Prettied up trinket boxes

Cute little trinket box with magnetic closure makes for a quick and easy make-over.  (found the box at dollar store!)

I cut a piece of paper big enough to cover the existing image; but left the pretty border still visible.

Then I glued a stamped piece of muslin on top of that; just a little off-center.

I added a little scrap of matching paper to the underside of the lid.

The sticky label on the bottom of this one just so happened to peel off perfectly; which is NOT usually the case.  IF it had not come off without damaging the bottom of the box, I would have glued another piece of paper to the bottom as well.

Just so happened to find another box at a different store, with the exact same design.  Went with a simpler design on this one.  Covered the whole top and front with vintage dictionary page; added a vintage post card image and a ‘paper’ key.

This one is a soap box that I saved.

This one had a very pretty design on the existing paper, so I just needed to partly cover it.  A piece of paper and a crown stamped on muslin, off-center.

A little piece of matching paper to cover the ‘non-removable’ label on the bottom of the box.

And a little piece on the underside of the lid ‘just for fun’ (this piece wasn’t really ‘necessary’ because it’s not covering anything  . . . I just thought it added a little interest!)

Waste Not ~ Want Not! Using up wood scraps

Michael gets the reclaimed wood that I use for making my signs and cuts it to certain basic sizes and keeps several shelves full of it in our workshop.  I ‘pre-piant’ my sign boards assembly line style.  Line up as many as will fit on the work table and basecoat them all in black.  Once dry, I paint the color top coat; then distress.  NOW they are ready for the designs to be painted on them. 

I keep a stash of these pre-painted boards stocked up in my craft room.  When I am ready to letter the signs, I select the sizes/colors that I want and usually do several of each design at a time.  Since we don’t individually cut each board to size to exactly fit each stencil; I end up doing that final cut at the END of the process.  Then I just touch up the black paint on the end that I cut.  This leaves me with a LOT of little painted scraps of wood.

And THIS is what I do with all those little scraps!

I have foam alphabet stamps and stamp a single letter on each scrap of wood when I get enough of them built up.

These little ‘monograms’ are for sale in my booth at Stars; priced from $3.00 – $5.00.

Use them to spell out a word, or just your initials.

Updated primitive child size desk

Took advantage of our quickly diminishing warm and dry days last week to get a bunch of outdoors painting projects done.  First on the list was this adorable primitive child size desk.

It had a very ‘sloppy’ semi gloss varnish on it with lots of visible drips.  So, the first step was to sand.  I really enjoy the sanding process, and ‘getting to know’ the piece.  This piece was obviously hand crafted by ‘make do’ kind of person.  It wasn’t the best wood, and wasn’t really constructed ‘to last’.  No dovetail joints like you might expect to find on a piece this obviously old.  But someone had signed the underside of the desk.  Alas, it was too faded to read, still, I ‘left it be’.

Notice how blotchy it looks after I sanded it???  From this I can tell it was made from ‘rough sawn’ wood; boards that had not been planed.  I really had NOT noticed this about the wood until I sanded it, and was a bit concerned that the saw marks would show when I distressed after painting.

Here you can see the nails that it was put together with, and more of the saw marks.  At this point I’m resigning myself to NOT distressing this piece after painting it lest those pesky saw marks show in the distressed areas.

Even the legs were made with the rough cut wood!  Definitely a primitive piece, and one that I would have left ‘as is’ back when I was decorating my home in fold art primitives.  But that was then, and this is NOW.  So it got painted!

Gave it a couple of coats of paint and let it dry.  Started very carefully sanding, making sure I only hit the edges lest those pesky saw marks showed through.  I really REALLY wanted to distress the whole thing, so I decided to ‘give it a shot’ and ‘test distressed’ one of the legs to see how badly the saw marks came through.

They looked just fine!!!  So I went ahead and distressed the whole thing!

The desk top distressed especially nice; showing the pretty wood grain.

Now that the outside of the desk was all brightly colored and prettied up, the INside seemed a bit dingy.

So I decoupaged some old atlas paged on the bottom.  I wanted to cover the entire inside, but with how the legs come through it would have been too many tiny corners to work around.

The desk has gone to my booth at Stars with a $59.00 price tag.

I’ve also taken in some Halloween decor to Stars.

Outdated / Updated Jewelry box

Rummage sale jewelry box, still covered with dust!  The MAIN thing I look for in old jewelry boxes before buying them to update is CLEAN INNARDS!   I’d say about 90% of them that I look back are not clean enough inside for me to buy.  No one wants to store their jewelry in a fabric lined and very stained drawer!

The doors open up to three more drawers.  Opening the bottom drawer activates the music box. This one was considerable more elaborate than I had ever worked on before, but it had clean innards and the price was right; even if it didn’t turn out ‘good enough to sell’.

I’m actually quite pleased with the way it turned out!

I even painted the back!  There’s the crank for the music.

This was a more labor intensive project than I thought it would be.  Painting the metal grating on the doors took more time than anything else.

I was however, able to do a fair amount of the sanding to distress with my orbital sander.  Only had to supplement a little bit of hand sanding.

Lots of ridges and raised details make for great distressing.

It went to my booth at Stars.

And has already SOLD!

GIANT vintage metal fork and spoon

So all of a sudden these things are popular again?!?!  Go figure.  Found this pair on our recent anniversary trip to WA.  Nice simple style and METAL.  (I can usually only find the carved ‘totem pole’ style handled ones.)

THIS set had a very unique addition; taper candle holders on the handles!  You can see them on the spoon, in this and the previous picture.  (the original pics of these were in with the ones my computer ‘ate’ and I was too lazy to put the candle holder back on BOTH pieces.  They easily screw on/off with a nut on the back)

Here you can seer the hole where the candle holders screw in.  Easy enough to touch up the paint if I decide to leave the holders off.    But I can’t decide if I should do that or not???  When I first saw them, the FIRST thing I did was look to see if the candle holders were removable.  And If they had NOT been, I probably would not have bought them.  But that’s just me!  Maybe the candle holders are what will make others WANT to buy them?!?  I just don’t know???

Would love your input on the candle holder of NO candle holder conundrum!

Right now I ma just holding on the them.  What I REALLY want to use them for is HANDLES on a big pantry that Michael could build sometime in the future.  

Little rummage sale wall cabinet

Cute little green cabinet I snagged at a rummage sale earlier this year.

Completely finished INSIDES too!  Bonus!!

This was really ‘one of those things’ that I really could have easily used ‘as is’.  And after I almost didn’t re- paint it after I sanded off the sheen.  But I’ve never have been very good at leaving well enough alone!  So it got painted aqua (inside and out!) and sanded again.

LOVE how nicely it distressed along the Wainscot grooves!

Distressed the back side of the door, but not the shelves.  (orbital sander won’t fit inside the shelves!)

It would make a perfect little wall cabinet for a bathroom.  It already has two heavy duty wall hooks on the back for hanging.

It is available in my booth at Stars for $35.00.

Sulking a bit

Along with the ‘anniversary weekend’ photos, the computer ate a bunch of my project pictures too; so I’ve been sulking over that instead of posting lately.  The past couple of nights it’s been getting quite chilly overnight and the cooler air is beginning to smell like FALL; making me realize that my ‘painting marathon days’ will soon be dwindling!  Time to get busy and get more of those bigger projects DONE, and soon!

I got this wrought iron etagere  painted turquoise and cleaned up the glass shelves.  Spray paint is your bet option for painting stuff like this.

It has gone to my booth in Curiosities, displaying a selection of my upcycled cake and cupcake stands.  It IS for sale too though; $119.00.

And whilst I was spray painting I went ahead and painted this little vintage wire newspaper rack.  Thought it would be cute filled with pillows.  It’s still in storage for now though.

Got this little night stand all spruced up too.  Took the handle off and sanded the whole thing with my trusty orbital sander.

Gave it two coats of my ‘beachy blue’ paint then a bit more sanding to distress.  For varnishing, I usually only do the TOP of chests, shelves and tables.

Sanding mostly along the edges and raised areas where it would ‘naturally wear down’; then on the flat surfaces for good measure.  You want your sanding to be very ‘haphazard’ so it looks more like it happened naturally, over time.  I don’t quite know how to describe it; but sometimes I see distressed pieces and the just look too PLANNED; too perfect!

Simple designs like this with just one (or two) drawers are perfect candidates for a big ‘statement knob’.  I just a thrifted porcelain rose knob on this one.

Isn’t she sweet?!?!  This cutie will be going to Stars sometime in the near future; hopefully along with the 2 drawer one I am working on today!

Shabby beach-ified wicker picnic basket

The middle basket in this stack had been in my booth at Stars for some time.  It was time to bring it home for a make over.  Since the sea grass trunk on the bottom had sold so quickly, I decided to ‘beach-ify’ this one too.

Since i had put a white fingerling starfish on this one that was still in my booth at Stars, I decided to do something different on this next one.

So I did a sugar starfish on this one, AFTER I dry brush painted it s slightly darker shade of turquoise.

The hardest part was finding a starfish FLAT enough to adhere to the wicker.  I used e600, and weighted it down with a heavy box while the adhesive cured.

Ready to go to Stars.

It stacks nicely with the other two baskets.

Priced at $35.00.

 

Patience

Maybe it was really nothing more than I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, but I like to take a ‘little’ credit and call it the reward for being patient and diligent.

You know that feeling when you find EXACTLY what you were looking for, and you can hardly even believe that no one else snatched it up already?!?!?  Those times when you really want to shout “WOO!~HOO!!” out LOUD, and do a little happy dance?!?  Yea, THAT feeling.  I had one of those last week.

I found these at the thrift store.  The smaller one w/o a lid first, in the dishes aisle.  I almost passed it by because it didn’t have the lid.  But I thought it matched the one I already had at home and I could use this one as a utensil holder.

Then as I got in line to pay I saw the two bigger ones on a front aisle display and grabbed them,

Got home and sure enough, they WERE a match to the small one with a lid I already had!  Yesssssssssssssss!

And looky here!  The salt and pepper shaker I bought at an entirely different time matched too!

Now I have a nice matching kitchen canister set!  Just gotta keep an eye out for the fourth canister.

Patience.

Reusing old display pieces

Remember when I brainstormed this idea for display pieces in my booth at Stars?  I had Michael cut three tables in half for me; a dining table, a coffee table and an end table.  Painted them all a neutral grey and mounted them and stacked them into some permanent displays.

I LOVED it ‘at the time’, but after about a year I began to feel a tad stifled due to the lack of flexibility with so much of the space not rearrangeable.  (I’m sure that’s not a real word, but you know what I mean!)

Soooooooooooooooooooooo . . .  when the time came for my recent move to a slightly larger space; the FIRST thing I told Michael was that ‘those tables have got to GO!’.  (as in NOT to the new space, that is!)  But of course I couldn’t just throw them away.  And due to lack of time to try to sell them ‘as is’, they were taken to storage to await my next brainstorm.

 Since the table were cut in half, the each only had 2 legs; and we had stabilized them with brackets mounted to the wall.  Now I needed four legs again to make use of them.  Michael cut and attached some simple 2×2’s for the back legs.

And while the front and back legs do not match each other; it is not uncommon in vintage furniture to have ornate front legs and very plain back legs.

And once painted I thought they looked perfectly fine.  This particular side of the end table had a drawer pull on it, which I left in place.  I had just removed it to repaint it.

And this is what I did with them!  I had Michael build me a couple of tall skinny shelves out of reclaimed wood, painted them to match the table halves and put them on top of the tables!  To make it easier to haul and move them, we decided it was best to NOT attach the shelf to the base.

Originally they were supposed to ‘match’.  Our ‘system’ for making shelves like this is that Michael cuts all the pieces and I paint them BEFORE he assembles the shelves.  It’s MUCH easier and faster that way!  Painting those pesky ‘inside corners’ on shelves takes SO much time.  Left unassembled I can use a paint roller and painting is a breeze!

Anyhow, Michael put ‘one too many’ shelves in the first one he put together, which left the second shelf missing TWO shelves.  I didn’t really want the shelf spaces THAT short, but I wasn’t going to make him take a shelf apart either.  So we left the one with four openings and made the other with three, as originally planned.

I left these two totally ‘plain’, and they are not for sale right now.  I have ideas for making more pieces ‘along these lines’ that will be for sale.  For now these are flanking the entrance to my booth at curiosities.

And displaying lots of pretty white cottage style wares.

NOW I just have to figure out how to re-use the two dining table and coffee table pieces?!?!?