birthday present if he's stuck for what to buy me later in the year. Kirstie does seem to be a bit obsessed with candles though. Don't get me wrong, I do like candles, but the simplicity of a plain (cheap) candle is as nice to me as one of the expensive scented one that Kirstie seems to lust after.
Now, wallpaper… I like having some big wallpaper patterns in a room, possibly as a feature wall. I'm not so keen though on a room that's completely plastered in this sort of paper though – especially when it's a downstairs loo, the smallest room in the house! It was interesting seeing the screen-printing process and I might be inclined to try it myself for something smaller – possibly some writing paper, or a wall hanging – but certainly not something as large as wallpaper.
Overall, I felt it was an improvement on last week's programme – especially as Channel 4 didn't introduce the programme as a solution to the credit crunch! Definitely worth sticking with the series though.
I gave it another chance but flipped channels during an ad break and forgot to flip back so from that I guess it didn’t keep my attention. Re: Stained glass, I attended a night glass in Harpenden. I can’t remember what it cost but it wasn’t expensive and I bought the basic tools. It was the most frustrating craft I have ever attempted but I have a beautiful personalised stained glass window so it was worth it.