Painting a Bookcase: Before & After

I rescued these two small bookcases from my parents' barn. I wanted to use one in our little boy's room. I chose the one on the right for this purpose.

I may make the left one into an art cabinet...but I have to figure out how to remove the bottom part. It was apparently a radiator cover.

Here is the 'after' picture of my bookcase.
You can't tell very well, but I did a glazing technique.
Here are the steps:

1. Prime the whole thing with plain old interior wall primer.

2. Paint the whole thing with interior semi-gloss paint.

3. After it dried, for the glaze, I used a gel stain meant for finishing wood, let it sit on the paint for a few minutes, and then wiped it off. It gave it a grainy look. I don't love it, but it is more interesting than plain off-white.

4. To do the blue back of the shelves, I used a satin finish spray paint. I masked the sides really well, shown below:

I applied quite a few coats of spray paint to cover the white and the glaze I'd already done. I really like it and can't wait for our house to be finished so we can use it! By the way, the blue shelf backs were a last-minute decision. I wouldn't have painted and glazed them if I thought I was going to spray paint them.

Update: See this post of my toddler's room to see this shelf in action! Love it.

Want to Make: Wall Art II

There are so many great ideas out there. I can't wait to decorate the walls of our new house! Here are some ideas:

kitchen

message center

Initials with denim for a baby!

Nursery Canvases ... love these.

World Market knock off...love it.

modge podged baby sign. Love that stuff.

I must make these (same idea, at least...not same designs)

love this color!

with ribbons. Sort of looks like a message board!

A New Technique

...at least it is a new technique to me!

Carbon paper just made my newest project a whole lot easier. I printed some images off of the computer to use for a project for my little boy. I wanted to transfer them to another

paper. I don't have a $200 Silhouette cutter the way so many crafty people do, so I thought I'd have to cut them out carefully and then trace them.

And then my dad suggested using carbon paper. He doesn't know if it is even sold in stores anymore, but he has a stash in his basement for projects in his wood shop. He said it used to be sold for 10 cents a box. Talk about a frugal solution!

I had never used carbon paper. It saved me so much time!

Here's how you can use it to trace images you've printed from the internet.

1. Sandwich the carbon paper between the image and the blank paper (or fabric) you'd like to transfer the image onto.

2. Take a sharp writing implement and trace around all the lines on your image. Try to pick up the pen/pencil as little and don't move the carbon or the image until you're all finished tracing.

3. Check your work! Now you can paint it.

What do you think? Was I just having a blonde moment or is carbon paper news to you, too?

I'm about to embark on this new project. Stay tuned to see how it turns out. It might take me awhile.

Ruffle Scarf Tutorial with Fabric Flowers

I made this scarf for my mom for Mother's Day! It was time consuming for me because I had to restart the whole project three different times (I'll elaborate what I didn't do correctly at the end). Learn from me and make your own ruffled scarf.

May I just say that it is really hard to take a picture of yourself wearing a scarf in the bathroom mirror? But I wanted to show how I intended for the scarf to be worn (looped around the neck loosely and then pinned in place with the flower pins.)

You start this project with a t-shirt. It's a great color of yellow, perfect for May. Iron the shirt if necessary and cut it off underneath the logo. Cut straight through the front and back of the shirt, you'll need both sides and you'll want as few seams as possible. I used a size large shirt.

I used my rotary cutting mat to make sure the cuts were square. I cut off the hem.

I wanted two narrow pieces, so after finding that I had 12 1/2" of fabric, I cut it into two 6 1/4" strips.

My two strips:

The strips will be tubes, so cut each one at the side to make them single long pieces of fabric.

Place the right sides together and sew the two long strips with a running stitch, backstitching at both ends.

Now comes the sewing part. It is key to use an unmatching color of thread when doing the gathering/ruffling stage of this project. Turn the tension on your machine as high as it goes and then increase the stitch length to the longest possible. Sewing 5/8" from the edge of the scarf, gather both sides. Repeat on each side. (You've gathered each side twice at this point.) You'll be removing these stitches later, so it doesn't really matter what they look like.

Next, change out your thread with a matching color (I used white, but it isn't that noticeable.) Using a stretch stitch, sew a straight line next to each side of the scarf. I sewed about 1/2" from the edge. These stitches will not be removed.

Final step for the scarf, remove the contrasting thread ruffle stitching.

To make the flowers, cut 4 3/4" strips from the sleeve of the shirt. They will not be completely even/level at the seam, so cut out the uneven part. (See how the seam kind of goes into a V?)

Here's the tutorial I posted awhile back for making fabric flowers if you want more pictures.

Here's the nutshell version:

Sew two of the strips together and gather the strip the same way as you did for the scarf. Try to stay close to one side of the strip.

To start rolling the flower, unruffle about 1" of the strip. Fold this small part of the strip that will become the middle piece down into a triangle with wrong sides together.

Hand sewing as you go, roll the ruffle into a flower.

This is sort of a ghetto way to attach the flowers, but I wanted them to be movable and ran out of actual pin backs. I do have tons of safety pins left over from my husband and I running 10k (in his case, half or full marathon) races, so it is good to use a few!

Anyway, when I did this project initially, I used the same thread to do the ruffling and the final stitching. I ended up cutting the final stitching in several places had had to go back, rip it all out, and re ruffle and then re-stitch three times. Also, I used a regular length running stitch the first two times (not the stretch stitch) and it just didn't stay too well! Those are the mistakes I mentioned earlier.

I think my mom will love the scarf. She loves colorful things.

I'm sorry that my pictures look so dreary! Maybe that's because it has been raining for four days straight...

Painted Scrap Bins

I was storing my scraps in ordinary shoeboxes. That isn't very fun. Then I remembered my love for spray paint. These baskets were plastic (bright green, from my mom's cast-off spring cleaning/organizing), so I started with a coat of plastic spray paint. It was white. Then I added a coat of lilac non-plastic spray paint.

This was after one application. I was at the end of a can of paint and so it turned a little splotchy (on the inside). I had to sand out some runs and then recoat the whole thing.

That's what happens when you paint outside at night without enough light...you fix your mistakes the next day.

This isn't even all my scraps. I could've used 2 more of these baskets to contain everything.