crafts
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Paint me a picture!
Okay, so last week I posted the pic I bought at our neighborhood yard sale. The plan, paint over the original canvas (pray it wasn’t priceless) and update the frame. I really had no clue how long something like this might take. Honestly, I kind of thought it might take me a while.
Before Saturday morning while Matt was out golfing, I decided to start painting and see what happened. I made a makeshift painting station in the garage. One side has a small ledge a few feet up and a couple inches wide so I tape a sheet to the wall and was able to prop the canvas up on the ledge. From there I just started mixing colors. Originally I wanted to go more grey but my paint turned a little more green so I just ran with it. I started off with my brush just mixing colors on the canvas. (Really I should have put a white layer on first but I knew I didn’t have enough paint for that.) So I just kept going, mixing paint and brushing it on.
During Once I had the whole canvas covered, which didn’t actually take more than 15-20 mins. I stepped back to check out what I had. It wasn’t bad! I liked the color gradients, so I grabbed a palette knife and started building the colors on the canvas. At this point I was just mixing the colors together with the palette knife and swiping it on the canvas. And it looked pretty good. Once the majority was done, I realized I needed to add a little bit of coral, since the bedroom is basically coral and white! 😉 A little red, yellow, pink and white and I had something that resembled coral. I had no clue really where I wanted to add it and decided on a to just put it near the bottom and hope it didn’t look dumb. It turned out pretty good and is really only a small touch of color. After that I was done!
I texted a few people pics of it and they all thought it looked good.
This is upside down. I couldn’t decide which way I was thing to hang it. Later that afternoon I decided I was going to work on the frame. I ran up to my craft room and grabbed some rose gold and off white paint. I used the rose gold to neutralize the brassy yellows currently on the frame. Then I mixed my off white with a bit of titanium white and added water. Lots of water. It was kind of messy but the result was a nice, worn looking frame. (I will say, the titanium white really wasn’t needed.) The last thing I had to do was paint the outer edge of the canvas. In hindsight, I probably should have painted that white first and then taped it off but I didn’t do that. I had to very carefully paint white around the edges of my newly painted canvas. In the end, I ended up with a little more white here and there but I didn’t really mind the way it looked so I just left it. I did go back and try to fix one corner of the canvas I wasn’t super happy with. It was a little flat. I can’t say it helped but it didn’t hurt it either. Just added a little more color and texture.
I let everything dry overnight and Sunday morning Matt helped me reattach the canvas to the frame. Then I got up the nerve to actually sign it. It was really stressful. 😉 But I got my name on the corner and it doesn’t look awful.
Now it’s hanging over the bed in our guest room! I think it turned out really good!
~k
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Flea market find!
Matt and I knew that when we bought a new house there were various items that would need to be upgraded. Our bedroom furniture is on that list. We are currently in possession of my childhood furniture set. However, this set did not come with bedside tables so a few years ago I bought some cheap side tables from Walmart. We couldn’t have anything too large in our old room at the townhouse. These fit nicely even though they were cheap.
Since we moved I’ve been randomly keeping my eye out for various pieces of furniture. Hence the dining room table sans chairs right now. 😉 About two weeks ago I was on FB on one of the buy, sell, trade sites I follow and someone posted a set of small chests for $120.00. I commented for dimensions and said I would be interested if the first deal fell through. The next day I received a PM from the lady. The chests were available, and they were just about the right size! I im’ed Matt and he said “whatever”! I PM’ed the lady back, asked if she would take $100.00 for the pair and the next day I went to pick them up. They weren’t in perfect condition but they were in good condition. I just needed to decide on a paint color and I was in business.
For a while now, I’d been looking at new chests. The only problem was that most of the new chests were 1) more than I wanted to spend and 2) too tall. Our bed is pretty low so we needed chests that were under 30″ tall. Most new chests are several inches over 30 which I knew Matt would complain about. The used chests came in right at 28″ tall which makes them only a few inches taller than the bed and not uncomfortable while reaching up from the bed.
The weekend I got the chests, Matt and I ran to Lowes to look at paint colors. I ended up choosing Morning Fog by Sherwin Williams. It’s a really pretty light greyish blue color. I was a little worried there wouldn’t be enough contrast between that and the wall color but decided to just go with it. First I primed the chests and drawers with Kilz. Then over the next few days I painted the chests, and then the drawers. Within a week I had everything done. (Which was kind of shocking!) Originally I had planned to use the pulls that were on the chest and just spray paint them but then I realized almost all of them were pulling apart and Matt didn’t really think he could fix them. I searched on Amazon and fell in love with some antique looking glass knobs but they were $17.00 for a set of 4. I would need 12 and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to spend $50.00 on knobs. In the end, that’s exactly what I ended up doing. The chests were really cheap so I figured I could splurge a little on knobs.
For just over $150.00, I was able to get us new bedside tables and they turned out AMAZING! The knobs really add a little something and the color blends nicely with the room. Seeing how well these turned out, kind of makes me what to buy the Hurdal dresser and chest from IKEA, paint them and add the same knobs. (Side note, we saw these at IKEA and they are quite large and sturdy which is the only reason I’m really considering them.) That would redo our whole bedroom (chests included) for under $1000.00. I told Matt I’m not really ready to take on this project but it might happen soonish. 😉
Before: Our small crappy little tables. 
The chests before, during, my knobs, and after. -
A tale of two doors
Right after Matt and I moved into the new house we had a really bad storm come through and our front door leaked. You can read about that here. That was 3 months ago. Since then I’ve been waiting for my new front door. While we weren’t happy that the front door leaked, it gave me the opportunity to actually get the front door I wanted. When we bought the house, I had dreams of removing the grids from the front door and frosting it with our address in the middle. However, the grids on our door were glued in and the builder said they couldn’t remove them. I was totally bummed.
Anyway, fast forward to today. It’s been 3 months and I am just now getting my new front door. Somewhere in between the door leaking and our 2 month inspection, the warranty guy was let go. So when it came time to sand down the foyer floors by the door and replace the door, the door went missing. No one was really sure what happened to the door. It was either misplaced or stolen which meant a new door would have to be ordered. Last Thursday we got a delivery. A new front door! The CORRECT front door was delivered to the house. The builder picked it up to have it painted and now I’m waiting for them to come and install it. I was hoping they would be early but seeing as it’s after 9am, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Hopefully it won’t take long to replace the door.
This is the old door. You can see the silicone they put around the panel to try and keep the water out. I feel we are lucky it didn’t leak again. Of course the guys didn’t show up to replace the door till closer to 10. It look about 45 mins to get everything swapped out but I must say the new door is BEAUTIFUL! I love it soo much! I really wish I could leave the glass open but you can see straight up to the master at night. The full pane of glass gives the house a little move charm, I think. I know it’s not a huge difference but I’m really happy.
Old door on the left, new door on the right. SOO much better. I think the new door looks older with more charm. The glass is also a little wider. 
From the inside. I had the door painted the same color on both sides. As for frosting the glass, I realized last night the new door is tempered glass and the glass etching stuff won’t work on tempered glass. I guess I’m going to have to use the spray frost. This is not my ideal method but it’s also a little less permanent than glass etching. Oh and I should mention the sheers I had covering the front door don’t work now because the area around the glass is covered and not boxed off. Does that even make sense? Anyway, my tension rods don’t have a place to fit now. So we are totally ghetto and have suction cups on the glass holding the sheers. Whomp!
~k
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Craft room update
Hello, almost vacation!
Matt and I are planning a little trip to the beach for a few days. I feel like I am in desperate need of a vacation. Our last “real” vacation was two years ago to Jamaica.
So, let’s see, what have I been up to. Well, I am still working on my craft room. I think it’s going to be a work in progress for a while. It’s been so freaking hot lately that I haven’t wanted to work on the stuff I need to finish, like painting my shelf brackets or my chandelier. This past weekend it cooled down enough and I was able to get outside and spray paint my shelf brackets. I bought the Ikea Ekby Gallo shelves while we were there a few weeks ago. I knew I wanted to spray paint the bracket piece gold since gold will be my accent color. I bought some Krylon metallic gold spray paint (I think this is it) and it was the BOMB! The nozzle swiveled and the push button was super smooth. No more spray paint hand cramp. I used 1 can for both brackets.
Now that I have the shelving painted I need Matt to help me install them over my craft table. Then, I need to start working on my chandelier. It’s one mom had and is no longer using so she’s offered it up for my craft room. It’s already goldish but I want it to be a little more gold. I think it will look amazing painted the same gold as the shelf brackets.
I brought my brackets and shelves inside last night so I could take some pics and I realized my shelves are the wrong size. Whomp whomp! The brackets are Gallo or something and the shelves are not. Total IKEA fail! Thankfully the shelves were’t very expensive. I’m sure I can find another place to use them. I told Matt last night I would just have to run to Lowe’s and get a piece of wood that would fit. While not ideal, this will actually allow me to paint the wood the same color as the table, chair and trim. So it might actually look a little better.
While we are on the craft room, I said a while back I would review the fabric I bought for my chair from Spoonflower. Spoonflower is actually local, they are in Durham, and they print their own fabric. This allows for hundreds and hundreds of choices you can’t get anywhere else. I fell in love with several of their patterns and I couldn’t find anything close at other fabric stores. Here’s my review:
They have tons of fabric choices you can’t find anywhere else. They also have a variety of fabric types. Since I was recovering a chair I bought their basic cotton fabric. This runs $17.00 a yard. Not terrible considering it’s custom. I think it took less than a week for my order to complete and ship, which isn’t bad. The packaging arrived and it was pretty cute. Now the fabric. I can’t say I’m blown away with the quality of the fabric. To me, it felt kind of “flimsy”. It’s a very thin, lightweight fabric. I was expecting it to have a little more weight to it. I have various other cotton fabrics in my stash and I don’t think this feels like quite the same quality. With that said, I will say it washed okay and looks fine on my chair. I’m not sure how it will hold up but this is also a chair I don’t plan to use daily. I think the colors and pattern were what I expected and I was very pleased with that. Would I order fabric from them again? Maybe, but only if I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted and they had a pattern I liked. I think I would probably try to find something from Fabric.com first. I only got their basic cotton so I’m not sure how the other fabrics feel. They may be a little nicer but they are also more expensive. I went cheap. 🙂
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The making of a craft room
When we picked our new house I knew I was going to make one of the bedrooms into a craft room. Matt was getting an office and I wanted a craft room. We had the space so I decided to use the bedroom next to the the master. It’s the only bedroom not connected to a bathroom and I wasn’t keen on having a bedroom right next to our bedroom/bathroom so this was the perfect space.
For months I searched and searched for a desk. I found one at Ikea but due to the shipping costs I kept looking. Then I found one on Amazon that was similar and ordered it. Thanks to UPS, the desk was left in the rain by our garage, not on our front porch, and the desk was ruined. I shipped it back and continued the search. I also realized that one and the one from Ikea would have been too small for the space so it worked out.
I still hadn’t found anything when my mom called one day to tell me that her work was getting rid of their display tables. Employees would be able to purchase them for $20.00. I knew it was just a wooden table but for $20.00 I told her to get me one. Turns out it will work great for a craft table.
I decided to be lazy and not actually strip or sand the table down. I bought some Kilz instead and used that as my base. Next I painted the table with 2-3 coats of paint. I decided to use our trim color since it wasn’t quite white. I thought a bright white table might clash. I’m really glad I used the trim color to be honest. Everything flows nicely.
Since the table was going to be used for crafts I thought it might be a good idea to put a top coat on the top. Boy, that was a mistake! I bought a spray clear coat. I did several light coats but the finish wasn’t glossy like it was supposed to but so I decided to put it on a little heavier. Well the damn stuff turned yellow, the can said it wouldn’t turn yellow! Grrr! So I ended up having to sand the top down to the gloss off so I could then add another coat of paint. In the end it turned out fine but it was kind of a pain.
Before, with Julio photobomb 
Fast forward a few days. The table has finally been painted and I ask Matt to help me get it into my craft room. Well I didn’t measure the table. Whoops. After about 20 mins of trying every possible way to get the table in Matt decided it wouldn’t fit. Okay so that’s not really an option. I immediately told him to cut the feet off. He was hesitant at first but we took the table back downstairs and on the front porch he sawed off the bottom few inches. I found some casters to replace the feet with and I think everything will be fine now. This will also allow me to move the table around should I need or want to.
The chair for my craft room has been a little less dramatic. I found the cutest chair at the Flea Market a few months ago. It just needed a little paint and some new fabric. I’ve been on the hunt for fabric since I found it.
Over the weekend I was able to get the chair painted with the hope that it would make finding a fabric a little easier. Well today was the day. I was going back through my fabric board on Pinterest and finally decided to order one. I think it will look really nice on the chair. It should be here in a week or so. If I like the fabric, I’ll do a quick review on the fabric store I used.
Chair before paint. Notice the brass tips on the feet. I’m going to spruce those up with a little more gold paint. 
Chair after paint. I need to add the gold. 
Fabric for the chair seat. I still have more work to do but this is the start.
~k
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Superhero Subway Art
I found this pic on my phone over the weekend and realized I never actually posted the final product. Whomp whomp. Even worse, it was like a year ago. Oopsy.
Backstory, a friend was having a baby and decided to do a superhero themed nursery. In true Kelly fashion, I decided to make her something. I decided on subway art with superhero slogans. I was lucky we were pretty slow at work so I was able to work on my project in my free time. (I like to work on crafts at work, shh, don’t tell. 😉 ) First I had to figure out what slogans I could use. There were a few I knew but I had to research quite a lot to finally get enough to fill the space. In the end I used 16 slogans. I won’t lie, it wasn’t easy find that many that I thought were appropriate and short. I think my subway art turned out really well considering.
I also decided to customize the Superman logo and change it from an “S” to a “D”. Baby’s name started with a D. 🙂 It’s been so long I honestly can’t remember how I did this. I either found the image on a Google search or I used an online tool to change it. I can’t believe I can’t remember. Anyway, I made it work.I just ordered more fabric the other day to make another baby blanket for a coworker. This will be my 5th one? I’m pretty excited about the fabric I got. This will be my second girl one. I’ll post some pics when I get finished. I feel like my baby blankets are getting better, and I am getting much faster. The process now takes me about an hour from start to finish. That includes cutting, pinning and sewing.
~k
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Mr. Picky Pants
Matt and I have been on a coffee kick lately on weekend mornings. We have about 3 mugs that hold 10+ oz and fit under the Kuerig so we decided we needed some bigger mugs. When Matt first mentioned this, I told him I’d run to Home Goods or TJ Maxx and pick up a few new ones. Well work has been crazy or it’s been cold and rainy so I haven’t run out at lunch to look.
Yesterday the weather was nice and we needed to run to the grocery store. Matt asked if I wanted to grab lunch first so I said yes. We headed to Briar Creek to Panera. I told him we could run to Home Goods and TJ Maxx to get new mugs after we ate. We get to TJ Maxx and I find a little wall of fun mugs and tell Matt to pick some out. He is like “ummm I want a set.” Ohhhhh! Well okay then. That is news to me. We walk over to Home Goods because I figure they will have some sort of set. We find some cute white ones but he doesn’t like these either. Once we’ve completed our lap around the store I suggest we walk down to Pier 1. Surely they will have something he likes.
Pier 1 had a much better selection and the prices weren’t much more than what we found at Home Goods. We finally agreed on, wait for it……..plain white mugs! Honestly this works for me. I’ve had visions of fun “fancy” mugs for a while and the white will let me do this. I know there are paints and pens for ceramic that you can use and then bake into the mug.
Here are a few ideas I am currently loving.
I feel like either polka dots or the half painted ones will win out. Of course they will all be gold. I like the simple designs the best but there are tons of ideas if you image search diy mugs. I’ll post pics once I add the finishing touches to ours!
~k
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Gettin’ my craft on!
The past few days at work have been quite boring. To the point that yesterday I think I found the end of the internet. Last night while I was watching TV I decided I should start working on a craft project for a friend who is having a little boy in a few months. They’ve decided on a superhero themed nursery. I tried to think what I could do that would be superhero themed. PLUS, I thought it would be nice if I could work on it at work. 😉
Anyway, an idea came to mind and this morning I spent some time researching superheros. Then I spent a lot of time working on my project. hehe. {I told you we are slow.} So a few hours later I think my project is done. I’m currently waiting on some feedback just to make sure this is “the” final version. I actually think this turned out pretty well so this gift may be shipped sooner rather than later just so I can post a pic. 😉
~k
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I feel another Pinterest Project coming on…
It’s been several months since I have been inspired to create any of the craft projects I currently have pinned. I found this adorable pic from Esty dealer drawGabbydraw and just knew I had to do it. I have watercolors so all I really need it probably a good pen. I have no idea where I will put it. I might need my own little lady cave so I can display all my random art projects. 😉 I still have my NC heart lying around somewhere.
In other news, I think Matt and I have finally decided on a location for our trip. More details soon. 🙂~k
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A special craft
I don’t think I mentioned it, but my brother in law Patrick, was very big in the music scene. He played the guitar, managed a music store and was constantly going to festivals to help.
As we were cleaning his house, we started finding guitar picks laying around. I guess I didn’t really think about the fact that he probably had a ton of them until we had a little baggie full. As soon as I saw how many there were I knew what I wanted to do! I asked Jill and Steve if I could have them for a project I had in mind. Of course they said yes, so for the past 2 months they’ve been sitting in the closet waiting on me.
On Sunday Matt and I ran to Michael’s to find the items I needed. A glass back frame and some glue. I ended up buying 2 frames because I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to do. One idea involved some sheet music. The other just needed a frame. Plus they were different sizes, one was square and one was rectangular, and I wasn’t sure which size would work best. In the end I used the rectangular one.
So what did I do? I glued the guitar pics to the to glass. It wasn’t hard or too time consuming, though it did take a little while to figure out which ones I wanted where. I knew I wanted to use the memorial ones at the top and bottom and I just filled in from there.
