Wood appliques « Primitives ~ Life ~ Art . . .

Can I have a ‘do-over’???

When I rearranged the store a few months ago, I ended up not having a place to put this shelf:

I took it to the fall shows and it didn’t sell. It rattled around in the back of my car for a few weeks until I finally put it in the storage shed. While I was rummaging through the shed last week pulling out some old frames to paint, this little yellow shelf was screaming “Pick me! Pick ME!!”

Since I was painting a bunch of frames black, I decided to paint the little shelf black too. And decided to add one of my handy-dandy wood appliques first!

And I sanded and distressed it a bit. A change for the better? The shelf found it’s new spot in our booth at Stars Antique Mall.

Isn’t it amazing how much those appliques ‘dress up’ the piece?

And just in case you forgot or missed the original picture of this piece . . . it was a country heart shelf.

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Published in:

on January 27, 2009 at 7:57 am Comments (2)
Tags: carved wood decor, updated country heart shelf, Wood appliques, wood embellishments

Carved wood appliques to the rescue again!

I sure do LOVE these carved wood appliques! So much so that we will soon be carrying them in our store, and possibly even sell them here via our blog (if there is enough demand. Is there???) I’ve ordered about a dozen different sizes/styles.

So, here is another sadly outdated country heart accessory, this time it’s a quilt rack.

It’s in perfectly good shape, just very outdated.

I just glued on one of my handy~dandy wood applique to cover up the heart . . .

And spray painted it black. Now it’s totally chic!

(okay, actually I wanted it to be WHITE at first, but after two GOOD coats of white paint, the pine knots were still showing through. So I gave it a coat of KILZ primer, then a couple coats of some CREAM paint. And the knots STILL showed through!! Thusly I finally succumbed to using the black. Which I am entirely happy with; but just learn from my mistake that light color paints will NOT cover pine knots!)

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Published in:

on January 26, 2009 at 8:58 am Comments (3)
Tags: carved wood embellishments, decorative wood carvings, outdated updated, painting over pine knots, pine quilt rack, quilt rack, Trash to Treasure, update an old quilt rack, updated country heart accessories, wall quilt rack, wood accessories, wood plaques

Little boxes made from reclaimed wood

Michael built these simple boxes with lids out of reclaimed wood.

For the darker primitive ones, I base-coated the outside with black paint first.

Applied my second coat of paint color and sanded a little to distress. I ‘just happened’ to be making some checkerboards at the same time and decided to use the stencil on a couple of the boxes. Apparently it was a good idea because the two with the checkerboard sold right away.

I wanted a way to keep the lids in place that would be fairly simple. Had Michael cut two little strips of luan which I glued to the underside of the lids.

I ‘thought’ they were done at this point, but as they sat on my work table and I kept looking at them, I decided they needed FEET and a knob.

So I went digging through my big box of assorted small wood parts and found some wood spools and candle holders that I decided would make nice little feet. And some wood knobs (which I’ve also used as feet in the past!)

Just glued them on with tacky glue.

Measured and marked the center of the lid for the knobs, predrilled a hole and screwed them in from the underside. They look much more ‘finished’ now.

Although I did go back and add a wood carved applique to the black one.

Then I decided to do a couple of lighter colored shabby ones.

Used the wood carved appliques. And little wood ‘game pieces’ for the feet.

Since these didn’t have as much surface area to glue, I predrilled holes in them and the bottom of the boxes. Glued the legs on right over my predrilled holes; then screwed them on from the inside.

For the knobs on the shabby ones I used some little wood BOWLS!

SO, Michael and I were discussing what we should replace the scrapbook section with once all that stuff is sold out (it’s all on clearance right now) and we decided to put in a ‘do it yourselfer’ section that will contain things like these unfinished boxes, the stuff for knobs and feet, the carved wood appliques, unfinished wood napkin holders . . . like these: