Roadside to Gardenside

I was lucky enough to find this 1950's style ice cream parlor chair on the side of the road. My first thought was "this would look great in my backyard" so I threw it in the back of my jeep.



I first used a wire brush to knock off any unwanted dirt and old paint and of course to add more scratches to the vintage style I was looking for.



Next, I measured and cut a piece of plywood to fit inside of the seat (which was a 13 inch circle). Luckily the original seat supports were there and the plywood laid right in place.



Once I made sure it fit, I cut the inside circle that supports the pot. Be sure to cut the inner circle smaller than the top of the pot.
After I cut the circle out I treated the wood with a primer and sealer since it would be wet with water on most days.



I chose to paint my flowerpot white, choose the color that suits you. Think about the possibilities for the chair as well.




So if you happen to see this or anything similar on the side of the road or at a yard sale, stop and grab it! It would look great in any flower garden, in your back yard, or on your deck!

I am linking up to these great parties. Check them out!

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Vintage Clock Face

We have lived in our house for about a year and a half at this point, and up until now I have been angry with my long blank kitchen wall for it’s inability to be decorated. Until now. Thank you Pottery Barn, as always. Look past the couch, to the table, and there it is! Cool, old, worn out looking clock face.

Alchemy Junk made a beautiful copy of this a few months ago, and I was inspired to take matters into my own hands to get a beautiful worn out clock face for my long empty wall. I made my way to Lowes for some wood as soon as I could after seeing this PB picture. I couldn’t find flat piece of wood for under $30 and I really wanted to spend a lot less than that, so I headed out with a 2x2 piece of oak plywood, (ugh, plywood), and some poly wood planks to cover up the plywood evidence. (In the picture below the planks are already stained, and the plywood is not.)

I knew that I wanted the wood color to show through underneath the white of the clock, so I first stained the board a dark walnut color. I let that dry for a few days so that it was completely dry and non-oily. I then whitewashed it, using some watered-down white paint, to give it a grayish sort of look, and after that was dry, I dry brushed white paint on top being careful to let some of the walnut and grayish colors peek through. I wanted a worn look and layering the colors seemed the best way to go.

I printed off some different sized fonts from my computer, and ended up with Bodini MT Condensed, size 250, because I wanted the numbers to be big, but slender. I then used my tried and true transfer method: traced the backs of the numbers in pencil, placed them where I wanted them on my board, rubbed over the front of the letters so that the outline would transfer, and then filled them in with paint. I didn’t actually get any pictures of this stage of the process, but I used a similar method with my Welcome sign, which you can see here. I painted on the 12, 3 and 6, and then lost my patience and decided to get on with the distressing.

I took my scraper and started kind of beating up the wood. I wanted it to have lots of dings and scratches in the finish. I also carved out a big hole in the center of the wood where the clock hands would have been.

I scraped roughly across the edge of the wood, and since I had never sanded it, the wood chipped off nicely.

I then held my scraper so that it was parallel with the grain of the wood, and scraped across the face of the clock letting it pull out little splinters here and there. The wood was relatively soft, so I randomly stabbed the scraper into the wood and pulled out a few more splinters.

I got my wire bristled brush and used that to rough up the wood a bit more. I rubbed it on the wood in the direction of the grain, and I was pleased to see that it was even more helpful than I had expected.

The wires not only put scratches in the white paint, but they also rubbed a dark grey finish on the paint. So I could either leave the dark grey patches,

or wipe it off a little bit with a damp cloth to get back down to the white and wood.

(All of the really grey spots in the picture below are from using the wire brush.)

And now it was time for the glazing. I dipped a wet rag into the glaze, and started rubbing it all over the clock. I made sure to get a concentrated amount into each of the cracks in the wood and along the edges. I took a thin paintbrush and painted undiluted glaze into the big cracks because I wanted a dark black look in the bigger holes. I then rewet my cloth and randomly wiped the glaze off, letting the whitewash effect and the brown wood peek through.

I tied one end of a string around a pushpin and put it in the middle of the board, and the other end around a pencil, and used this to trace a circle all around the wood. This was a lot more difficult than it sounds, the pencil kept wanting to follow along the grooves in the wood instead of making a nice curve, but after several tries I finally got it. I filled in the pencil line with undiluted glaze, and used the glaze to paint on all of my numbers as well. Then I simply wiped across the numbers and circle to fade them. {Edited to add: Once finished, I thought the glazed and faded numbers were a bit too light, so I painted back over them with black acrylic paint, and gave them a light sanding.}

I stained the poly wood planks the same dark walnut shade that I had used originally on the board, and when they were dry, I took each plank and banged it against the concrete stoop in the garage so that the edges would be roughed up as well. I was a little nervous that the boards would bounce back and hit me in the face, but it didn’t take too much force to bang them up and luckily I remained unharmed.

I then used Gorilla Glue and glued each of the boards around the clock face. Since this glue foams up as it dries, I made sure to put the line of glue towards the back of the board so that any foam would seep out onto the back of the clock face. And this is what I ended up with…

Now I just need to decide where to put my clock face, because it turns out that it doesn’t look as good in the kitchen as it does in every other room! Back to the drawing board…

Also, I’m linking to these fun parties this week, so check them out to join in the fun!

Also,

Thanks!!

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Holiday Picture Holder (the Easter edition)

When trying to narrow down an Easter treat to share with you all today, I had the hardest time picking what I wanted to share. I LOVE all things holiday. I am a tradition fiend who fills every possible nook and cranny in my house with small holiday surprises. And I must say, Easter is one of my absolute favorite holiday's of all! (Though I am fairly certain I say that about almost every major holiday, so just you wait!)

If you were to visit us, here are some of the things you might have seen laying around lately...

Almost all of these decorations require one thing that is very near and dear to my heart: the hallowed egg. Every year my family has spent time blowing out eggs and decorating them. The ones you can see personalized lying around my house are from many periods throughout my life. I love being surrounded by the memories every year. The project that you are about to see incorporates some of these hollowed eggs in a year-round picture and trinket holder I made for this upcoming Easter.

The first thing I did to make this picture holder was buy a set of dowel rods and block holder. I bought them at my local craft store for $1.99.

I wanted to jazz up the rods a bit, so I went to an old standby...type writer wood numbers. They were only $0.69 each and I can never resist a cute number! I simply hot glued the wooden number to the dowel rods in a mismatched fashion. (I chose to vary the height of some of the dowel rods, I wish I had been a bit more dramatic with the height differences now...)

Once I had the numbers in place, I painted the entire set black, and antiqued the numbers edges with white paint. I used acrylic paint for both. It was much easier to paint AFTER gluing the numbers on the rods. The dowel block worked as a great paint drying rack!

To hold the pictures, I used miniature clothes pins which I also bought at the craft store for $1.50 a pack. I painted them black to blend with the dowel rods. I attached two to each dowel rod on opposite sides of the numbers with hot glue after the paint had dried.

The finished product was very neutral and matched the house perfectly, which is exactly what I wanted for something I am planning to use year round.

When I finished the picture holder, I moved onto the accents. First, I transformed some hollowed eggs I had from last year into garland by sticking floral wire through the holes and hot gluing the ends to the egg. I then added crepe paper and ribbon skirts to the eggs for a little pizazz.

I also cut out some current easter egg hunt photos of my daughter and glued them onto scrapbook paper and ribbon accents with fun spring colors. Lastly, I cut some bunnies left over from last week's page flower wreath that I thought I could throw in the mix somewhere. This left me with a nice assortment of fun easter things for my new holiday holder.

I am quite happy with the way it all turned out. It was a very quick and easy project. I love the fact that I can use it year round by simply updating the clothes pins with seasonal images and goodies. It also works well in every room because it is so neutral, so I won't get tired of it too quickly!

I'll be linking up to these great parties this week. Stop by and check out all of the great things I am sure we will find there!

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Family Blocks

Since my husband and I's families both live out of town, I try to show Jayce pictures and talk about our family members regularly, so that when we do get to see them he has some idea of who they are. I saw this great article about blocks here, and decided that I would make Jayce some family blocks.

I started off with a piece of poplar wood from Lowes, 36” by 1 1/2” by 1 1/2” for $5. Luckily, one of our friends has a power saw and cut the wood into 1 1/2” blocks for me. They splintered a bit in the cutting process, but it was no problem since I was covering up the sides anyway, and I ended up with 18 blocks. (I saw some 2” blocks at Michaels the other day for $.99 a piece, so I saved $13 doing it this way!)

I Mod Podged scrapbook paper onto 4 sides of each block, trimmed the excess paper and then sanded the edges off. I think this little detail (the sanding) made all of the difference in the world. I love how the rounded edges look kind of worn and vintage.

I printed pictures of each of the family members, printed corresponding names, and then Mod Podged these to the backs of the blocks. Here is our little family stack.

I gave each nuclear family a different pattern of scrapbook paper, because I wanted to give Jayce another way to see which family members go together.

For the couples, I used a picture of the two people together, and just cut them apart. This was the easiest way of making sure that each person’s head was roughly the same size, and the backgrounds matched a bit too.

Jayce’s unmarried aunts had the same scrapbook paper as their parents. I don’t think that I’ll make new blocks once they get married, and since both just turned 20, I won’t need to worry about that too soon.

That said, I do plan on updating this middle block once our little niece is born, able to be photographed, and a name is decided upon. For now, I just left the picture and name sides blank.

As I was making the blocks I was so excited about them and slightly bummed that they would inevitably end up strewn around the house, so I decided to make myself a little family set to play decorate with. I used a more adult style scrapbook paper and printed the picture in black and white.

Once everything was glued on, I Mod Podged the whole thing with a matte finish to seal it. I’m glad that I decided to do this step, because one of the blocks ended up in a cup of water shortly after Jayce was done playing. I guess they do look a little bit like ice cubes. But the paper and photo were completely unaffected by the water.

Jayce loves these! We build houses and choo choos, we count them, we talk about family, and in no time we will be learning about spelling too!

I'm linking this to the CSI Project.

Erin

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