Sunday, February 13, 2011

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Xmas 2010 ornament - antique spoon

Monday, February 7, 2011

A few more vintage Valentines . . .

Sharing a few more vintage Valentine inspirations for Vintage Inspiration Friday.

Aren't these just the sweetest images of children. Some are from the Graphic Fairy

and other free image blog sites.

A Victorian banner with vintage sheet music hearts,

sweet little girl pics, German glass glitter, and vintage lace

These little baby pics were so precious; I just had to give them angel wings

and adorned them with vintage lace corners and attached to old card stock;

and now they're ready to be attached to a gift

Saturday, February 5, 2011

MONDAY, JANUARY 24, 2011

faux metallic letter tutorial.

i'm all about using my painting powers for good and not evil (aka, nice "finishes", and not cheesy sponge-painting techniques), and today i thought i'd share a short tutorial on how to get a "metallic" look with paint. and it's so easy, trust me.

we've all seen the great zinc letters at anthropologie that are priced between $18-98/per letter. not bad if you are buying one, but bad if you are wanting to spell something out. anyway, i bought some cardboard letters at hobby lobby for around $2 each. they looked like this to begin with:

here are my supplies, along with a chip brush (the cheap-o brushes that are around one dollar at the craft store or home improvement store) and a paper towel:

black craft paint and folk art "pearl" paint. it works much better for silvery metallic finishes than the silver paint does!

first, i painted them both black as a base coat, then let them dry:

then, i did a super-quick dry brush of the pearly paint on top of the black. that means that i dipped a dry paint brush into a tiny bit of the pearl paint, and just kind of smudged it on. it's not rocket science...you just dab it on, then smear it around until it looks "right". you can also rub it off and around with the paper towel.

if you do an up-and-down motion with your brush, it looks more like aluminum.

and, you're done! so easy. you could do this with lots of different items, too. picture frames, boxes, etc. i started with these letters, just because i wanted to play around with this metallic finish and make sure it was "do-able", but now the options are endless...

Stenciled wall large graphics

POSTED ON AUGUST 5, 2010 BY EMILY | 125 COMMENTS | ADD A COMMENT

When I first took over the front office, I knew I wanted to make it a lighter, more inspiring room to be in. I thought about painting stripes because I really do love them, but I already have some thick ones painted in the boys’ room. Then I thought wallpaper would be nice. But here’s the thing about wallpaper: 1. I always like the most expensive one and 2. putting it up is a pain {although now that I think about it, it would probably be easier to hang wallpaper than to paint it. Oh well.}

So I decided that instead of looking for bargain wallpaper, I could just make my own. I really like these curtains from Ballard Designs and decided to take the pattern as my inspiration.

Here are the steps:

1. Create a template {or download mine at the end of the post}

2. Trace the design onto the wall. Over and over again. Now it makes a lot of sense to use a level to make sure you are not drawing diagonally down the wall, but I didn’t go to such effort. I think I have a pretty good sense of straight {if that makes sense} so I was able to eyeball it.

No, Brady did not help me trace the pattern, he was just my model.

Check out those sweet grubby little four-year-old fingernails.

There were sections where the pattern got a little wonky, so I just improvised and figured once the entire pattern was up, you wouldn’t notice little imperfections. The one thing I did try to do was to keep the pattern equal along the top & bottom of the wall {see photo}

3. Paint over the lines {I painted along the inside of the line}. I used a small paint brush that was the width that I wanted the lines to be and white latex paint we had leftover from the kitchen.