Category: quick and easy.

TGIF!

This has been a crazy week, I’m sure most of you can relate.  As many of you know, I have a day job working in municipal government.  I don’t share much about that here because that’s part of my boring, 9 to 5, accountant persona.  It’s not terribly exciting to share, but I do love my work there.

Here in Minnesota, our governor has finally issued an order for non-essential workers to Stay at Home starting tonight at midnight.  We were anticipating that he would do so, so I spent most of the week preparing for the possibility that I would have to work from home.  I won’t be able to do all of my work from home, but I can do a good portion of it here.

So this week has been spent scrambling to put things in place in preparation for the Stay at Home order over the next two weeks.  It has been a strange combination, being really busy at the day job and then going home and feeling like I had absolutely nothing to do.  Even though not all of our businesses have been closed yet, I’ve been trying to avoid public contact whenever possible so Mr. Q and I have been staying in and binge watching M.A.S.H.

I’ve also been at a loss for a good blog post for today.  All I worked on this week was a simple pair of candlesticks from the thrift store.

I purchased these because I liked the beefy size of them.  They weren’t horribly ugly or anything, maybe just a tad boring.

I decided they might look pretty fab with a rusty finish, so I pulled out some Dixie Belle products.

I started by painting them with a base coat of Dixie Belle’s Caviar, a basic black.  Once that dried, I added two coats of the Iron paint from their Patina Collection.  Before the 2nd coat of the Iron paint had a chance to dry, I sprayed them with the Green spray.

After waiting about 24 hours, they had developed some rusty patina.

It’s definitely an improvement, but I wanted a little bit more rust.

But I have found that when using these products, the rust continues to develop over time.  So last night I checked them out to see if they had gotten any rustier since last weekend.

They look a little rustier for sure.

I’m debating putting them outside to encourage even more rusting, like I got with the planters I painted last summer.

Hmmm, watching candlesticks turn rusty … seems like ‘a tad boring’ is a bit of theme today.

How about you?  How are you coping with the pandemic?  Working from home?  Having to close your business entirely?  Missing your family?  Running out of toilet paper?  Got any great ideas for relieving the boredom?

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing the Patina products used for today’s project.  You can find their products here.

 

A couple of weekends ago, before the world shut down, my sister and I hit up the thrift shops again.  We didn’t find much.  Debbie found some colorful plastic drinking glasses for using on the patio this summer, and I brought home just a handful of things.

I always pick up the glass canisters when I see them at a good price.  I love using them to store my craft supplies.

The fact that you can see what’s in them makes it so much easier to locate the item you need.

I’ve already added a Classic Vintage Label transfer from re.design with prima to the little galvanized bucket.

It’s perfect for a small plant, but also works great for holding paint brushes … if you happen to have a lot of them, which I do.

I’ll be painting the candlesticks eventually, but didn’t get to them in time for this post.

But my favorite find was the mid-mod desk lamp.

It was a little beat up, and the felt bottom had seen better days.  But I checked it at the store and it still worked.  I’m not sure about every Goodwill store, but the one we were at had a strip of outlets near the electrical goods so that you can plug something in to make sure it works.  Handy.

The first thing I did after cleaning the lamp was rip off the grungy old felt bottom and replace it with some new felt.  I simply cut it to fit and stuck it in place with spray adhesive.

Next I wanted to spruce up the gold finish on the lamp just a bit, so I pulled out a selection of metallic waxes to see which one would best match the existing color of the lamp.

The Bronze Age (bottom), which is one of my favorites, was clearly too brown.  The Eternal (middle), also a favorite, was a bit too bright.  But the Vintage Gold (top) was just right.

I used a piece of cloth to apply the wax all over the lamp.  It was pretty much a perfect match, and it helped even out some dings and other imperfections.

If you’ve never used this wax before, I’ll tell you that a little goes a long way.  It comes in a rather small container, but look how much I still have left in mine and I’ve used it on countless projects including this lamp …

I will let the wax cure for a full 30 days before using the lamp just to avoid melting it with the heat from the bulb.

I really wanted to add just a bit of an industrial vibe to the lamp to finish it off, so I pulled out the Everyday Farmhouse transfer from re.design with prima and added a little wording to the base of the lamp.

Adding just a little graphic punch to something always makes me happy.

I’m really loving the mid-mod vibe of this lamp, how about you?

Once the wax is cured and life has gone back to normal, I’m sure I’ll be bringing this one in to Reclaiming Beautiful to sell because I don’t have a spot for it myself.

As always, thank you to re.design with prima for providing the Vintage Gold wax and the Everyday Farmhouse transfer used on this project.

If you’re looking for re.design with prima products you can find local retailers here, or online sources here.

Today I’m sharing yet another item drawn from the pile in the carriage house.  I have to confess that I don’t exactly remember where this one even came from, but I think my picker, Sue, found it for me.

It’s just an old wooden fruit crate, and at some point someone replaced the bottom with new wood.

So I decided to see if I could use some Dixie Belle No Pain Gel Stains to create a faux finish that would age those boards just a bit.

As soon as I opened the can of Weathered Gray I knew it was going to be too light on its own.  It would be perfect for giving fresh wood a pickled or lime waxed look, but it was too light to match the rest of my crate.

So I decided to start by darkening up the wood with a coat of Walnut.

Once again, much like the last time I used this stain on some dresser knobs, I forgot that I wasn’t working with a quick dry, water based product.  So I tried to add the Weathered Gray before the Walnut was fully dry.  That just ended up blending the colors together, and I wanted a more layered look.  So I stopped working for the day and left the Walnut to dry for 24 hours.

The next day I used an old t-shirt to add some Weathered Gray over the Walnut.

It’s not a perfect match, but it certainly looks less like a brand new bottom on an old wooden crate.

Once I had that finished I decided to add one of the re.design with prima’s Sweet Apricot transfers to the blank side of the crate.

If you aren’t familiar with this transfer, it comes with 9 different fruit labels.  Each one is approximately 6.5″ x 9.25″.

I chose the one on the upper right and applied it, and then lightly sanded it to give it a more weathered look.

After I had the crate finished, I was trying to brain storm a way to stage it for photos.  I thought of filling it with clay pots and maybe a plant or two.  But then I thought, hey, wouldn’t this be a great way to corral your toilet paper supply!

Especially since apparently everyone else has stocked up with a year’s supply of toilet paper … except us.

It was at this point that I discovered we only had 3 rolls on hand.  So Mr. Q went off to the grocery store, only to return saying that they literally had no t.p. on the shelves.

Seriously you guys, has the world gone mad?

I confess I thought it was pretty ridiculous when I heard that people were stocking up on t.p.  Why in the world would you be worried about running out of such a simple and readily available commodity?  In fact, we even purposely did not buy t.p. a week ago because we didn’t want to contribute to the ‘panic buying’ problem and we didn’t need it then.

So now here we are one week later, rationing our remaining 3 rolls of t.p.

Well … not really.  Fortunately both my sister and our neighbor nnK are stocker uppers.  We have a standing joke with nnK that in the event of a zombie apocalypse or some other catastrophe, we’ll be heading to her house because she has enough food stocked up for all three of us.  Both Debbie and nnK have a healthy supply of tp and have offered to share.  So maybe we don’t have to ration it after all.

How about you?  Are you rationing the tp?

As always, thanks to Dixie Belle Paint Co for providing the No Pain Gel Stains I used on this project, and to re.design with prima for supplying the transfer.  I also especially want to thank Debbie and nnK for providing us with toilet paper.

If you’re looking for Dixie Belle products you can find them here.

If you’re looking for re.design with prima products you can find local retailers here, or online sources here.

Do any of you guys remember when I participated in the Index Card Art Project?  It was one year ago yesterday that I posted about it, gosh time flies.

Instead of oil painting or drawing, my artistic medium of choice is scrapbooking.  In this case, I used photos from the Adriatic Explorer cruise that Mr. Q and I had taken back in November 2018.

At the time I mentioned that I was going to be on the lookout for the perfect vintage recipe box to keep my cards in.

Now normally, it seems like these sort of boxes are a dime a dozen and I see them everywhere.  But of course, once I specifically wanted one I couldn’t seem to find one.

Then last week my picker, Sue, brought me a few goodies from an estate sale she went to including this box …

Eureka!  The perfect box to contain my index card art!

But oh, shoot!

My cards are too big for the box.  Drat!

I even thought for a moment that maybe I could cut the cards down to fit, but I had gone all the way to edge on most of them …

I’m glad I checked that before I started work on the box.  Had I been keeping this box to store my cards I would have given it a travel theme.  Although I don’t have a specific plan for pulling that off yet, I know I’ll come up with something when the right box comes along.

But in the meantime, I went ahead and gave this box a makeover anyway.

I started by painting it in Dixie Belle’s Sea Glass.  Then I sanded the edges and added one of re.design with prima’s Classic Vintage Label transfers to the front.

Once I had that in place I felt like the top needed just a little something too.  That’s when I noticed that I had this portion of another Classic Vintage Label …

I had cut out the center of this one to use on something else.  Coincidentally that made this leftover part perfect for this box.  Seriously, what are the chances?

It turned out so darn cute …

that now I’m doubly disappointed that my cards don’t fit 😉

Well, it’s back to the drawing board for something to store my index cards in.  Now I just have to decide if I’ll keep this box for something else, or send it in to Reclaiming Beautiful to sell.

In the meantime, as always, thank you to Dixie Belle Paint for for supplying the Sea Glass paint and to re.design with prima for supplying the Classic Vintage Labels transfer for this project.

If you’re looking for Dixie Belle products you can find them here.

If you’re looking for re.design with prima products you can find local retailers here, or online sources here.

A few weeks ago I had a few extra minutes during my lunch hour so I stopped off at a local Goodwill store.  I didn’t find much, but I did pick up a couple of gold frames.

I thought both of these would make good candidates for using a wet distress technique.

I started by removing the glass and the floral prints from each frame.  Then I painted the larger one using two coats of Dixie Belle’s Midnight Sky and the smaller one using two coats of Fluff.

As soon as the paint was dry I used a dampened terry cloth rag (a nubby cloth will work best for this) and simply rubbed paint off the raised surfaces.

It’s that easy.

Here are a couple of tips on wet distressing.

First, it works best on surfaces like this that have a raised design that you want to highlight.

Second, it’s a great choice when you want to distress down to another layer (in this case, the original gold of the frames) without going down to the wood underneath.  You’ll have a bit more control over that with wet distressing as opposed to sandpaper.

Third, it works best on paint that has just dried.  The longer you give the paint to cure, the harder it will be to wet distress.

Finally, it works best with a chalk style paint like Dixie Belle because this kind of paint is ‘reactivated’ with water (again, before it has had too much time to cure).

Another great benefit of wet distressing is that it doesn’t create any dust, which makes it perfect for winter indoor work (especially if you work in your living room like I do).

You can reveal as little or as much of the base color as you like.  And if you remove too much paint, just put more paint back on over it and try again.

When you achieve the look you were going for, simply add a coat of clear wax for protection and call it good.

I kept the original floral print in the smaller frame.

But I changed out the print in the larger frame.  I didn’t care for the red floral that came with it, so I went with this Eiffel Tower print instead.

What do you think?  An improvement?

Have you tried wet distressing?  Or do you have any other techniques that you are partial to?  If so, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

As always, thank you to Dixie Belle for providing the paint used on these frames.

You can find Dixie Belle products here.

Did you guys miss me on Wednesday?  I skipped right over having a post because … well … I gave at the office this week.  In other words, I spent all of my energy at the day job.  I’ve been putting in a little overtime of late because this is crunch time for me at my ‘real job’.  I’m not going to lie, it’s been a bit stressful.  I just haven’t had any energy left at the end of a long day to work on blog projects.

In addition, I can’t share the dresser that I finished last weekend yet because it’s part of a collaboration that I’m working on.  The reveal date isn’t until February 10.

But … you know what … how about if I give you a sneak peek at my piece …

Shhhh, don’t tell anyone that I showed you that 😉

Anyway, my point is, I have very little to share this week (and possibly next as well).  I’m going to spend some time this weekend working on my next piece(s) of furniture, but don’t know that I’ll get any of them done in time for a photo shoot before the sun goes down on Sunday.

In the meantime, I have one little project that I can share today.  This is one that I wasn’t even sure I would blog about because it’s not terribly exciting.  However, since I’m desperate for content, I’m just going to go with it.

Remember the Cosmic Roses dresser?

When I purchased that piece the seller asked me if I wanted the mirror frame that went with it, even though it didn’t have the mirror glass or the harp for attaching it anymore and the trim was broken off.

Of course I said yes.

Although I’m fairly sure this frame never went with that dresser.  It’s not the right size, and had a totally different wood finish.  I knew I could do something with it though.

My handyman Ken made quick work of gluing the trim piece back on the top and cutting a piece of hardboard to fit.  I just had to paint the hardboard with some chalkboard paint (I used the Rustoleum black chalkboard paint on this one), and then paint the frame.

For the frame I went with Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint in Farmhouse White.

I haven’t been using as much milk paint these days, but this piece reminded me how much I love it when it gets perfectly chippy.

I really love taking something that was destined for the dumpster and giving it a new life.

Not only have I been too busy to create things for the blog, I’ve also been too busy to get my stuff in to Reclaiming Beautiful.  Hopefully I’ll make it in there next week, and this chalkboard will go with me.  I want to get it there before Valentine’s Day has come and gone!

Thank you to Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint for providing the milk paint I used on the chalkboard frame.

One of the new transfer collections available from re.design with prima is called Classic Vintage Labels, and I absolutely love it.  I mentioned it last week when I shared how I used one of the sections on a secret Santa gift …

Here’s what comes with this transfer.

There are 27 different labels included in this one set, so I decided to get to work and see if I could add some labels to a few more things around here.

First I gathered up some raw materials including some enamelware and some clay pots.

Then it was as simple as just adding the rub-on labels.

This set of 4 enamelware refrigerator boxes got jazzed up with some labels.

The Bees & Queens label is definitely one of my favorites.

The transfers adhere beautifully to enamelware.  I added one to this old pot as well.

I think it makes a great impromptu ice bucket.

It feels like this cafe label was meant to go on this bucket.

This container was perfect for a hot chocolate gift basket that I put together.

Next I added a few labels to some clay pots.

I’d purchased a variety of cyclamens to give as hostess gifts over the holidays and it was fun to present them in pretty pots.

Even just the simple bee transfers add a lot to a plain clay pot.

Of course I couldn’t resist buying a cyclamen to keep for myself.

I love the pop of bright color they add to cold January days.  The flowers on these last quite a long time too, so you can enjoy them for a while.

Is it too early to start transitioning from holiday decor to spring decor?  Because I feel like I’m ready.  How about you?

Thank you to re.design with prima marketing for providing the Classic Vintage Labels transfers used in all of these projects.