Housekeeping item no. 1 – Congratulations to Marguerite.  I drew her name at random to win the Moody Blues giveaway.  Mr. Q sent it off in the post yesterday!

Housekeeping item no. 2 – Some nefarious person has created a fake profile on Instagram using my photo and the name ‘lindastrand1234’.  It is not me!  Do not be fooled.  Please note that my only profile on Instagram is qisforquandie!

OK, now on with today’s post!

I headed out for a bit more thrifting with my friend Sue last week.  Thrifting can really be hit or miss, and last week it was mostly a miss.

That’s about it for the smaller pieces.  Pretty blah, right?

I had to laugh at the reindeer candle holder.  He seems to be solid brass, but someone spray painted him brown.  Do you think they were trying to create a chocolate reindeer?  It really doesn’t seem to work in the same way as those chocolate bunnies.  Maybe because candlesticks made out of chocolate would probably be a bad idea.

I grabbed him because I thought it would be an interesting experiment to try and strip that spray paint back off.  And if that fails, I can always spray paint him gold.  Either way, I’ll hang onto him until the Christmas season.

Next up, these metal ceiling tile/ceramic tile thingies.

Again, I only grabbed these because I thought they might present the opportunity for a fun project.  I’m challenging myself to come up with a way to give these an updated look.  You’ll have to stay tuned for that one.

This next piece was a no-brainer for me.

I always grab these wooden totes when I see them.  They are so fun to makeover (take a look at a few I’ve done here, here and here).  This one will go into the stack of small projects for a snowy day (which we’ve had quite a few of lately).

Last up for the small items are these two galvanized pieces.

Let me ask you guys something here, do you think galvanized is on the way out?  Is it too closely associated with farmhouse style?

You may remember this galvanized tray that I thrifted quite some time ago …

I added that Vanilla Bean Farm wording to the front and took it to the shop, and there it sits.  Not selling.

So I was hesitant to pick up these two galvanized pieces, even more so because they were both priced rather high for what they are.  I literally will be lucky if I can make more than a dollar or two re-selling them.  But as seems to be the theme in this post, I thought they would both make fun projects.

I have been having a lot of luck lately selling pieces that have the I.O.D. Rose Chintz paint inlay on them, so I decided to go that route with the first galvanized tote.

I painted it in Dixie Belle’s The Gulf, and then blended in just a little bit of their Sea Glass in the center to add some depth.  Then I applied the paint inlay (my how-to post on this process can be found here).  Once dry, I sprayed it with a matte sealer to keep the inlay from smearing.  Then I sanded it very lightly and gave it a final coat of clear wax.

I painted directly over the galvanized metal without any sort of primer.  I find that chalk style paint does a very good job of sticking to galvanized metal like this as long as there isn’t a shiny topcoat on the metal.  I did wonder if the process of pulling off the paint inlay backing sheet would pull off any of the paint and there was just one small spot where that happened.

I’m OK with a little chipping, but if you’re not you may want to apply a coat of Dixie Belle’s Slick Stick before your first coat of paint over galvanized metal.

Next up is the galvanized container with the brass handles.  I actually picked this one up because I was looking for something to hold the amber bottles that I shared a little while back.

I was hoping they would all fit in this galvanized container, but it’s only big enough for three of them.  Nonetheless, I decided to do it up for that purpose.  I started by cleaning it, of course.  Then I painted the inside in Dixie Belle’s Anchor because it was a little stained and grungy looking.

Next I wanted to clean up those handles a bit.  I suppose I could have tried polishing them with some brass cleaner, but instead I decided to add some of Dixie Belle’s Gilding Wax in Bronze.

It was just enough to freshen them up a bit.

Next I added some sections of the gold Somewhere in France transfer from re.design with prima to the front …

and back …

The gold over the galvanized metal is pretty subtle, but I think it adds just a little something extra.

In addition to that meager pile of small items, I also picked up this kid sized cupboard.

I have to say, I put this in the cart and pushed it around a bit, then I almost took it back out of the cart because I just wasn’t sure I wanted to tackle it.  But it was only $6.99, so I figured if nothing else it would be yet another interesting experiment to see if I could improve upon it.  My biggest problem with it after the cherry red paint is that it looks so top heavy.  I’m really not at all sure how I’m going to solve that problem.  If anyone has any ideas, please share in the comments.

That brings me to my find of the day.

I dug that gold framed mirror out from behind a few other large mirrors.  I’d seen just the tip of it poking out.

Isn’t that lovely?  I think I’m probably going to hang onto this one.

What do you think?  Which item would have been your find of the day?  Leave a comment and let me know!