Let there be light

So I've been working on this lamp for a while...and when I say working on, I mean constantly looking for the perfect lampshade in any store I entered. After not having much luck, I decided "why don't I just take a lamp shade that I already have (I have several lying around- any time I find one for a good price I get it) and recover it". So today, that's exactly what I did. I am making a lamp for a customer (aka my aunt) and she will be using it in her cabin on an old Singer sewing table. I already had the base picked out. It is a wine bottle which I wrapped in some twine. The cool part is there is this pretty "M" emblem on the bottle and their last name is Miller so I thought it was fitting. Here is the base:

So the lampshade I chose to use is a gold color and had some ribbon piping on the top and bottom.

I took off the piping and decided to cover over the gold with some lace so that the pretty gold color could still show through the lace. Here is the lace pattern I cut out by tracing my lampshade and then the shade once I covered it with the lace.  

I loved the way the shade looked just like this, but I felt it needed a little pop of color so I added a maroon ribbon to the top and bottom on the lampshade. Once I put it all together this is what I ended up with.

Hope you like it. Love you all!

-Amy

interesting, pretty and functional

I have started a habit of going to Goodwill almost weekly and I almost always walk out with some sort of interesting find. I found this at goodwill a few weeks ago.

I don't know what this would be called but it has three dials, one tells the temperature, one tells the humidity and one is a barometer. As far as I can tell they all work. I thought it was a great and interesting piece with good lines. Anywho, I took it apart and painted it.

This was after I taped over some parts of it before I painted. This took way too long to do fyi.

And here is the finished product. I spray painted the dials a silver foil and painted the wood a light green and a metalic sheer biege color and then painted the piping in white. I think it turned out pretty good and makes for an interesting, pretty and functional wall piece. Love you all!

-Amy

Weekend highs and lows

I went to Market Days in Wimberley yesterday and it was AMAZING! Definitely the highlight of the weekend. My wonderful husband got up early with me and we were off and running at market days by 7:30am (I know, I couldn't believe it either). We were there until about 11:30 and I think we actually covered all of it. I didn't buy much, just some drawer knobs and pulls and a storage basket/box. All were $1 each.

But I did get lots of good ideas, and I also realized that alot of things at Market Days I already had, like an old screen door and an old window. I had been thinking that I needed to redo those things before I try and sell them but after going to Market Days, maybe I can just sell them as is. However, that kinda seems like a cop out, the whole fun of collecting beat up things for me is to be able to transform them into something better. Anywho, here are somethings I've been working on that I have finally managed to complete.
Remember this chair:

Well now it looks like this:

I replaced the missing pieces of the chair and stained it a dark walnut, although the chair turned out almost black. Most likely because it was really dry unfinished wood and all the stain just soaked right into the wood. Then I got these cushions at Garden Ridge because all their patio cushions are 50% off right now. The seat cushion is really thick (maybe too thick), but I guess better to have on over stuffed chair than understuffed. If I get really ambitious, I'd like to make a footrest out of the scraps left from the other matching chair that I took apart. We'll see...

I also finished a matching set of lamps this weekend. The bases were originally vases and I loved the white with the gray and the pattern.

I am still working on getting my Etsy shop started. In the meantime, if you see something that you like, let me know and chances are it's for sale! My email is ajshaw10@gmail.com

Love you all!

-Amy

I love lamp

One of the things I've been working on recently is making my own lamps. Here is one that I've done.

Well, what do you think? I will be making alot more and hopefully will have some more to show this weekend. Love you all!
-Amy

Exciting News

This just in.....I was featured on another blog called "Perfectly Imperfect"! She does these weekly post where she has other blogs post their furniture creations/redo's on her site and at the end of each week she picks her favorites. Well, on a whim I decided to post my "planter stand turned picture frame" onto her site and guess what......I was listed second in her favorites!!! As you can probably tell, I was pretty excited about it b/c I wasn't expecting that at all. Anywho, be sure to check it out on her blog at http://www.perfectlyimperfectblog.com/2011/08/all-things-furniture-9.html  Thank you Shaunna at Perfectly Imperfect, you really made my day! Love you all!
-Amy

Project Chalkboard

Alright, so I know it's been awhile since my last post. I've been very busy with work, but I did finally manage to get enough time to complete my chalkboard. You may remember, I bought this beautiful frame at a garage sale a few weeks ago for $1.

Well, after some work, I've managed to turn it into this.

Ok so here was the process:

First, I bought a piece of plywood and traced the shape that the board needed to be to fit in the frame.

I cut this out with an electric handsaw. This was my first time to use an electric saw and no injuries, woohoo!
Here is the backing once it fit into the frame.

Next, I sanded, and sanded.....and sanded some more, primed and then put several layers of chalkboard paint on my backing.

Now on the frame, I put paint stripper on all of it to take off the varnish and some of the stain/paint. This was very tedious work getting into all the nooks and crannies of the detailed woodwork. Once the varnish was all stripped off, I sanded the frame down.

Then I primed the frame and painted the first coat of paint on.

The next evening, I painted a second coat of paint over the frame in a different color. On the second coat, instead of coating the frame, I did a sort of dry brush/glaze so that the ivory from the first coat of paint showed through in all the crevices.

The paint colors I used were Ivory Tower from Loews and Nantucket Dune from Sherwin Williams. Thanks to my very generous boss, I got a whole box full of paint samples and pints for free!

God is good!

So here are some close ups of the wood work and paint color.

So there it is! Another project completed. Love you all!

-Amy

A past project

I thought I'd take some time to show you a project I've done in the past. I found a broken plant stand in a pile of trash out by the curb. It looked exactly like the picture below (sorry so blurry).

I brought it home and pondered what it could become. I decided that maybe it would just be better used as scrap wood for some other project but as I started pulling off slats of wood, I realized that this could be a great piece of wall art, and on further inspection for pictures as well. I was able to unhinge the table to make it fold flat. Then I pulled all the slats off of the center square and a few others around it. The squares that were now "slat-free" were going to hold pictures. I cleaned the wood and screwed what used to be the plant stand legs together so that my frame would stay together flat. I also had to saw off some of the extra length of the legs once it was flattened. Once my frame was finished, I brought it inside and realized I didn't have any pictures that fit in the open squares perfectly, so I cut some cardboard to the right size, covered each one with a different type of fabric, stuck some of my wedding pictures on top of the fabric, then staple gunned each cardboard piece to the back of the frame. After all that, this was the finished product:

I think it turned out pretty good. What do you think?

Also, on a side note, I have been talking about starting an Etsy shop for quite a while now, and I'm hoping this will actually happen some time in the near future. I may be putting various pieces that I restore on my blog on the etsy site and also some jewlery holders. Below is one that I've made and use myself:

Sorry the picture quality isn't great. The thing up in the top right corner is a feather hair piece. The backing that the earrings hang on is lace fabric. Each jewlery holder is different and I can custom make them to order (frame size, color, backing material etc.). If anyone is interested in one before I get the Etsy site up let me know, and I will announce when I do open an Etsy store. That's it for now. Love you all!

-Amy