Barn Window Jewelry Holder

Happy One Week until Thanksgiving!! Are you getting excited? Planning your menus? Well I'm doing no planning, since we are going back to my parents' house for Thanksgiving this year, and my mom takes care of the food shopping and menu hoopla. We haven't been at my parents' house for Thanksgiving in several years, so I'm pretty excited.

Also, since I don't have any hostess planning going on right now, I've had some time to get some more homemade Christmas gifts made. This week I made jewelry holders for my mom and my sister. They both love jewelry, I am the odd one out there. They also both have a vintage-y, country-chic decorating style, so I decided to combine those two loves and create country-chic looking jewelry holders for each of them.

I started with two barn window frames that I got from my parents' stock of "treasures," as well as some chicken wire that Handy Andy had (obviously he has that lying around, don't you??).

I removed some old nails that were still sticking out of the window frames, and then sanded the frames down. Then, I spray painted them -- man, I love spray paint, so easy.

 

They were a little splotchy, but that's fine because, after they dried I sanded them again and brushed some dark wood stain over them. (No, I did not do them Christmas colors on purpose, thanks to Handy Andy for asking. Those are colors they each use to decorate with often).

Once the stain dried, I finished them with Minwax Finishing Paste (love that stuff). Rubbing that on them lightened up the stain a bit too, I really like how the colors turned out. After that dried, I added the chicken wire to the back with a staple gun -- I suggest wearing gloves, I didn't and my fingers were killing me when I was done.

To finish them off, I added some lace and burlap embellishments, and some scrabble tiles to my mom's and...

Done!

These were pretty simple to make, and I think they will really love them...AND they are useful - score! I also bought some little hooks to add for them to hang their necklaces on, but I haven't gotten around to putting them on yet.

 

Are you making progress on your family Christmas list this year?

Thanks for stopping by!

 

Refinished Lamp

Happy New Year All! I hope you had a fun and safe New Year's! I feel very productive already in 2012. I worked on a few projects yesterday and wrapped this one up that I started a little while ago.

Remember my vintage button lampshade? Well I finally got around to painting the $5 lamp I thrifted to go with the shade. I loved the design of the lamp, it just needed a makeover before it got placed in the guest room. Here's what it looked like when I bought it:

 

I got the lamp home and found out it didn't work, but Handy Andy worked his magic and fixed it up. Then I cleaned it with soap and water and taped off the electrical parts.

At first I thought about keeping the two-toned look, and just painting the darker parts of the lamp, but I couldn't find a spray paint with the hammered finish in a color I liked. Instead, I decided to paint the entire lamp with the same blue paint I used on my frame for the guestroom and then finish it with a high gloss lacquer. I used Rust-oleum Wildflower Blue, satin finish [love this color!], and then coated it with Rust-oleum Specialty Lacquer. I did two coats of the blue and one coat of the lacquer.

 

I love the way it turned out with the gloss finish! It looks great with the lampshade in my guestroom.

I'm excited to be chipping away at finishing the decor of the guestroom, one project at a time! I'm also working on refinishing the light fixtures in our kitchen and will be sharing those soon.

How did you start the New Year?

P.S. Linking up here:

Thrift store love & my new chairs

A few weeks ago Handy Andy and I took a trip to a local thrift store. He was looking for some new flannel shirts (oh yeah), and I was looking for anything I could use in a scrapbook and maybe a picture frame. I found a few fun things, including Scrabble tiles, some vintage-looking cards and an excellent frame.

While I was rummaging around, I passed by the furniture section and came across these chairs that I instantly loved. There were three of them, but I only bought two. They were $5 each.

Ok, so they don't look like much, but I loved the look of them and I had been looking for another little something to put in my living room. I had seen a chair I really loved from Target:

The problem? For starters, it was about $200 over budget. Also, it was a little too big for the open spot in my living room.

So, back to my thrift-store chairs. I had read Centsational Girl's blog post about refinishing a thrift-store chair, so when I saw these chairs I thought (in true Handy Andy fashion) "I can do that!" I brought them home and prepared for the refinishing. I gathered the following supplies (most from Handy Andy's collection):

1. Spray paint
2. Staple gun
3. Scissors
4. Sandpaper
5. Amazing fabric (that I bought from JoAnn's - on sale!)

Next, I took the seats off by flipping the chairs over and unscrewing the four screws that held the seats on.

I lightly sanded the chairs all over and wiped them down with a damp cloth. Then spray paint. My mom was visiting, so that was her job while I worked on painting another project I'll share later.

While the paint dried I cut two pieces of fabric for the seats. On Centsational Girl's post, she added some padding, but I actually thought the seats were comfortable enough. I covered the seat as they were, old fabric and all. I folded the fabric around the seats tightly and used the staple gun to secure the fabric on the underside of the seat. All that's left is screwing the seats back on to the chair frames, and...

Done! Well, this was taken before they were actually done, because I had to go back and fix a few spots with the spray paint. After that I moved them to their rightful place in my house...

They are perfect for the space and it only cost me about $30 total. I call that a success! What do you think?

P.S. Linked up to The Idea Room's linky party. Check it out to see more fun projects!

Pinterest Thursday: I tried it!

The room where my craft table is located is affectionately called Sparty's Room due to the Michigan State decor and the large MSU Spartan fathead on the wall.

Sparty's room is my craft room as well as our office. There's a lot going on in Sparty's Room and it's not a very big space. I'm always trying to figure out good organizational methods to make the most of the space I have in there, so when I saw this on Pinterest I got inspired:

Cute. Simple. Cheap. Now it's my turn -- I think I can make that!

Over the course of about two weeks I gathered eight empty cans and peeled the labels off and washed them. I decided that I didn't want to put the cans directly on the wall so I picked a piece of wood from Handy Andy's wood scraps to mount the cans onto. After that, I got some green and white spray paint and gorilla glue (from Handy Andy's adhesive collection). I painted the board and four of the cans white. The other cans got painted green. Once they dried I used the gorilla glue to mount the cans on the board. Gorilla glue expands, so it was good for the skinny bottom edges of the cans. This glue  takes between 4-6 hours to completely dry, so I patiently waited and then...

 Eureka!

If you look closely, you can see where the gorilla glue expanded outside of the cans and I was too lazy to fix it didn't fix it because it gave it more personality...or something. I still need to do something with my ribbons, but this lovely can creation cleared up some space on my table, so I'm happy!

Well, maybe you can't tell that it helped to organize my table, but it did. I promise.

P.S. To see more Pinterest-inspired projects, head over to By the Book Paper for Pinterest Thursday posts.