Peonies and a thrift store find...

Each spring I eagerly await when my Peonies bloom. I'm not sure there is anything quite as lovely. There a little like clouds on a stem. When I saw this lovely pottery "basket" at the thrift store. I knew I had to have for my Peonies. It set me back a whole $1, thanks to a 50 percent off sale.

Make your own Mercury glass...

So my friend recently had a yard sale, and let me tell you, I was buying. (Plus she gave me lots of stuff too.) Anyway she had this star shaped tea light holder that I thought had potential as just a decorative element. I thought it would look great with a mercury glass treatment.

The main ingredient needed is the Looking Glass spray, by Krylon. It's a little expensive, but it's awesome stuff.  I've used it to make mirror before. You just follow the instructions on the can, but they basically entail spraying the back of the glass. I like it because it created the aged mirror look that I love. While making the mirror, I found it sped the process along if you sprayed black paint on the back. (Otherwise you have to put on a lot of coats of the Looking Glass.)

So to get the Mercury glass look, I found it works best to use the looking glass first, a couple light coats. While the Looking Glass is still a little wet, start spraying, other metallic paints - I had chrome and gold- on the backside of the glass. It's also great, while the paint is still wet, to hit it with some sprinkles of water. (It reacts cool with the paint and makes it more Mercury-like.) I forgot this step on my star. I finish off with a light coat of black paint. I just used chalkboard because that's what I had on hand. 

Here's the finished product ... cloudy-mirrored, loveliness. Useful, no. Pretty, yes.

Almost everything has potential...

When it comes to furniture, I think almost anything has potential. There are a few caveats...pressed board pieces are generally not worth the effort ...okay, so maybe there is really only one caveat. Anyway, when my grandmother offered me this ugly footstool I didn't hesitate to take it in.

It took me awhile before  I decided what I wanted to do. I've never really recovered anything like this before, so I was a little hesitant. I decided to tackle it using some nice, but cheap fabric I picked up at St. Vincent Depaul.

I originally going to sew a removable cover for it, but since I'm new to sewing, I made the initial part of the cover a little too small, so I decided to get out my staple gun (otherwise known as my BFF.)

 I stapled the skirt on. I also chose to do the fabric on the reverse because it was a little garish (which is probably why it ended up at the thrift store.)

I  was able to cover up my staples with a combination of piping and gimp. This was my first attempt at making my own piping. The single piping turned out great, but the double piping not so much.

It's a little wonky, but I'm pretty happy with my first attempt. I have a similar project waiting it's turn in the basement.

Now the real challenge--- finding  time for the piles of potential hanging out in the basement.

Ready to travel

I have a hard time passing up a suitcase, but you can only use so many...especially when you rarely go any place.

I decided to take this suitcase and

combine it with this ...



The combination equaled a cute little side table.

I don't know if it was the recent royal wedding ... or maybe my extreme adoration of Miss Mustard Seed ... but I can't get enough of the Union Jack right now. This looks much cuter in person... the background is actually a light blue, but in the photo it almost looks white.

I have a paint brush and I will use it....

So I repainted this cabinet a while back. (It had some veneer problems) When I did that I decided to remove the decorative element from the doors because I wanted an unobstructed view of what was inside the cabinet.

I hung on to them for awhile until I decided to use them as "paneling" in the little area outside our kitchen area. They fit perfectly. I painted them and the wall so they look like solid wood. I recently repainted the wall a green color to make them and my artwork pop more too.

Around that same time I made a "child/dog gate" out of an old frame and some chicken wire. It keeps the dogs out of the basement while allowing access for the cat (he goes right over the top.) It's also held up better than the child gate we use to use, which broke pretty quickly.

It's puppet time

I wish I would have done a tutorial for this, but I was really winging it and was in a time crunch (hence the slightly eschew window.)

A while back, I picked up a canvas show curtain thinking I could use it for something. I did use it to recover a chair, but had enough left to make a puppet theater. I just had to add some coordinating fabric to the bottom to make it long enough.

I discovered after I made my hole, and finished off with seam binding, that I needed to add some fusible interfacing to the backside, to keep the window from falling forward. (It actually would have benefitted from a stiffer interfacing, but I was using what I had on hand.)

Ages ago I picked up some old felt board letters and have been able to use them for several projects. I was really glad to have them on hand for this project.

My darling neices were happy with their theater, although everyone also wanted to see out of the window too... so funny.

I'm linking to The Freckled Laundry's Air Your Laundry Party.

T-shirt redo

 

So when I was getting ready for a garage sale, I came across some clothes that I couldn't sell because of of stains. I decided to salvage some of those shirts and turn the designs into appliques to redo, plain shirts. I simply used Pellon (follow the directions on the product), to turn them into iron-ons and then ironed them to the plain shirts. I also did a zig-zag stitch around the edge of the applique.

Getting a picture of my little guy in this handy work is easier said then done.

Whew, he finally stood still. Here's his "new" shirt.

 I used the technique on a couple of shirts for him and a few shirts for me ...yeah, I was able to salvage my own Donald Duck and Pippi Longstocking T-shirts.