Pallet Sign

I have seen a few pallet signs around blogland lately, and really liked the rusticness of the idea.  So, I asked my husband if he would cut a few pallets for me.  Since he works a lot of hours, he never really got around to it.   And then... inspiration struck!  

Remember this chair?

 Well... This next picture was Take One, which didn't pan out.  But... we kept the pallet seat we made for it!  By this point, you probably know what I am getting at, don't you! :-)

So the other night I went in search of this seat and traced a bible verse on it.  Then, I painstakingly filled in each letter with cream craft paint.  This part took a lot longer than I was expecting!

(As you can see, at this point, it was still in the shape of a chair seat!)

And a close up to prove there's actually writing on there!  I ended up having to use a white pencil crayon... a regular pencil didn't show up.

Et Voila! Le produit fini!

(The next day, my husband trimmed it into a rectangle for me, so it would sit straight.)

It's by no means perfect, which, I think is part of it's charm!

See you soon!

Rag Garland and Valentine Banner

After being in Michael's the other day, I was inspired to make a couple of Valentine's projects.  

They had these rag garlands, that I thought were really cute, but, I couldn't really justify buying one since I have a ton of scrap fabric at home (I quilt, so I tend to have a lot of scraps...) and could basically make one for free. 

I originally made this garland to hang on the shelf in the kitchen, but when I put it up there, it seemed to really overpower it.  So, on a whim, I plopped it up on top of the china cabinet, and it was the absolute correct, I couldn't have done it better if I'd measured it, length.  

Except for the ribbon that I interspersed throughout, this entire garland was made entirely from little scraps!

So, I left it there and made up this cute little banner to hang in the kitchen. 

It was super simple to make.  I just cut out 5 hearts and taped them to a piece of pink ribbon with a chunky bead in between each heart... honestly, it probably only took me about 10-15 minutes tops.  It was pretty cheap, too.  The paper was on sale at Joann's- $0.16 each (I didn't even use half the sheet), and the ribbon was 3 spools/$1.00 on sale at Micheal's.  And the beads weren't terribly expensive either, I think they were from the dollar store. 

Oh, and to make it a little more special, I added a piece of bling to each heart, too.

And this is about as valentines-y as my house is going to get! 

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Cupboard Painted With Old Fashioned Milk Paint

I found this cute little cupboard at the Salvation Army last week.  

As you can see, it was in sad shape.  

The first thing I did before I even brought it into the house was to have my husband remove the old backing.  It was actually warm enough that day that I was able to give it a good sanding, too, before we brought it in. 

After Christmas I convinced my husband to take me to Lee Valley, where I picked up some Old Fashioned Milk Paint, and I had been wanting to find a piece to try it out on.  

Using Snow White and Slate, this is what the cabinet looked like after two coats:

I gave it a good sanding... It was really powdery!

And here it is all distressed and waxed up.  The wax really gave it a nice sheen and made it feel really smooth.  It also darkened the colour just a tad.

Overall, I really liked using this paint.  I found though that it didn't really spread out that well....But maybe that was me and I didn't put enough water into the mix, but I did follow the directions to the letter and the consistency didn't really seem terribly thick.  Once the paint was dry, I found that it flaked up in places, which made it really easy to distress.  

 All in all, I did enjoy using this paint, and will certainly use it again in the future! 

See you soon!

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