Fall Decor - Dollar Store Style

Owls have become my go to fun buddy lately. After making this fall craft, We now have three owls in our living room and I'm up to two owl necklaces!

Anyways, onto the craft. These two little guys ended up costing me a whopping $2. I just had to buy the two ceramic owls at Dollar Tree and had the rest of the supplies on hand (paint and glaze).

I simply painted the ceramic owls with one coat of a light grey paint, let it dry, and then rubbed some antiquing glaze all over the owls.

I probably should coat them with some sort of sealer because the acrylic paint can easily be scratched off, but since they are just sitting on our end tables, I'm not in too big of a rush. For now I'm just enjoying the little dudes (or dudettes).

Then to go along with the owls is the glittered pumpkin you see above.  This also only cost $2. One dollar each for the pumpkin and a package of glitter.

I 'painted' sections of the pumpkin with Mod Podge and then dumped glitter over it and repeated until the whole pumpkin was covered in glitter.  To keep the glitter from getting all over the place when the pumpkin is moved I sprayed it with a few coats of clear coat sealer.

So there you have it! A few fun fall decorations on the cheap! :)

Coaster Time

I've finally made coasters after having our nice, new end tables for about 6 months and our revamped coffee table for about a year.

I naturally found this idea on Pinterest. And it's pretty simple, and fairly inexpensive. 

Actually, the most difficult thing for me, was choosing the design I wanted our coasters to be from all of these options

Jesse said he liked the green the best and it was the first paper I picked out, so that's what I went with. Started out by cutting squares to fit the tiles (bathroom tiles on clearance at Lowe's for 35 cents).

Next up was using a few layers of Mod Podge to get the paper good and stuck on the tile.

I was in quite a rush with my last steps and bypassed picture taking. I cut out felt squares and hot glued to the bottom so the tiles had a soft padding when skooching across the tabletops. Then, I sprayed them with a clear coat sealer.

Final step: Enjoy the awesome-ness.

Check out our new pet, Ollie the Owl. He's bringin' in the wisdom to the living room.

Project of the Week

Deciding to limit myself on TV and browsing the internet has so far gone over very well. In my new found spare time I completed a project I've been thinking about doing for about a year now.

I picked up this little doozy from a dumpster last August (living in a college town, you can find some pretty decent stuff that college kids throw out when moving).

It's not the fanciest piece of work, but it's been a solid night stand for about a year now....and it was free!! I've been wanting to paint it up for awhile now. My thoughts were to paint it a nice cream color and try out the whole glazing technique I've seen all over the place. 

So I went out, bought my supplies and got everything ready to go! We don't have a sander, so I decided to try liquid deglosser. I thought this would be a good project to try it with before re-finishing anything else which has more nooks and cranies.

I didn't feel like the instructions on the bottle really told me what to do so I went to my trusty computer to find some tips. Everyone seemed to really love the stuff and were raving about how easy it was to use. I just didn't feel the same way about it. It seemed like a ton of work that I was putting the deglosser on and seemed like I was having to scrub to get the results (that I thought I was suppose to get). So, if any of you experts out there have advice, let me know! :)

What did I do? I went off and bought a orbital sander. There are plenty of other projects that I want to tackle, similar to this one, which would probably need a sander of this who deglossing thing wasn't going to work. I love the sander! All seems pretty simple to me (until I get to a piece of furniture that has grooves and I have to deal with hand sanding).

Next up was painting and glazing. I did two coats of paint and tested out the glazing on the little drawer. With this one I just painted the glaze on with a foam brush and wiped it round with a dry rag. I wasn't really diggin' it. To me, it just looked like a dirtied up drawer.

The second (middle drawer in the above picture), I followed steps that I found, brushing the glaze on and then wiping it off with a wet rag. This was suppose to leave glaze in the grooves...well whaddya know, there aren't really any grooves so, I was just wiping it all off. I tried to rub some glaze around the corners and on the handle, but there didn't seem to be much difference between that and the drawer with no glaze (on the left).

At the end of the night, I was frustrated and just started brushing the glaze on, pushing it around on the surface, and playing. Then I started liking what was happening. I asked Jesse what he liked best, and this is what we decided to go with.

Last night I went to town and finished the rest of the nightstand. Today we finally have dry finished product! :)

 

It looks absolutely nothing like what I had in mind (creamed colored antique type-looking thing), but we both really like how it turned out. It looks more grey than anything, but hey, we like grey! :)

Chalkboard Fridge

That's right....my very first project I took on after moving into our very first house was to paint the refrigerator with chalkboard paint!

It went from this:

To this in just a couple of days (apparently I like to stretch out the majority of my projects over a matter of days).

Now, a chalkboard fridge isn't for everybody. Just ask my sister or mom if they want me to make over their refrigerator and I'm betting you they would say, "No way, Jose."  But it was just the perfect first project for our new home and this odd gal. It didn't take an overwhelming amount of effort and I know that we won't be living with it forever.  The later being the reason I was able to get Jesse on board (and even help out!).  We are planning a kitchen remodel down the road (a very long ways down the road).  He probably knew this was a good way to let me do a little bit and spend only a little amount of money and be satisfied with our kitchen for a smidgin' longer.  And to put me off on attempting to paint the cupboards awhile longer too (though I'm using this time to convince him it is a good idea that works).

Anyways, back to my super, awesome project! I love it! Can I say that again? I love it! It is the perfect place to keep track of our menu.  I also quite enjoy making to do lists and this is a perfect place to write one out. Make it nice and big and in a spot where I always have to look at it. Then maybe things will also get crossed off the list (possibly my favorite part of list making <-- list making is an art).

So, the steps were pretty simple.
1) Take apart the fridge if you desire -- quite possibly the most difficult part of this entire project. It seemed to take us forever to figure out how to get those darn handles off! Jesse did not want to have a black fridge with white handles, so we decided to spray paint them black.  We also attempted to take off the face plate of the ice/water dispenser. Somebody (me) got a little too rammy and cracked a corner, but that someone (me) also successfully removed the plate later the next day, who then tried to continue to take apart the darn thing and cracked yet another piece of plastic by tightening a screw rather than loosening....Anyways with all that work and destruction we decided to just leave the darn thing white and put it back together.

2) Next up, I sanded the beast down. I used some 3M sanding blocks and went to town -- dust everywhere so clean up later!

3) Wipe down all the dust off the fridge so you can paint!

4) While I was doing steps 2 & 3 Jesse was being a sport and coating the white handles (and some grass) with black appliance spray paint.

5) Apply the first, second, and third coats of chalkboard paint with a roller according to the paint instructions.

6) I then covered the entire thing with chalk and wiped it off before starting to make my menus, lists, and awesome doodles on our fridge.

7) Bask in the awesomeness that is chalkboard paint and all the crazy people that first tried out painting their  own refrigerators.

My lovely one more time

Renewed CoffeeTable

Shall we start off with the before?

The last week of July is the big moving week in Ames.  With it being a college town, the majority of leases are set up to go from August 1 to July 31 since classes start in mid-August. So it's a great time to troll the dumpster for perfectly good furniture. This coffee table was sitting by the dumpster beside my work. One of the legs was off, but all the parts were there.
I convinced Jesse to check it out with me and he agreed he would help me put the legs back on if I really wanted to give it a makeover.

First off, it was time to scrape off some gunk and stickers the previous owners had added to the table with a razor blade.

I was lucky enough that my father-in-law lent me this handy little sander device.

It's much quieter and it seemed like it was faster than the other sander I borrowed from my parents. After an hour and a half of using the "Sonic Crafter" and 40 minutes of hand sanding, it was starting to get dark and I was pooped from sanding. This is where I ended on Day 1:

Day 2:
More sanding...and I really thought I would be finished with the sanding after the second day (not the case). I started on the legs and 'drawer' with a sanding block. Then Jesse convinced me to give the sander-machine a try on them. It worked well on a good chunk of the legs. It's getting dark earlier these days, so I don't have as much time outside. End of day two, I'm hoping that it really is only one more chunk of time to get it all sanded down!

Day three:

The whole thing started coming together. I finished sanding down those little bits that weren't quite done that you can see in the above photos. Over the entire coarse of this project my mantra became: "Imperfections will give it character and I like character." Pretty much this was just my way letting myself feel okay with the bits that I couldn't actually get sanded down and give up without trying harder than I felt up to. But I also did believe it. While sanding I hoped that it wasn't the day that apartment manager's decided to start using the lawn sprinklers again.

Penny was keeping an eye on me the whole time I was outside. What a loyal pup.

After sanding, I wiped the puppy down and then got to town staining. I used Minwax's Dark Walnut stain. And only needed one coat. As I was almost finished staining I thought I heard a lawn mower start up and hoped that the middle school age kid, that seems to mow every weekend, wasn't here to blow cut grass onto my drying table.

Here is the table drying while Jesse and I went to shop for a new knob for the previous drawer, which is now just for decoration.

Day Four

It really did come together on Sunday. We set it up in the spare room to put on a couple coats of polyurethane. Which I would have thought of something to set the table on while I was sanding and staining. Probably would have prevented a few back and neck aches.

 

Once the polyurethane was try, Jesse re-attached the legs and drawer using some wood filler and Gorilla Glue.  We let it harden and stick over night and this morning set the coffee table up in it's permanent residence.

Here's a before and after of the table top and closer up on the legs.

A few take-aways from this project. Sanding is always much more work than what I think it looks like in my eyes. It seemed that I had back and neck aches that morphed into headaches the day after I sanded. So, that being said, it will be quite awhile before I attempt another project that involves a bunch of sanding. No thank you. But even with all the work and some pain, I quite enjoy our new piece of furniture. It is such a gratifying feeling knowing that you made (or in this case re-made) something that you will use every day in your home.


I'm linking up at Remodelaholic.

Chalkboard Cleaning List

I've had chalkboard paint on my mind for months now! And I've finally made my first chalkboard paint project with hopefully many more to come.

This lovely little frame came from Goodwill and started off looking like this:

I peeled off the backing that was held on with tape and got right to painting the frame.

I used yellow acrylic paint that I had on hand. It took many coats and since I didn't sand the frame down, there are still streaks of the brown that show through the yellow. Luckily I like it this way and it gives it a vintage feel.

Next I headed to Hobby Lobby (I loooove Hobby Lobby) and picked up some chalkboard paint. I wanted to get spray paint but they were fresh out so I settled for some that I had to brush on. Following the directions on the bottle, I applied two coats of paint. One horizontal, one vertical with an hour to dry between the two.

In the morning the paint hadn't completely covered the glass, so I applied a third coat. That night I measured the spacing that I wanted the separate lists (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) to have and where each row would be making sure to leave space for the items I forgot and will need to add later. If you look really hard, you can see the pencil markings.

Next I busted out a paint pen and scribbled my cleaning to do list onto the board. I got a bit distracted as we were watching Harry Potter and misspelled Kitchen as Kithen...had to sneak a little C in there as I didn't want to start over!

I decided to hang it in the bathroom as I know I will see it everyday. All I need to do now is purchase chalk and find a way to attach it to the frame, so I don't lose it and start checking off my list!

MIA

Wow. It's been awhile, eh? Well, where have I been and what have I been up to?

Oh you know, it's summertime and I've been playing. One of my best buddies moved back to town and I've spent quite a bit of time with her. I've hooked her on this crafty thing I've got going on, so we've been doing plenty of craft shopping and pillow making among the grilling out and bummin' around.

Here are a few pictures I've what I've made recently and will be posting about [hopefully] soon.

Other items on my to do list:

My first serious sewing project, making a romper from a pattern.

An old tank top elastic band dress.

A clutch.

Upcycling an end table I rescued from [beside] the dumpster.

Harry Potter themed snacks

The Streets of Life

Ever since I came across this piece of wall decor from Pottery Barn I've wanted to make my own (since I don't want to dish out the big bucks for it). But I want it to be huge, like at least 36" x 48" huge. So, I decided to test out a smaller different version.

Now, I'm not quite sure if I came up with this idea all on my own or came across it on one of the many crafty, creative blogs I check out. Either way, I'm quite proud of it! The finished project isn't what I imagined in my head, but how often are ideas implemented exactly they way you first dream up? (Especially when I couldn't describe or draw out what was in my head!)

After a few months of mulling the project over in my head, I finally decided it was time to get down to it! I described what I could to Jesse. I wanted a sign that has the streets that we have lived on filling up the entire canvas, different sizes and directions. He was quite willing to help me out with the project. That got me even more excited. It was off to Hobby Lobby to buy the supplies we didn't have on hand (the canvas and proper paint colors).

As we were in bed one night, trying to get to sleep, we started chatting about it. We listed out the streets to use and then Jesse came up with a brilliant idea. In fact, it is now my favorite part. He said, "What if we try to make the streets into a map?" I was so excited and instantly hoped that the street names and directions of the streets would work well together.

Jesse got a pencil and paper and started testing it out. It worked out pretty easy for us since all but one of the streets (actually a dorm I lived in) are in the same town!

So the design/layout was all in Jesse's hands. I left it up to him to figure out the font and sizes of the words. He made this template in Photoshop and then I printed the words out.

Next I cut out around the words and placed them on the 16" x 20" canvas (just to be sure they fit!). I still didn't have a plan as to how I was going to get the words onto the canvas...I was just going with the flow!

Then it was time to start painting the background. We knew we didn't want it to be a solid color so I took a wide sponge 'brush' and just went crazy slapping paint around in all different directions. I also threw down a few globs of paint on the canvas to give it a bit of texture.

I let it dry overnight and then came back the next day to 'fill in' all the rest so it didn't have too much white spots and let it dry overnight (okay a few more days went by) again.

While paint was drying (or just hanging out waiting for more paint) I figured out how we would get the letters onto the canvas. I used an X-acto knife to cut out all of the letters so I had a stencil. If I were to do this again, I would use cardstock or anything thicker than paper so that the stencil would be more sturdy when painting over it. This did take quite a bit of time, but thanks to my experience at my aunt and uncle's sign shop, I was quite the pro! ;) I'm sure there are plenty of better ways out there but I couldn't come up with anything else that was free and I was so darn excited to complete our piece of art!

We placed the stencils on the canvas, stuck them down with some tape, and started dabbing paint!

This last part was the most difficult for me. It was soooooo hard to wait for the paint to dry before pulling up the paper, but Jesse restrained me. When I took the paper off, we were so happy with the end result. The letters aren't perfect, which ended up being exactly what we wanted. Makes sense now that I think about it. We didn't want the background to be solid and perfect, so why would we want the words to be that way too?

We hung the street art up in our kitchen tonight and I absolutely love it. It represents where we have been and each street name brings back all kinds of memories. And knowing there is never going to be anything exactly like it make me smile. Now it is time to tackle the huge number art canvas!