We’ll See, Ce Ce Caldwell….

Just how washable are your paints!

Warning…this may take a while…

This weekend, the sun was out and a welcomed site.  We’ve had more than our share of rain this summer and many projects were put off due to the damp weather.  I was able to accomplish some of the projects that I had started and never finished. 

1^st project was to add one more coat of stain to our back porch dining table so I can start the protective clear coat this week. I'll post more on this project later...

2^nd was to hang the curtains in our bedroom, that I purchased last summer and never got around to hanging. Excuse the mess, it's a work in progress and you wouldn't believe the equipment used in this project...

3^rd seal the grout in our master bath shower that I replaced last weekend.

And I did all of that so that I could get downstairs and try out my newly purchased chalk paint.  I would not let myself start any project with this new discovery until I had finished the other projects.

 

If you aren’t familiar with chalk paint, it’s the be-all-end all in repainting furniture, kitchen cabinets, metal, you name it, you can use chalk paint on it.  Stripping the furniture or sanding is not required.  All you have to do is make sure the piece is clean and start painting, however waxing is required at the end to protect the paint and enhance the color.

We live 45 minutes south of Atlanta and there aren’t any vendors that carry any of the popular brands of chalk paint (Annie Sloan, Ce Ce Caldwell, Miss Mustard Seed, etc.) in our area.  There is a shop in Senoia, Ga. that sells it, but I’m never in that area and it’s a long way to drive for me to buy 1 quart of this expensive wondrous paint.

 

Fate intervened in that I needed to meet a client on Friday, to discuss an upcoming home staging project and she suggested The Senoia Coffee and Café.

 

Well, twist my arm why don’t you? As soon as we finished our meeting, I made a bee line to the cute little shop that carried the Annie Sloan brand and as I was leaving that shop noticed another shop that carried the Ce Ce Caldwell brand.  I purchased A. S. duck egg blue, and CCC in pure white. I couldn’t wait to get home and start using my new purchases.

I was so excited to try it, I didn’t know which way to turn.  What would I start painting first?  

I had this little picture frame that I wanted to paint, so I added a coat of CCC pure white to it.  You can see that I had added painters tape (another project that didn’t get finished) to create stripes and all I had to do was start painting. Out in the sun it goes to dry. 

 

Then I had some old faded reed placemats and I put a coat of AS duck egg blue on those….out into the sun it goes.  Not really sure that I like these painted, but I needed something to paint quickly.

 

I’m in the basement, practically turning around in circles, excitedly trying to decide on what to paint next and I spotted a mirror I’ve been wanting to lighten up.  I snatch it off the wall and lay it on the table and start applying AS duck egg blue.  I was so excited to use this beautiful paint that I didn’t take any before photos.

 

 

Got that coat on, applied a 2^nd coat to the now dried placemats and then decided to add one more coat of white to the little picture frame before I stopped.

 

Now let me just say, I know that I tapped that lid on the CCC paint after I used it the first time….I just know that I DID!  I grabbed the paint in one hand, started to shake the container and guess what?  The lid was loose and paint was splashing out EVERY WHERE!  I was a gasp, I say, absolutely gasping!  

It was on the floor (carpet tiles) on furniture legs, on the wall, all over my clothes and me.  While wanting to throw up because of the mess that I had just made and because of all that expensive chalk paint that I had just wasted, the only thing that I could think of was…"well they say it just cleans up with water and a little bit of soap, so we’ll just see if it actually does. We'll just see Ce Ce Caldwell!)

I started pulling up the glued carpet tiles and taking them outside one by one to hose off, I would wet one down and then go get another one. Once they were all outside, I added some spray cleaner and started hosing.  And it did wash completely out of the carpet tiles.  WHEW! 

 

I

The walls and some of the other places that got splattered were not so lucky...

And my paint clothes may not recover...

 

I’m still locating paint splatters, but I’m not going to let it upset me.  These things happen.  Get over it!  Move on!  Go paint something else and be sure the lid is on  next time. 

 

Typography Tutorial

Having long admired the cute typography art work in all the stores and all over Pinterest but not wanting to pay the prices at the stores, I researched how to create one myself.

 

But how to get the letters even and steady looking.  Anyone that knows me knows that I have horrible penmanship and trying to free hand something like this was not an option, if I wanted to be able to read it later while hanging on the wall.

You Are My Sunshine is a song I used to sing to my grandson while trying to get him to settle down and decided to use the beginning verse as my art project.

Finally, I found this site giving instructions on how to mirror print from your printer and then transfer the print to your board, canvas or whatever you are using by wetting the back of the paper. 

 

The hardest part was trying to figure out how to mirror print on my printer, but I finally got it. 

By following the instructions from the tutorial, it did work…sorta!  I ended up going back over the letters with a pencil to fill in a little darker, however that tended to smudge a little if I wasn’t careful.  Spraying some poly acrylic over the entire canvas prevented any additional smudging.

I wish I had a picture of how it looked before I added some stain to give it an aged look, but our computer crashed and I lost a ton of photos and docs…proving that we really do need to regularly back up our files!  Big sigh!  I don’t even know what all I lost until I go back to find it and it’s not there.  Big sigh!

Anyhoo…using a little bit of the stain that I used on the Horse With No Name project, I did a little dry brushing onto the canvas so that it wouldn’t be so “bright”.  I'm beginning to appreciate age, patina, character, wrinkles, cellulite….oh, let me get back on track.

 

 

And this is how it looks while at work in a staged home….it makes me happy when skies are grey and we’ve had plenty of those lately. 

Now I know it doesn't look all professionally done like the ones that you can go out and purchase, but I like that part of it too....it's something that I created and that makes me happy too!

What projects are you working on lately?

 

 

How To Cover Dining Room Chairs for under $8

This is one of the best deals I think that I've ever discovered.  A few weeks ago, while shopping for an upcoming vacant staging job, I found these curtain panels on sale from $29.99 to $16.99.  The colors and fabric pattern were perfect to  update some things that I already had in the works for this project. So, in the buggy a panel went.

I can't drive to Atlanta and shop at Forsyth Fabrics or Lewis Textiles for $16.99!  And if I did, the least expensive I could purchase the fabric would be around $15/yard.  These panels were 54" w x 95" long.  This was a DEAL folks!

 

However, I always check out the end caps for clearance items and guess what I found?   Give up?  This bunched up packaged panel for only $7.56.  Only $7.56?  Really? 

 

 

 

See where it says "online item"?  I guess someone had ordered it online and returned to our local Target and since it wasn't packaged the same as the others, ended up on the clearance shelf. 

Score!

 

I couldn't get out of there fast enough.  I kept thinking someone was going to come over to me and tell me that the panel was mistakenly placed on the clearance shelf and the price marked was incorrect.  





 

Once home, I opened the package and pressed the panel and thought about the best way to use it.  Pillows for sure, then I remembered that I was going to use some antique chairs that I had and the chair pads had not been updated in about 20 or more years.  They still had the hunter green & cream gingham check fabric that I added way back in the day when "the country" look was all the rage. 

 

 

WAY BACK!

 

Mr. Fixit had to make a few repairs so they would be safe to sit in and while he did that, I started laying out the seats on top of the new fabric to measure for cutting.  I added 3 inches all the way around and cut out enough for 4 seats.

Once all covers were cut, I started stapling and pulling.  It's not difficult and it goes fairly quickly. 

Sometimes I had to use my little pink hammer to get the staple all the way in. 

 

To create a neat corner....I folded up the corner like so and stapled...

 

 

 

Then tightly pulled up the bottom portion of the corner and stapled.

 

Then pulled over the side part of the corner and stapled

 It's a little bit like wrapping a package. 

 

Look at how they update these chairs...

 and see how good they look with this white table ...

 

Some of the left over panel was used to make a table runner for the table and I still have enough left over to cover some throw pillows.



 

All of this for under $8! 

 

A Horse With No Name

While recently researching online for a simple DIY art project, this horse silhouette popped up and it was love at first site.  It's a discontinued item from Pottery Barn that was priced at $199 smack-a-roos. 

 

 

 

Taking a mental inventory of supplies needed, I realized that I could probably complete this with little or zero $$$$.  Now that's my kinda project! 

 

 How Do You Like Me Now

 

 

 

 

Ride A Horse Save a Cowboy

 

These songs kept running through my head....

 

 

First, I researched online for a horse silhouette and found several.  Once a choice was made, it was downloaded into a pictures file.  Trying to figure out how to make it large enough to be impressive took some extra thinking on my part and I was not patient enough to wait to have an enlarged copy made at the office store.  Did you know that when you move that little rolling thing on your mouse over a saved photo that it will increase or decrease in size?  I didn't know that, but I do now!

 

 

 

 

 

After using copy paper and taping it to the monitor, I traced a portion of the horse.  Then move to the next section, taped on another piece of copy paper and trace that part.  Needless to say, lots of tape and several sheets of paper later, I had a large version of a horse silhouette, but it was worth the sacrifice.

 

 

Remembering that I had some packing paper that would be large enough to use as a template, I retraced the horse again. See it on the door below?  This paper was too thin to use as a "reversed stencil", so contact paper and poster board were purchased.  (There goes the budget.) Using tape to attach poster board and contact paper (at different times), the horse was retraced again. 

 

 

There were left over boards from our great room ceiling that I would never through out, because, being the "almost hoarder" that I am, we might need it one day and guess what, it was needed!

 

 

 

It's a tongue and grove board and we had to use some braces on the back so the boards wouldn't wobble to and fro. 

When I say we, I mean E. 

E's my Sous-Crafter and my husband. He also cut them to the size so I wouldn't cut my fingers off.  He got to use the table saw...arr, arr, arr or what ever Tim the Tool man would say.

 

Once the boards were stained, my canvas was ready!

The stain was left over from a rental house reno.

 

 

 

 

Being concerned about the paint leaking under the poster board into the groves of the wood, I decided to use the contact paper version and carefully made sure it was really stuck in those groves, before and during the painting process.

 

 

Using some SW Antique White latex flat paint left over from another project, I dry brushed the paint onto the board, being careful to only stamp around the outside of the horse instead of a back and forth method.  You can barely see the outline of the contact paper horse.  By the time I got to the bottom of the board the top had dried, so adding the second coat was a fast process.  It only took two coats and I wanted a rustic look.

 

After peeling off the contact paper, I used some sanding blocks to rough up the edges and then used a very little bit of the stain from before to distress it. 

This entire project only cost less than $5 for poster board and contact paper.  Big difference from $199 PB version that's no longer available.

 

 

Didn't he turn out great?  I especially like the knots in the wood. 

Now he needs name and a special place in the house. 

 

How about A Horse With No Name?

 

 

 

Thrift Store Christmas Find

We have the most interesting thrift store on our way into town.  The owner usually has some of his "wares" sitting outside the building, close to the road and I almost wreck the car every time I drive by because there is always something that catches my eye.

I  stopped in one day recently to look for a platter that I had found before and didn't purchase, (he still had it) and as I was taking a final look through, I found these beauties for $5 buck-a-roos....get it?  Deer....bucks....

...anyway, the box was ragged, dirty and torn, the syrofoam inside was broken, but the ceramic "reindeer" inside were in perfect condition in need of a good cleaning and a plaid bow removal.




 

After their bath and bad bow removal.

 

It's Christmas time and I'm thinking Holiday Decorations for now, but ya need to plan ahead with these purchases or they can get out of hand. I've been on the lookout for something like these and thought that I may have to buy some old brass looking ones that I could spray paint, but these are perfect just the way they are.   They're georgous, right?

Now take a look at them with a raffia bow....

Reindeer 1) "I like that bow!"
Reindeer 2) "Thanks, I really like yours too!"

And this is how they look with my natural Christmas decor.  One is on top of the entertainment unit on one side of the great room...

Buck-a-roo #1



...and the other is on the top of an antique hutch that "E" refinished years ago.

Buck-a-roo #2

I can't help but smile at them everytime I see them...just knowing that they will still be out "prancing" around after the holidays are over.  Get it?....Prancer....prancing. 





This is how they will look the other 11 months of the year


 

 

Nail Stregthener

I've been battling dry brittle nails all fall and winter.  They break, tear, peel & split!  The cuticles are all dry and hang nails everywhere....ugh.  Pretty image, huh?  Oh come on, I know I'm not the only one going through this! I've had it, so I've been researching nail strengtheners.

There are acrylic nails, acrylic tips, nail hardeners, gel applications and many more.  After much research, I still couldn't figure out what I needed to do.  So I paid a visit to the local salon supply store.  I won't say which one, since the girl that worked their gave me some advice that could get her in trouble. 

You see, she looked at my nails and said to apply Lamisil cream.  That's right...the anti fungal cream for athletes foot.  Can you believe it!  She said her small son had athletes foot and she applied this to his feet every night and noticed her nails and cuticles starting to improve.  She asked her Doctor and he said that the cream has a "steroid" in that was helping her nail beds to improve.

Hey, it's worth a try right?  I picked some up and I'm going to give it a try!  Now I've looked all over that tube to see what "steroid" it may have in the ingredients and to be honest, I can't read that little bitty writing!  Oh well, I'll let you know how it goes!