Pallet Project Update-Kitchen Plate Rack

April 11, 2016April 9, 201619 Comments

I’m finally back with a project today!! I’m sure you are all thrilled! 🙂

Steve cut out this pallet rack for me several years ago, so I don’t have a tutorial for that part, but you can find them on Pinterest. Lauren, a friend and I did some craft shows a few years ago, and I had made pallet racks to hold books. This one had never sold and had been just waiting for me to come up with a project for it. Finally inspiration struck!

I spray painted black over the letters first.

While it was drying, I picked out the phrase I wanted to put on it and found the fonts and size on Microsoft Word. I printed them out and then cut them down to make them easier to work with.

To transfer the lettering to the wood, I rub pencil on the back of the paper. Then I turn the paper over, place it where I want it to go and trace the letters. When you are done, there should be a faint outline of the words. You can see how I did this for another sign too.

Once my tracing was on the board, I painted it in with white chalk paint. I used a really stiff brush to fill in each letter. After it was dry, I sanded it down a bit to look more worn. The last step was to go over it with a clear varnish. I knew I was going to hang it in the kitchen, so it needed to be protected.

(please don’t look too hard at the kitchen, ugh! It really needs a make-over. BADLY!!!)

So here it is hanging over the stove. The perfect place to store some platters, plates, and cutting boards.

After looking at the pictures, I realized it was kind of bare on the wall above it. I was roaming through my local Goodwill and found this little cow head. Perfect! Her name is Amelia. She is a little small for the space, so I mounted her on some old boards we had. I didn’t even know I had the one with writing on it. Love it!

I am on the lookout for a little wreath to go around her neck. Or maybe a cowbell! Have a wonderful day!

From Arabian to Modern-Giving New Life

March 18, 2016March 17, 20166 Comments

Before I go any further in this blog post. To my cousin Sarah-if you are reading this, stop here! Or don’t, it’s up to you.

Okay, moving on.

My roommate Hannah is a giraffe lover. This includes giraffe blankets, giraffe calendars, a giraffe onesie, you get the point. She got a set of giraffe bookends from her family for Christmas, thinking that they would be perfect for her. The only problem was, they weren’t really Hannah’s style.

Now to be honest, I think that these look really cool. I like the colors, all the textures, and the little mirrors lining the bottom and the back. But, these are not Hannah’s style at all. She is much more of a modern girl, not so Arabian.

When she said that she was getting rid of them, I took them. I thought that I could paint them to give them a new look and give them to my cousin Sarah (who isn’t supposed to be reading this but might be anyway) for her birthday.

But what I didn’t realize, what how stubborn these bookends were going to be to paint them. Are giraffes stubborn animals?

My original idea was to keep all of the little mirrors on the edges and the few that are on the giraffes. I thought that it would look really cool to paint them a metallic silver to give them a modern look, but keep the mirrors. So I painstakingly put Vaseline on all of the little mirrors so that way I didn’t have to tape all of them.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out the way I was hoping it would. Once I sprayed the bookends silver and let them dry, I went to take the Vaseline off the mirrors. But, when I was wiping off the the Vaseline, I was taking the paint off as well.

So, I just painted the entire thing anyway. And here is the final product!

I love how they turned out! They now look very modern and much better than the red and gold. I also like how the edges look now that the mirrors are covered.

So, I hope that Sarah likes them! I love how they turned out with the paint and I hope she loves them as much as I do.

Styrofoam Easter Eggs

March 11, 2016March 10, 20166 Comments

So, this project started when I was walking through the 99 cent store. And to be honest, I love shopping at the 99 cent store. I can go and buy dog treats, Arnold Palmers, lunchables, spatulas, mixing bowls, and stuff for your car all in one spot. It’s like a lesser version of Walmart!

While shopping through the 99 cent store, I came across some Styrofoam eggs that could be used for decorating for Easter. And then I saw some smaller eggs on Kabob sticks. And I thought, what if I put the smaller eggs in the larger egg to make an arrangement?

And then I bought the supplies!

I bought two of the bigger eggs, one package of bigger eggs on sticks, and two packages of the smaller eggs.

I split all the eggs into two separate piles. There were four big eggs in each arrangement and ten smaller eggs in each arrangements. I knew that the biggest problem was going to be the long Kabob sticks. So as I went along, I broke off the sticks to make them shorter and easier to stick into the large Styrofoam eggs.

And here are the end results.

So…I’m not completely happy with how they turned out. I like all the colors worked together, but it didn’t go exactly as planned for how the eggs looked once they were in the giant eggs. I had a completely different idea of what they would look like when they were done, and this isn’t what I had in mind.

But other than that, it was a very simple project to do for Easter. I only spent $5 creating this, but you could spend a little more if you wanted to add more egg Kabobs (or whatever they are actually called), go for it. This is what I made with what I had, but I might go back and buy more egg Kabobs to fill in the arrangement.

Game Piece Pictures

March 4, 2016March 3, 201612 Comments

Do we have any gamers in the audience? Any kind of game: board game, video game, card game. Anyone?

Do you ever play a board game and find that there are pieces missing or there are extra pieces and you have no idea what to do with them? Yep…me too…

Well, a while ago, I found a box of game pieces that were at a yard sale and I purchased them. They ranged from chess pieces to checkers pieces to dominoes and colored blocks. There were so many pieces and I wasn’t completely sure what to do with them all.

And, I figured it out.

So I started with picking my pieces and picking up some frames from the Dollar Tree and started the project. I picked up three frames and wanted to use the colored blocks, dominoes, and wooden checkers to create my artwork. I figured that the easiest way to make this work was to use hot glue to keep the pieces on the framework. So, I took out the glass and added a piece of white paper on the back of each frame to get started.

Before doing all of this, I laid out the pieces on the frames to see what the pattern would be. I started with the checkers and knew that I wanted them to be in rows and using opposite colors. So, here is the design that I picked.

I worked on the dominoes next. I wanted to do something with the numbers lining up, but wasn’t completely sure how it was going to work out. So, I tried a few different things before I came up with this one.

Finally, I used the colored blocks. I didn’t have a clue on what to do with all of the blocks, and then I started humming the Tetris theme song. You know what I’m talking about. So, I made my own version of a Tetris game. I lined up all of the blocks to make sure that I would have enough, then started making my game.

So, after all of this work, I started hot gluing. It wasn’t too hard to put everything together, and it was a lot of fun to see how it all came together.

And without further adieu, here are my finished game piece pictures.

I think they turned out great! I love how they look together, plus they could be separate if wanted. And, they could be hung on the wall if I get tired of them sitting on the table. I may use the rest of the pieces that I have to make more pictures, but I like how these look together!

Upcycled Old Metal T.V. Trays

February 22, 2016February 21, 201620 Comments

Hello again! Did you all have a wonderful weekend? I pretty much just stayed home (saves money that way!) and worked on bringing some spring inside! We already have blossoms on trees and flowers blooming here. It’s probably too early, but it’s so beautiful, it’s hard to complain! I did get to work on a couple of projects too.

I have had these trays for years and could never really decide what to do with them. I have always used them for decorating outside because I felt like the floral design just lent itself to be outdoors. But they never had a specific purpose. I don’t know why this took so long to figure out, but an idea finally came to mind-at least for one of them.

I dug through some letters I have had for awhile and found enough to sort of make the word ‘garden.’ I had to add the leg for the ‘R’ and an extra line for the ‘E’, but I managed to make it work. I planned on doing the word ‘summer’ on the other one, but I didn’t have enough letters.

Now that I have my letters, I put a little glue on the back of each one and placed them on the tray. Probably a spray adhesive would have worked better, but I didn’t have any, so I went with what I could.

For the other tray, I tried covering the design with burlap and spraying around it.

With the letters attached on the first tray and lined up, I started spraying lightly over the top with white spray paint. I always use the Rustoleum 2X paint. Love this stuff!

Once I knew the letters would stick, I sprayed more layers of paint. It’s best to spray several light layers and let the paint dry in between. Once the paint was dry, I removed the letters.

I didn’t like how the second tray turned out, so I tried something different. I printed out 3 large flowers, laid them on top and sprayed around them. I didn’t like this either, so I am going to have to come up with a whole new plan. I will probably spray the whole thing white and then stencil something on top.

On the first tray, I sanded a little around the edges and over the top. I still wanted it to look like it belonged outside. After the sanding, I sprayed a clear sealer over the top to add some protection for the outdoors. I also added drawer pulls to the edges so it could be used as a tray for serving. At least one out of two turned out good!

I love how a little bit of the floral peeks through.

I wish it was warm enough to actually use this right now!

Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can enjoy a nice glass of tea out in the garden. Are you ready for spring? Have you started any spring projects yet? I would love to hear about it!