The American Spirit...Still Strong at Our House

I found this blue box at a garage sale. For some reason I love old boxes and crates. My friends think I am crazy, so does my husband. I usually find them at junk store and they are covered in dust and dirt. I just spray them with the hose outside and let them dry...good as new.      

 When I got it the box it had already been painted royal blue. Right a way I thought FLAG. 

Nt sure why, maybe because it was around the 4th of July.

 Then I remembered I had these brass eagles I had taken off some sconces I found in my grandmas stuff. Here is a pic of what the sconces look like now.

More on them tomorrow.

 

So I saw this tutorial on Lake Girl Paints. She is awesome.        

 

 I was really excited to try out this technique.instead of paintbrushes, she used pieces of cardstock to paint the stripes on her table. You just put a couple, 2 or 3, different colors on the edge of the folded over cardstock.  

I started by taping of the blue rectangle in the left corner. then painted a thin coat of Kills over the rest of the lid. Let it dry and then used painters tape to mask off the stripes I wanted to stay white. I used a piece of chipboard to paint my red stripes because it i really stiff. And I used more red than any of the other colors. If you mess up just spread some more paint on top.

 after the red stripes dried, I took off the painters tape and stamped the white stars on the the blue rectangle. then sanded the whole box and aged it with a tinted glaze. when completely dry I coated it with Minwax.

 

This Flag Box is up @ Nellie & Nicos.  

Super Hero Stool

I found this scrapbook paper the other day and knew right away what I wanted to do with it.

I love Kids stuff. It can be colorful and outrageous. PLAYFUL! I found this stool at a thrift store a while back and have been waiting for the perfect inspiration to come along. 

And it did.   

I thought, "Why invent the wheel?"  

So instead of painting the graphics on the stool,  I just cut the words out of the paper and adhered them to the top of the stool after it was painted. 

Then I painted stripes on the legs and sanded everything. Finished it off with a tinted glaze and polyurethane it so it could withstand the kiddos playing with it. . 

I so wish my son was young enough to enjoy this stool. Pooh! Guess I will have to sell it.

This piece is up @ Nellie & Nico's if you are interested in seeing it up close and personal.

Toothbrush Cabinet

 I am pretty excited about this little project. I have been seeing how people have been using different transfer mediums to transfer vintage images onto just about anything. So I recently invested in a couple different mediums to try them out. The Graphics Fairy's "12 Easy Steps to Image Transfer" has been very helpful in my education of these processes.  

For this project I decided to use the Citra Solv Method on painted wood. I got most of my info on how to do this from "Our Adventures in Home Improvement"

Okay, so like most things, there is a learning curve. I had my husband print off a couple copies of this Vintage toothbrush image from The Graphics Fairy  I had to alter it a bit to come up with the image below. the image needs to be backwards from how you want it to look on your piece.

 

Then I cut down the Photo copies to fit in the center panel and taped it down with painters tape.

So here is where things went terribly wrong. It says to adhere your copy with the ink side down (did that) and to brush a small amount of Citra Solv onto the back of the downward facing copy... well I did that or so I thought. I was using a sponge brush (probably my first mistake). So then I started rubbing the backside of the copy with, they suggest a spoon, I used a bone folder. And of coarse me being impatient as I am, I decided it wasn't working fast enough, so I put more Citra Solv on. BAD IDEA! Citra Solv is a major grease remover and I now know you could probably use it to strip furniture. Damn the copy started bleeding all over and the paint started bubbling and then adhered to the paper. So I had a HUGE mess on my hands. 

So being the quick learner that I am (I have much practice from learning from my mistakes) I quickly cut of the part of the print out that I had not ruined and throw everything else away. (That stuff stinks) Then I scraped off the messed-up paint and sanded it a bit. Re-primed, repainted, re-aged.

While doing all this I thought about what I had done wrong.

A. this method is for unfinished wood, the solution gets soaked up and then you don't have the problems I did.    

B. I put way too much on with the wrong type of brush.

C. the bone folder actually worked very well. (the only thing I did right) 

Okay so lets try this again.

 I salvaged some of my photo copy and thank goodness my husband had made more than one copy. (he must know me) I cut the toothbrushes into strip so that if I messed up again i would not ruin them all. I held one of the toothbrushes down and lined it up with the bottom of the panel. I then used a 1/2" or 1/4" wide painters brush and dipped it into the citra solv. I practicly wiped it dry before rubbing it on the backside of the photo copy. i worked in very small section, 1", so i could see what the reaction would be. then I scraped the back of the photo copy with the bone folder. 

You can see below that at one point I got a little too much Citra Solv on the copy and the paint started to stick to again. it wasn't that bad and I thought it looked kind of cool, so I didn't fix it, but you REALLY can't put much solution on the copy when working with a painted surface.    

Eleven toothbrushes, later I was done. I let it sit over night before sealing the image with Min-wax polyurethane. I was scared to touch the surface. Afraid the image would run. It was no problem though. I did try not to have to brush over my strokes much though just encase.     

 

I found this cute drawer pull @ Micheal's. It says "see what is inside" 

I painted the inside blue and aged it.

 

 This piece would be a great addition to any bathroom. It has a towel rack at the bottom and roomy shelves for medication and toothbrushes. 

 

It is up @ Nellie & Nico's right now. 

I hope you can learn from my mistakes.