Thursday, June 30, 2011

Painted Shutters

My favorite craft blog is probably got to be www.crapivemade.com. Seriously this lady is awesome. She’s got fun ideas, funny kid stories and well she just seems like she’d be a cool person to hang out and craft with. She shared this about painted shutters a while back: http://www.crapivemade.com/?s=painted+shutters and I’ve been searching for a reason to make some. And I finally found one.

My good friends decided they’d get married (well them and apparently everyone else I know…did I mention I have 3 weddings this summer? No I didn’t? Ok well now you know. 3! And I’m in 2 of them and my daughter and my husband are in all 3 of them! You’re totally jealous of how awesome we are right now aren’t you? Oh No? Ok that’s cool…

ANYWAYS these cool kids : http://www.ryanchristina.diandraann.com/ are getting married soon and bridesmaid duties call for a bridal shower! Perfect excuse for shutters! I went to the habitat for humanity ReStore (we went to Norwalk but there are lots more locations, check here: http://www.habitat.org/restores/default.aspx) and found two for $4. Cheap!! 

How I got them to look nice: I went home cleaned them off, sprayed a coat of off-white spray paint and then used distress ink (another tip from Crap I've Made) to create the distressed look. You can find distress ink in lots of colors at Michael's. I think I picked the walnut brown. Now I had no idea how to use this stuff so first I tried using a makeup sponge and that looked awful and well spongy. I tried paper towels, also awful. I ended up just using my fingers to smear it on. Unfortunately I had 3 stained brown fingers for a few days….oops…

Also I was in a time crunch so I did it quickly and then quickly applied a polyurethane sealer, this one to be exact: Rust-Oleum 12Oz Out Clr Gls Spray 250081 Polyurethane Int/Ext Finish(more on how this is good stuff in another post). Unfortunately doing it quickly = a little sloppy. If I were to do this again I would allow adequate drying time in between spray coat, distress ink and sealer. But from far away they look cute right? No one notices the drips except maybe for me (and consequently now all of you reading this if you ever see them in person...)


Dress them up however you like and have them as a backdrop for a party or as decoration on a mantle or side table. I think I’ve even seen them used at a wedding to hold table number cards…I wish I could remember what site I saw that on it was REALLY cute!

As you can see above I just got some pictures of the happy couple and clipped them on with clothespins. Then I made a quick LOVE banner on some simple colored card stock and clipped them up as well. If your wondering the font I used was called Graceful Ghost. I think it's my new favorite font! And I found it for free!


Where could you use some painted shutters?

2 comments:

  1. those look great! How is the Re-store? I've been wanting to check it out. What a cute idea!!

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  2. The ReStore is pretty cool. We went in for shutters and I didn't have much time to do any extra searching. But thats probably for the best. I don't really need any extra projects. at least not for now anyways :)

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