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Avie’s 1st Birthday!

By Arielle on January 28, 2013

Our niece Avelea turned 1 year old on Friday, and on Saturday her parents threw a big party complete with balloons (which she loved!), a mini cake just for her, and lots of gifts.

So far for all of her gifts (showers and Christmas) we’ve bought her clothes, so we didn’t want to get her clothes again (though there will definitely be more clothes in the future!). Recently she’s taken a liking to books, so we decided to buy her some board books, and give them to her along with these bookends that we bought last year at a garage sale.

At first we were thinking new books, but after realizing they were several dollars a piece, we thought maybe we could find some at a thrift store so we could get her more. Lo and behold, one of our Goodwill stores has a large children’s book section and we were able to find an assorted collection of board books. We thought they’d be $1 a piece, but when we checked out they were only 50 cents each! And no worries, we sanitized every single page of every single book!

Then we painted the bookends. We didn’t love the colors of the bookends (too pastel and typical little girl looking for us) so we wanted them to be something that could go in a little girl’s room, but didn’t look quite so baby-ish. We settled on antique white for the outside part, and a grayish purple for the letters.

I originally thought I would spray paint them, and sprayed a few coats of Ivory Krylon on them.

But even after a few coats it was bubbling slightly, so I sanded them (didn’t take much), and decided to pull out the big guns. I sprayed them with a coat of Kilz Original oil-based spray primer.

This stuff is expensive, but it’s amazing! Oil primer is always a good option for coverage, durability, etc, and it’s so nice not to have to worry about clean up, especially with such a small project. After the primer was dry, I sanded again to smooth out the grittiness from the primer.

Then I used a DIY antique white chalk paint and a custom mixed grayish purple chalk paint for the letters. (Remember you can put latex paint over oil-based primer, just not directly over oil paint.) After several coats of chalk paint and 24 hours of dry time, I applied a thin coat of Minwax Paste Finishing Wax with cheese cloth and buffed it. This just provides a little added protection and makes the finish feel smoother and less chalky.

And here’s the finished product along with the books we found.

My sister-in-law posted this picture on Facebook of the bookends and some of the books in Avelea’s room. I think they turned out so cute, but it looks like she might run out of room for books soon! She’s going to be such a smart little girl after all that reading! Well, ok, she’ll at least know all her farm animals and be able to distinguish a red fish from a blue fish. Very important life skills, don’t you think?

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Chalkboard paint canisters

By Arielle on October 15, 2012

A few weeks ago I bought these glass canisters to use in my laundry room for laundry detergent, cat food, and who knows what else. I’ve been looking for something to store my homemade laundry detergent in for ages, but I wanted it to have a tight fitting lid and I couldn’t find anything for such a long time. If that stuff spilled it would be such a pain to clean up! I picked these up at Garden Ridge (crazy store, that one!) for under $20 for all 3 and planned to paint a shape on each with chalkboard paint to label the contents.

I know they don’t match exactly, but they’re close enough. After much googling of things like “label templates”, I found a shape that I liked for the chalkboard section. I resized it for each canister (had to do each one a couple times until I had the size I wanted), printed it out, carefully cut around the shape, and taped them to their respective jars. Once I decided where I wanted them, I used a pen to mark where it should go.

Then I used painter’s tape to tape the edges of each shape. I imagine this whole process would be much simpler with a Cricut, or at least a large blank label to print the shape on directly. I was being cheap, though, and trying to complete the project with stuff I had on hand. Here’s the front.

And the back.

I made a slit on the inside and cut the tape along the outline of the white shape, leaving me with the outline of the shape in the tape.

To make the chalkboard paint, I simply added unsanded grout to latex paint. The grout can be kind of expensive, but I found a box of grey unsanded grout for $2.50 at the local Habitat for Humanity Restore, and that box would do a whole school full of chalkboards! The grey grout could be a problem if you were trying to do a colored chalkboard paint, but since I was doing black it didn’t matter. At some point I’m planning to chalkboard paint the peg boards in my garage, too, so it’ll come in handy!

The ratio it calls for is 1/2 cup of paint to 1 tablespoon of grout, but I didn’t need very much paint so I just made half. The paint was pretty lumpy, but in the end it wasn’t really an issue.

After one coat it was still pretty see-through, so I did two coats and sanded in between the first and second coat to get rid of lumps. This picture still makes it look kind of streaky, but it’s really not so bad.

When I peeled off the tape, I was freaking out just a bit because it had bled so much! (I hate you, Duck brand painter’s tape!) I quickly realized that your nail will take care of that a little too easily and it went from this mess…

To this.

I was worried the rest of it might scratch off from the chalk, too, but after writing on them several times there are no scratches, chips, or flaking. And I suppose if I ever get tired of it, I can scratch the paint off and start over!

Next, I conditioned the chalkboard surface by rubbing the side of a piece of chalk over the entire area. I didn’t really know why I needed to do this until I wrote on it, tried to erase it, and the outline of the words would not go away! Once you’ve covered it in chalk and erased it once it erases much more easily.

Then I wrote my descriptions on the canisters, filled them up, and put them away!

I’m using the biggest one for cat food so that the cat food bag no longer has to sit out in the kitchen. I’m just sure my cat is super duper excited about it!

The second biggest I’m using for my DIY laundry detergent. Previously, it was in a plastic container with a slip on lid, and I was always worried it was going to spill, spreading fine particles of Ivory soap and Borax everywhere burning our throats and making it impossible to breath! It was a safety hazard, really.

Hopefully soon I’ll have some Downy Unstopables scent beads for the smallest one, but geesh they’re expensive just to add some scent to your laundry! They smell so good, though! (I’m picky about scents, and while I love that my DIY detergent is “scentless” for my clothes, sometimes I want things like towels or sheets to have a scent.)

I also made a few other organizational changes to my laundry room while I was at it. Now I just need some kind of picture or something on the wall between the two shelves! And some automated way to sort, move, and fold the laundry, perhaps?

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Paint chip art is done!

By Arielle on April 7, 2012

Well, it took me a while, but I finally got my paint chip piece done! If only the bathroom were ready for it…Here’s the inspiration for it.

I decided to use pink, coral, salmon, strawberry, etc. for the accent color against my light green walls, so I went to Home Depot and Lowe’s and snatched up every pinkish paint chip I could find. It’s a good thing I have a huge purse! Here’s the frame we bought at the Salvation Army thrift store for $8. It’s 17ish inches x 22ish.

I started by cutting my paint chips into 1″ by 3″ rectangles, but after playing around with them for a while, decided I wanted them to be 1″ by 2″ so that I could use more. Also I just liked that proportion better.

After I cut them all out I organized them into color groupings (here they’re still the bigger size, I think) to try to make it easier to lay them out later.

I started with the lightest and tried to pick ones with similar hues for each row minus a few since I was going for an imperfect ombré look. Despite my perfectionism, I think it turned out pretty close to imperfectly perfect. After I had about 5 rows how I wanted them I taped the pieces of the first 3 rows to the other pieces in that row (so that each row was a separate piece). This made it a lot easier to keep going so they weren’t moving around so much. I left about 2 rows untaped so I could reorganize any pieces that weren’t quite fitting with the next rows.

I used the same piece of paper that was in the frame before as the backing. I also used the same mat, so I just traced the shape of the mat onto the paper. Then I glued the pieces all down once I had organized all the rows. I used a tiny bit of Elmer’s glue to adhere them but got a little warpy in some places, so I would recommend using double-sided tape or rubber cement.

The frame was a bit glossy and had a shiny gold paint on the inside ridge, so I sanded it lightly before painting it.

I painted it using Rustoleum Satin White spray paint. I also spray painted the mat. I already had it so why not try?

It got some dust and little stringy things from the paint on it, so once it was dry I scraped it with a razor blade. That helped a little, and now that it’s pressed behind the glass you can’t really tell. I’m happy with the result and it certainly beats paying for a new, custom mat. Next time, though, I think I’ll try regular paint and a small foam roller. So without further ado, here’s the completed piece!

Here it is in the bathroom. It’s home will be on the wall opposite the door (next to the shower) above the towel rod, but we haven’t put those up yet so we’re not sure where it needs to go.

And our countertop, while it looks pretty, is causing us some trouble. Turns out the holes for the faucet are too close to the backsplash so the drain lever won’t fit in the faucet. Oops! But it’s not our fault…it’s a standard size vanity, standard sink, and standard faucet. He had access to all of it to measure for the holes, so we’re not sure why it’s not working. We’re also not sure how it’s going to be fixed. Pretty sure the only way to fix it is to get a whole new piece. Ours was a remnant, though, so I’m praying he has enough of it left or I might be forced to make another decision! We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, so that’s my first piece of homemade art. What do you think? I think I love it, and I think it’s going to look awesome in my bathroom!

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Back from the weekend

By Andrew on March 27, 2012

We really enjoyed our break last weekend at the marriage conference. Amazing how a weekend of nothing can help you relax and catch back up. We wanted to introduce you to one of the projects we did last summer while we were nervously waiting for our home. Arielle was the one that spotted this beauty at a garage sale. I have got to go on the record as saying I was really convinced this lamp should have been committed to the dump.

Arielle however convinced me that the $1 investment was worth the risk for this lamp. So we brought it back home and picked up some white spray paint from Walmart. Arielle sprayed it white, and what do you know it looked beautiful. This is only after the first coat.

Unfortunately this story ends sadly as I knocked it over when we were moving everything into our pod and broke it. We didn’t get a chance to take any cute pictures since I broke it. But perhaps you can imagine it being the highlight of a shabby chic bedside table.