What colour did you paint your garden shed?

"What colour did you paint your garden shed?"

We painted our shed in Cuprinol Garden Shades colour Silver Birch.

"Cuprinol Garden Shades has been specially developed to colour and protect sheds, fences and other garden wood. Its special pigments ensure a rich colour and allow the natural texture of the woodgrain to shine through"

Which really transformed it...



You can read all about my garden shed here, and for all the before and after photos of my garden check out my Facebook Page photo album My Garden - A Transformation

Have a sweet day!

Art.co.uk tin signs

Today on shops i love I bring you Art.co.uk. Art.co.uk is an online boutique full of, you guessed it, art! From posters to prints to framed art to wall art collections. The website is easy to navigate and is split into helpful categories like art styles, products, and collections. From the website: "We work with passion to bring you the world's largest art collection.Whatever your interest, your décor style, your inspiration – we're sure to have that piece you can't live without."

Ice Cream tin sign

Afternoon Teas tin sign

Strawberries & Cream tin sign

I love nostalgic vintage tin signs and have a few I have collected over the years. I especially like using them outside as I think they add quirkiness and interest. When the lovely peeps at Art.co.uk offered to send me three, I jumped at the chance! You see, the night before I had spent ages perusing the internet looking for a lovely tin sign to go above my potting bench and after much searching found what I was looking for at art.co.uk and bought a Cibron & Sons seed one which I have hung above my potting bench. So the following morning when I received the mail I was so excited as I had fallen in love with so many of their tin signs.

They have such a wonderful large variety of them it took me ages to decide, but in the end I opted for ones from the cuisine section. I chose the retro pink and blue American Soft Serve Ice Cream tin sign, the vintage looking Afternoon Teas tin sign and the nostalgic Strawberries and Cream tin sign. They arrived promptly and were mounted on card so they arrived in pristine condition. After playing around with where they would go I hung the two smaller ones either side of my bench from the fence using cup hooks and gardener's twine. I re-arranged my old tin signs and hung the Afternoon Tea one under my bunting above my dining area.



Thank you Art.co.uk, you have made my secret garden all the more special to me...

More lovely tin signs from Art.co.uk

*I was not paid for this review - I was sent three tin signs of my choosing. Torie Jayne does not accept payment for any of her posts.

Have a sweet day!

My secret garden dining area

I updated my dining area in my "secret garden" by stringing up some of
my pretty wooden bunting, hanging more vintage tin signs, and adding a tablecloth.



For my casual dining area I spruced up our old bistro chairs with a lick of paint and recently replaced my old bistro table with an identical new one.

I looked everywhere for a nice round tablecloth for my bistro table but could only find rectangle ones I liked, so I decided to make my own...




I simply cut a circle of oilcloth fabric and hand stitched a pink crochet hem to the edge.





Have a sweet day!

My secret garden

My secret garden design

At the back of my garden I had a patio area next to my spruced up garden shed, but it was pretty dull and uninviting, so I re-designed it to be reminiscent of an outdoor living room. I started off by gathering up lots of inspiration for my outdoor living room. I wanted it to be a stylish, comfortable place for casual dining and relaxing...



We had already made the patio area bigger as the grass was worn away outside the shed and with constant use it was always going to be that way. But I didn't like the look of the patio even after we had cleaned the stones. To give it a more country feel we covered the patio area in pea shingle.





What lies behind the twinkly arch...

...but a secret garden.

My perfect place to serve sweet treats!




For comfy seating I bought a cheap wooden bench and gave it a make over.

At the entrance I added a £6.99 garden arch that I wrapped 100 solar-powered LED lights round so it twinkles at night and have started growing rambling roses on it. Now if only I had some magic fairy dust that got my roses to smother my arch in pretty pink flowers! Tomorrow I will be sharing with you all the details...

Have a sweet day!

My Garden Design

How my garden looks now

How my garden looked after we had dismantled the old shed and put up new green fences on the right hand side, and fixed and painted the back fence.

How my garden looked when we bought it

Since Spring I have been adding a few finishing touches to my garden that I have been sharing with you here on Torie Jayne, like my potting bench, herb etagere and my pink wheelbarrow planter. I have also been updating my facebook page photo albums with all our house - before, during and after pics. Due to this a couple of friends who had been browsing through my garden photos asked me how I went about designing our garden. I used Adobe Illustrator first to draw up what the garden looked like, and then to make a mood board of ideas, finishing by drawing up how I wanted it to look. Today I thought I would share with you those designs.

After designing how I wanted the garden to look came the hard work, which you can read about here - "My garden transformation". Over the years I have lost a few plants to frost and others I have moved when they got too big for where I had first planted them. I have also been updating my outdoor lounge at the back of the garden with some hand made bunting and more vintage tin signs. More of which is coming later this week...




To see all my large garden photos from before, during, to now, check out "My Garden - A Transformation" album on my Facebook page. Here you will also find links to all the posts I have done about my garden so everything is easy to find...

Have a sweet day!

Garden tools, a makeover

I have had my garden trug and tools for a few years but the tools were starting to look worn and the paint on the trug had started to chip away. So with my new fondness for spray paint I decided to give them a makeover. I used Malachite Light by Montana Gold.

I chipped off all the loose paint

Then I covered the bare areas with a coat of outdoor metal undercoat paint

After a couple of coats of spray paint, it looked as good as new

Looking worn and tired

I placed the fork and trowel ends in sandwich bags, and carefully placed masking tape over the joins

I spray painted the handles and left them to dry

Adorable in aqua!

Here they are back in my garden shed makeover post from 2009!

Have a sweet day!

My potting bench details

Yesterday I showed you my new potting bench, today I am sharing with you the details...

Clibron & Son tin sign

Floral Cath Kidston gardening gloves

Hunter blue wellies, found for £44 in the sale at All Sole

My handmade herb label tutorial

Garden roses wooden tray, Pink and blue enamel buckets from The New Covent Garden Flower Market

Tomorrow I will show you what my old trug and hand tools looked like before they had their makeover!

Have a sweet day!

My potting bench

Last week I shared with you some of my garden details and last month I showed you how I made my herb etagere that sits just outside my patio doors. Today I wanted to share with you my new potting bench that sits further along my patio...

I bought it in the sale from Greenfingers.com and gave it several coats of Cuprinol Garden Shades in pale jasmine paint. I then added some cup hooks to the side for extra storage space. I now have the perfect place to do all my potting and re-potting of plants and it brightens up my once dull green fence.

Potting bench from Greenfingers.com £29.99, unpainted

Have a sweet day!

My Garden

All photos by Torie Jayne

This past weekend I cleaned and scrubbed my wellies, painted and put together my potting bench and spray painted my trug and garden tools! So today I wanted to show you how it is looking so far...

Have a sweet day!

Candy Pink spray paint

Yesterday I showed you my wheelbarrow that I spray painted candy pink. I didn't stop there! I also gave my bicycle planter a healthy dose of pretty...





My bargain plastic bird bath...

Bird bath £5.19 in the sale at Greenfingers!

I used Rust-Oleams painters touch Candy Pink gloss spray paint.

Have a sweet day!