Thursday, July 21, 2011

Painted Piano

A while back my parents started to remodel their living room. With the remodel came new furniture and no more room for our family piano. Thank goodness my 2 older siblings had no room for the piano because guess who got it by default?!?! ME!!!! (Yes I like to state the obvious sometimes.) Well, the project is old (I think it was like September of last year) and my memory is terrible so there is not much to blog about but I did get at least one middle of project picture from my iphone.

Unfortunately I can not remember exact paint colors, but I did a base coat of brown and dry brush technique of an off white color over the top which you can see started on the front right there. As you can also see on the TV there I used this project as a time to catch up on old episodes of Dexter. Man do I love that show!!

I DID NOT sand the piano to start. No one needs a bunch of dust flying around to get trapped in the piano.I just used Zinsser Cover Stain, 1 Gal first. I've used this primer for many other projects and it works great. It covered up a very RED room in just 2 coats! I did not do a top coat/sealer to finish it which I am regretting now. If I ever have some extra time I'll get around to doing that.

I also “reupholstered” the bench. Used a 2" foam cut to size and wrapped some cute home décor fabric around it and staplegunned the CRAP out of it. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. What do you think?

Yay for creating new memories with my kids on my childhood piano!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Life/Growth Chart

Just as soon as I started this blog, we had a tragedy in the family and it is an understatement to say that things have been crazy the last week and a half (has it only been a week and a half? wow...). The source of all my craftiness, my Mom, lost her battle with cancer and we laid her to rest this past week. In an effort to try and continue what I started here, and do something to distract myself, I'm going to be posting up a bunch of past projects until I get the time to finish up some that are in the works and get into the "to-do" list.

I'll start with one that has me amazed at Life and all the changes it brings:

Katelyn's Growth Chart


You can tell this one is old by the amount (or really lack) of hair my kid has! She wasn't really fond of me taking these pictures, but I think its kinda cute :)

Stuff for a quick and easy growth chart:
- Letters - I found mine at Tall Mouse, a craft store that unfortunately no longer exists. I liked these a lot better than Michael's selection. However, I did find them online at http://www.save-on-crafts.com/ just search for "Funky Wood Letters." The bedding in my daughters room was full of a ton of different colors so I selected my favorites and painted them up.

-Wood panel - I found mine at Home Depot in a little section of pre-cut Poplar boards. They're only about 1/4" thick, so not too much weight to hang on the wall. You can get whatever size will accommodate the letters you pick. I took the letter K to the store and checked out the selection. Just make sure you get a wide enough board that will allow for the markings on the side. We had some leftover white paint from when we repainted the baseboards and molding in the house so I used that to paint the board and keep the background nice and bright.

- Markings - I grabbed a ruler and went to town. I started at the 2' mark and went up to 6', using a larger mark for a foot, and a smaller mark for an inch. I hand painted all these but I would think if you have a Silhouette SD Digital Craft Cutting Tool (QuicKutz)or a Cricut 29-0001 Personal Electronic Cutting Machine you could make it a lot easier on yourself and cut out even shapes. Mine looks a little wonky and hand painted but I don't really mind. Once the marks dried, I went back and hand painted the numbers. I wasn't confident in my free handing skills so I printed out a font I liked, cut it out and stenciled it on.

- Assembly - After everything was dried, I grabbed some Gorilla Glue 6205001 Wood Glue Bottle, 18-Ounce and put the letters on the board as evenly as I could. After letting the glue dry we installed a frame hanger on the back and hung it on the wall in her room with the bottom portion exactly 2' from the ground.

Now the trick is remembering to actually get the kid to stand in front of it and measure her. She's growing like crazy these days!

Oh crap! I just remembered I need to get going on another one of this for the other munchkin that's on the way! We better pick out a name for this little man soon! I better add that to the growing list...

I love the simplicity of this and the way her name stands out so well. There's so many options for things you could add to it. Extra painted embellishments, coordinating fabric or scrapbook papers behind the letters. What would you do to fancy it up?

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Wedding Cake Toppers

With all the wedding planning going on around me I’ve been known to hop on etsy from time to time to find cute things. And I found the CUTEST little painted wood people for cake toppers. But they were about $45-50 to have someone customize them for you. Well that’s just silly. I figured I could do my own knock off.

I found a seller on etsy that had plain wooden dolls and I had a boatload of acrylic paints on hand courtesy of the Craft Queen, my mother.  I looked at a few of the available customizations on the etsy ones I saw and picked what I liked and got to it. I penciled everything on first to give myself guidelines and then painted away. It takes a rather steady hand. So starting these later in the evening and thinking you’ll be able to finish them without a few flubs is just silly. Good thing you can paint over mistakes! I decided to seal these guys too with the polyeurethane I talked about in the previous post.

Here is Ryan and Christina:

Here is Brian and Michelle:

And Here is Scott and Christy:
I'm so happy with how they turned out!! So cute!

And I have 2 sets of couples left. Now I just need more people to get married so I can make some cute gifts! Wait a minute I take that back…no more weddings for a while people! I need some time to recover! :)