The Mirrored Jewelry Window

My goodness it has been a long time since I've had a project!! We are presently living in East Tennessee and are fortunate enough to be renting a place with a GARAGE, which means I now have a new "studio"! I'm quite excited, if you can't tell from all the exclamation points. There are a few projects in the works already, one that I'm particularly excited about. It might end horribly though, so I'll hold off on introducing it.

Today I want to share a project that I started a few years ago (and mentioned ever so briefly here), left in my last "studio" (aka my parent's garage), and only just now finished a few years later.

It has probably been 4 years since my mom and I picked up a number of old windows at a garage sale and stowed them away in the garage. Although there are a plethora of ideas on Pinterest these days (a picture frame, for example), we were at a loss for what to do with them at the time. My first inclination was to make a mirror out of one, using Krylon's Looking Glass spray paint. When sprayed on glass it creates a mirror effect. In fact, I intended to make it look like an old, antique mirror.

My first step was to remove all the chippy paint that was falling off all over the garage. I scraped and sanded and when I couldn't take it anymore, I mixed up some Antibes chalk paint with one of the blue chalk paints I had on hand (forgive me, it has been years and I don't recall which color I used!) and slapped it on. I then of course distressed it so that the white under layer peeks through in some spots. I like the way the rusted handles add to the character, too.

You may notice that there are 3 panes missing on this window, making it asymmetrical. I debated knocking out a pane to even it out, but decided against it. I left it in and sprayed the panes from the back with Krylon Looking Glass spray. At the time I started this project, I was in the throes of a mercury glass obsession. In fact, I still love mercury glass! I wanted to make the mirrored panes look mercury glassish/antique mirroresque, if you will. I did some research and decided on a course of action---a handful of layers interspersed with a misting of a vinegar/water solution. I'll be honest, it did not turn out how I intended. I think that this method could work with some practice, but that Krylon stuff is EXPENSIVE and I'm not that picky! The window frame itself has a "vintage" charm about it and the imperfect mirror seems fitting (although I suppose it could be more perfectly imperfect, if you catch my drift). This is the point where I stopped all those years ago because it just wasn't doing it for me. It didn't seem finished. When my now-husband and I moved to Houston, this flawed window mirror just didn't make the cut and was left behind.

Fast forward to it hanging out in my new garage back in Tennessee. But what to do with it! My brother came to visit us one weekend and we went picking through a recently torn-down house from the 1920s (with permission, of course). We packed the back of my brother's hatchback full of goodies and hauled it back to my garage. I now have a stack of aged, rustic, full-of-character wood downstairs at my disposal! I was looking at a nice, flat piece when it occurred to me that I could screw that sucker to the bottom of my homeless mirror and make a shelf. I had already been toying with the idea of making it a jewelry holder, and this shelf was the perfect solution to how I was going to house earrings and other odds and ends.

I screwed in hooks across the frame, for holding necklaces, and screwed that exceptionally thin piece of wood to the bottom. It took a lot of cleaning to get all the years of funk off the wood, but with some elbow grease and a few coats of spray poly it looked bright and rustic at the same time. All that was left was to affix some hardware to the back and slap it on the wall! Here are the finished photos (I still need to write about the dresser below it! It has a similar story of being abandoned in my parents' garage until recently).

I hope this inspires you to branch out from all the window-picture-frame ideas out there and try a new window project! Let me know if you do--I would love to see what you make of it! What are some other cool window project ideas?

Pumpkin Pregnancy Photos and an Ambitious Carving Attempt

I have neglected this blog so much the past few months! I would regale you with all my really good reasons (read: excuses), but instead I'll just show you way too many pictures of this awesome pumpkin the bf and I carved last weekend!

Yes, I'm aware this looks like a creepy pregnancy picture. They all looked like this no matter how we held it lol

We've had a growing obsession with French Bulldogs for the past few months and are dying to get one (but we have to wait!) so when it came time to pick a design to carve, naturally the only thing we could think of was a frenchie.

As you can imagine, there aren't many french bulldog pumpkin carving stencils out there, so we printed off a picture from the internet and traced it, having to decide what would be positive and what would be negative space (aka pumpkin and not pumpkin). We were going to be all fancy and carve into some spots, but not through, to create another layer of detail and preserve the stability of the design, but there's only so much you can do with a grapefruit spoon and a carrot peeler.

Nonetheless, here's how it turned out! (after a few temper tantrums, grouching, and 2 days)(none by me)

Note to other prospective pumpkin artists: even if a so-called pumpkin art carving book tells you to do so, do not rub your new baby down in canola oil. Or any kind of oil really. You're going to spend hours carving, cursing and flinging pieces of weird smelling pumpkin guts all over your kitchen/back porch only to come home the first night it is lit and find it CRAWLING WITH ANTS! Then you'll cry and try to burn them with a lighter and bug spray. But this can be avoided! Don't. Oil. Your Punkin.

It's Aliiiiiiiiiive!

You may recall a post where I declared my little desk plant dead. It looked awful, and was as far as I could tell dead dead dead. Being the tidy and efficient person I am, I set it on my windowsill and forgot about it (except for the occasional instances when I noticed it and knew I should take it outside to compost, buuuut didn't want to)(because I'm that lazy). I finally mustered the energy yesterday and lo and behold, I was about to fling it from the pot when I noticed THIS!

It's aliiiiiiiive!!! Not only alive, but the formerly "cutest and tiniest desk" plant got even cuter and even tinier!! I'm so excited. And my new plan of action is to continue pretending it is dead, since that's obviously working wonders. So no watering, no poking. Let the experiment continue!

2 More Early Projects

While I am a creature of habit, I am also susceptible to phases, and I have been out of the furniture phase for a few weeks now. I've recently starting to venture back down to the studio, but it just isn't as tempting as it used to be since it has been hotter than hell here the past few weeks (the best joke I've heard so far is "satan called, he wants his weather back"). I don't have anything new ready to write about yet, although I'm still working on the super secret project and am also in the midst of reworking an old rocking chair for my oldest friend Claire, who recently moved into a cute house in East Nashville (I am so jealous and I haven't even seen the place yet!).

I thought that while I'm airing my clumsy first attempts at making stuff funky that I might share another few early projects. The dropleaf table in the post below was my very first, and while I was huffing around and being generally frustrated by my failed attempts, I painted this giraffe thing that I used to love so much when my childhood room was Indian/African/travel themed. I wish I had known to take "before" pictures, but alas all I have now are "after" photos. It was originally a very typical yellow, black, and red palette and had great texture and shape (which was a huuuuuge pain when it came to painting and waxing, let me tell you). I painted it the only colors I had at the time, Duck Egg followed by a coat of Old White, clear wax, and finally dark wax. I think it's definitely a strange piece, but I really like it and can't wait to have an awesome place to put it!

     One thing I always make sure to bring back from somewhere I've traveled and loved, beyond photos and memories and presents of course, is a little something to hang on my wall. I like to have something visual and unique to serve as a reminder of all the things traveling to that place taught me, as well as to provoke that surge of memories that so often start to fade. Something I splurged on a bit for myself in Chile (well, splurge in the typical, broke-backpacker sort of way) was a small tapestry from San Pedro de Atacama (see a few posts down). I bargained for it with a kind man at the far end of the dusty main street, Caracoles, on my last day in town. It shows 6 bright, stylized flamingos, very representative of San Pedro and Bolivia because the vividly cyan and red lagoons throughout are teeming with the delicate pink bodies of 3 species of flamingo. I envisioned displaying it in a floating frame in which the tapestry would be pressed between to panes of glass surrounded by a simple wooden frame, the wall showing around the sides through the glass. But, being broke and cheap, I instead chose to hunt through the house for materials to fanagle into something like my vision. I found an ugly brass frame to work with, and in the end I went totally the opposite direction with it and ended up loving it even more. Like seriously, I am in love with this frame. It completely embodies my personal taste. It looks much better in person though, and I would have preferred a thicker, more visible wire. Also, it was a pain in the butt to wrap with all that wire and beading, especially because the wrapping interferes with how tidily the glass sits in the frame, but it looks nice and let's be honest, I can't afford better :P

Here's how it turned out:

RIP Little Succulent

Sooo.... I regret to inform you that on this 7th day of July, 2012 I am pronouncing my adorable little succulent dead :( Poor little thing had no chance. It shot up so tall, and then turned a pallid yellow and the leaves grew feeble and fell off. I watered it (but not too much) and gave it turns on the sunny windowsill. Let's see, that means I kept it alive a whole 2.5 months. That's pretty bad.

I'm ready to get another succulent soon and see if I can figure out how I kill plants so quickly and what I can do to stop it! Also, my little sister Mia bought me an air plant. It is supposed to be stupidly easy to care for so we'll see if this goes any better ;)

How My Garden Grows

Hello! I've been working tons lately (at my job that is) and will be working even more in the coming weeks, so work on my projects will suffer and I probably won't have much exciting to post about :( However, the past few days I've been throwing all my extra time into a super secret project I'm really excited about. If you're reading this and know what I'm talking about, please don't comment anything revealing here or on fb! It has to be a surprise. I have splinters down my shins and in my hands, but pending any absolutely disastrous accidents of bad taste/ugliness or actual accidents (there's always a decent chance for any of those), it should be done and revealed in due time and should be duly awesome!

The only other thing worth commenting on (or not, really), is how much my charming little succulent has grown since my first post! I would make some horrible, trite connection between the germination of this plant and the development and maturation of my blog, but that'd be so less cute than this picture! (actually, I need to know--am I the only one who regards plants with the capacity to be cute? positively adorable? I might be crazy)

Baby

So much bigger! I haven't even watered it (oops)

The Littlest (and probably cutest) Desk Plant

     Whew, feels like there's a bit of pressure on this first post! Although to be quite honest I don't expect much traffic. I'm just here to write a bit and share the things that I'm working on, the things that excite me and make me smile. Like this adorable little succulent (of the genus Echeveria) that I absolutely couldn't leave Home Depot without yesterday! I've spent a lot of time there recently for various projects (which I shall expand on in future posts) and meandered into the plant section. I found myself trying to leave with, I kid you not, an armful of succulents (those funny little plants with weirdly thick and juicy leaves). In short, I left with just this single, darling little plant. I painted a little pot for it and it sits happily on my windowsill. As it looks very lotus-like to me, it brings me a sense of serenity and a smile every time I catch sight of it. Unfortunately, I have not been blessed with a green thumb. In fact, it has been said I have a brown thumb (lets not be gross now). We'll see how long I can keep it alive! :)