Month: April 2024

the day for metals.

Published on by Quandie15 Comments

My friend opK and I hit the thrift shops last week and I came home with a nice little pile of things to makeover.

I’m always looking for wooden items to paint, but somehow I ended up with mostly metal items this time around starting with this trash can.

This is made out of heavy duty galvanized metal, the foot petal still works perfectly and it just needs a good cleaning.  I did a quick online search and found this exact trash can for sale on Wayfair for $81.99.  But I’m wondering, should I paint mine?  The one on Wayfair almost looks like it has a bit of a wash over the metal …

and I also see some rusty spots.  What do you think, leave a comment and let me know, add a wash or leave it alone?

Next up is this little group of items.

The little bird on a cage is already perfectly rusty and fabulous, and he’s going to fit on the urn in the front.  But first I’m going to rusty up that urn with some of the Dixie Belle Patina paint.  In fact, I’m going to rusty up all three of those other items.

Next up are a couple of buckets.

The tall one was a simple makeover.  After cleaning it up, I gave it a couple of coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth and then added an I.O.D. transfer from the Brocante set.

It already had a nice black rolled rim, and I’ve painted a couple of similar pieces in the past that ended up looking like enamelware.

As for the smaller bucket, it had some strange textural flaws.

I don’t know what that is, but I couldn’t sand it down so I decided to just work with it.  I mixed some of Dixie Belle’s Sea Spray texture additive with some of their Dried Sage paint and then stippled it onto the bucket with a chip brush.

Once dry I sanded it lightly to knock back some of the peaks.  Then I added a coat of Drop Cloth over it, and once dry, sanded again.  Finally I added another of the Brocante transfers.

Now that it has an overall texture, the drippy looking clumps don’t stand out at all.

I love the end result on both buckets.

I did manage to find a couple of non-metal items while out thrifting that day.

I’ll admit that I was a bit hesitant about the chalkboard.  I think the chalkboard phase might be over.  But it’s one of those more authentic vintage chalkboards with a little wooden rail to hold the chalk.

So I thought I’d take a chance on it.

After giving it a good cleaning, I refreshed the wooden frame with some brown wax and then I simply added a little different wording to it.

Now we’ll see whether or not it sells.

As for the other item, it’s a cookbook holder.

Someone had decoupaged it to within an inch of its life.  That’s three layers of torn paper, all decoupaged into place.  It took me forever to get those off.  It involved lots of soaking with water, scraping with a razor blade and finally some sanding.

I wanted to give it a far more subtle look so after painting it with Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage, I simply added a paint inlay from the I.O.D. Melange set.

Those artichokes seemed like the right touch for a cookbook holder.

While opK and I were heading from one thrift store to another, she spotted an estate sale sign so we hit the brakes to check it out.  It ended up being the estate of some serious antique collectors.  They had collections of antique crocks and stoneware jugs, old glass bottles, vintage soda pop bottles, and interestingly enough, mortar and pestle sets.  I bet there were at least 20 or more of those.

As can often be the case at professionally run estate sales, most of the prices were too high for me.  But I did come home with a couple of things.

I couldn’t resist the little enamelware pot.  It was $18, so a little steep for me but not outrageous.

After washing it up, I decided to add an I.O.D. transfer to it.

I’m sure that antique purists will be horrified by that.  But the transfer could be easily removed down the road when I get tired of it, or if I eventually sell it on to someone who doesn’t like it.

But for now I’m planning to keep this little pot and use it as a vase.  And I think that transfer made it just a little more special.

As for the other items, they are hose guards.  At least I’m fairly sure that’s what they are.

If you aren’t familiar with hose guards, you put them at the edge of a garden bed to prevent your garden hose from dragging through the plants.  I purchased some plastic hose guards last summer and they didn’t even last through one season.

These are super heavy, maybe cast iron?  I’m not sure what material they are made out of, but I think they’ll be far superior to the plastic ones.  And at only $5 for all 5 of them, they were definitely a bargain.

So overall it was a successful day of thrifting.  Which of my finds is your favorite?  And what about that trash can, would you add a wash?  Leave a comment and let me know.

champagne taste on a beer budget.

Published on by Quandie12 Comments

I went to a fantastic vintage sale recently with my friend opK (it was Haupt Antiek Market for any of you locals who may be familiar).  They had several really lovely, and authentic, French blue enamelware pitchers.  At $98 each, they were a bit out of my price range though.

However, when I got back home I remembered that last summer a good friend of Mr. Q’s offered me a trio of metal French style pitchers.

Unfortunately, they weren’t the authentic French enamelware kind.  But even though these are inexpensive knock-offs, I thought it would be fun to try to give them an authentic look using paint.

The first pitcher to get a makeover was this one.

I initially planned to give this one a rusty look with the Dixie Belle Patina paint.  So after cleaning it and then giving it a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky chalk paint, I gave it the rusty treatment using their Iron paint and Green spray (for full instructions on this process, check out this how-to post).

While it did turn out exactly as expected, it feels a bit boring to me (more on that in a minute).

I then moved on to the next pitcher.

After cleaning, I gave it two coats of Dixie Belle’s Drop Cloth.  Then I added a transfer from the I.O.D. Brocante collection.

I then gave it a spotty rust treatment.

I’d recently seen a YouTube video by The Provincial Farmhouse where she used the Dixie Belle Iron paint and Green activator spray to add some rust to a metal tray that she was painting to look like faux enamelware.  So I decided to give that a go on this pitcher.

Basically I just dabbed some of the Iron paint onto my pitcher here and there and then used a brush to dab the spray over the wet Iron paint (spraying it wouldn’t have given me enough control).

Over time that rust will continue to develop and look more authentic.

I love the sense of age that this added to what otherwise looked like a rather freshly painted pitcher.

After being inspired by those authentic French pitchers at Haupt Antiek Market, I pulled out the Miss Mustard Seed milk paint in French Enamel for the third pitcher.

It had a very shiny factory paint job both inside and out, so after giving it a good cleaning, I painted it with a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Dried Sage.  I knew the milk paint wouldn’t stick to that shiny original paint.  The chalk paint will adhere nicely to it though, and the milk paint will adhere nicely to the chalk paint.

Once I had the French Enamel paint on, I gave this one some spotty rust as well.

And as you can see in that photo, I did get a few small chippy spots.

I added a topcoat of Dixie Belle’s clear wax to this one.

I loved the end result, and I especially loved the French Enamel color, so I brought my somewhat boring rusty pitcher back out and painted over the rust with the rest of my already mixed milk paint.

I noticed that the milk paint was getting a little chippy, and then I remembered that I had added a dark wax to a couple of spots on this pitcher.

So those waxed spots were resisting the milk paint, while it adhered fairly well in the non-waxed areas.

I wanted to preserve that chippy look but still prevent more paint from flaking off, so I gave the pitcher a quick spray with some Rust-Oleum matte spray sealer.  Once that was dry, I followed it up with another two coats of Dixie Belle’s flat clear coat.

And with that, all three pitchers have been transformed.

Now, I fully realize that none of these are going to pass as authentic French enamelware.  But rather than a price tag of $98, I’ll probably mark mine somewhere in the $18 range instead.  So for those of us with champagne taste on a beer budget, these would probably do just fine.

What do you think?

forget me not.

Published on by Quandie2 Comments

I pulled this galvanized box out of my stash the other day.

I thought I could dress it up with some paint and more of the new I.O.D. Lover of Flowers transfers.  I went through the transfers and decided the forget-me-nots would be lovely on it, so that led me to then chose Dixie Belle’s Serenity Silk paint for the box.

It’s a really lovely shade of blue-green that leans a little towards grey, and it works beautifully with the colors in the forget-me-nots.

I scuff sanded my box, then washed it up with Dawn dish soap and hot water.  The Silk paint then went on as smooth as … well … silk.

But I forgot one little, bitty thing.  The Silk paint is an acrylic paint.  And I find that it does not adhere to smooth metal as well as chalk paint.  It tends to be more prone to scratching, and more importantly, prone to pulling away from your surface when you try to apply a transfer.  You can see where that began to happen as I was applying the typography portion of the transfer …

There are a couple of things I could have done differently.  First up, I could have used the Bonding Boss first to improve the adhesion of my paint.  But I didn’t.  Second, I could have let my paint dry for at least 24 hours before adding the transfer.  But I didn’t.  Third, I could have just used a chalk paint since I was painting over a slick surface.  But, I didn’t do that either.

After struggling to get the first portion of the transfer down, and finding that my paint was pulling away.  I put everything aside and let my paint dry until the next day.  I was then able to carefully apply the rest of the transfer successfully.

I should point out that I purchased two sets of the Lover of Flowers transfer.  I knew I would be able to use it on lots of small projects, and I also knew that I.O.D. new releases tend to sell out quickly so I stocked up.

I used the forget-me-not poem from one set, and the floral swags from both sets to decorate this box.

I cut both of the swags apart to create one swag that was twice as wide.  I wanted to fill the entire space on the front of my box.

I finished up with a coat of clear wax over the entire box.  Although the Silk paint has a built in topcoat, the transfer does need to be sealed.

Although I originally just filled it with books for my photos, I also think it would make a great container for some flowering houseplants.

As a sidebar, the plant on the right is the Streptocarpus Ladyslippers™ Deep Blue Vein from my front window box that I decided to try overwintering in the house this year.  It has had lots of lush green foliage all winter, but it only recently started putting out blooms again.  On the right is a potted azalea that some friends gifted me with the other day.

I’m not going to keep this one though, I’ll be adding it to the pile of stuff I’ve set aside for a potential occasional sale this summer, unless one of you locals wants to snatch it up first!