Painted Vanity Table

I had a crazy busy day yesterday.  I left work and got home five hours later.  I was exhausted.  I have an easy project for you today.  I'm still trying to catch up on posts from my sister Ivette's apartment.  She found this vanity on Craigslist and she couldn't pass it up. The lines are so cute.  She brought it straight to my house for some paint.

I used Annie Sloan chalk paint in old white.  Look at the mirror compartment.

Here she is.   I didn't get a straight on angle because of the placement in the room.  She had a small area that she used to sit on the floor and do her make up and hair.  The vanity is a perfect fit.

Look at these gorgeous handles from Anthropologie. We did some light sanding on the edges.

What do you think?  I love its new look.

I'll be linking up to these parties

and Beyond the Picket Fence, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Showoff, Remodelaholic, Addicted 2 Decorating

Metallic Striped Chair

I hope you had a great weekend.  We had a busy one. I spent all of Sunday afternoon working in my front yard.  I bought new landscape lights, mulch, and decorative rocks.  I was going to leave it for the gardener to take care of, but figured I'd rather spend that money on something else.  Unfortunately, I was short about 4 bags of mulch/pine bark and 2-3 bags of rocks.  Hopefully, I'll finish it up this week.

I have a chair that we found a while back for you today.  I had photographed it, but forgotten to post about it.  We found it at a thrift store for $20.00.

I removed the cushion and cleaned it up.

I gave it a coat of grey Rustoleum Spray Paint.

Then I gave it a coat of Metallic Silver Rustoleum spray paint and glazed the chair.  I used the same technique that I used on my sister's metallic table.  Here she is.  We had it upholstered in a pink and white striped fabric. 

I'm loving how feminine the chair feels.  Quite a difference from it's original version.  My blog seems to be kind of glitchy and telling me a script is running that is slowing down Internet Explorer.  Are you getting this message while scrolling through my blog?  If so, does anyone know how to fix it?  

I'll be linking up to these parties

and Beyond the Picket Fence, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Showoff, Remodelaholic, Addicted 2 Decorating

Easy Palm Tree Art

I have a really easy project for you today.  I got the idea from one of my best friends and thought it was perfect.  My sister, Jessica, was looking for more pieces of art for her walls.  Using a large piece of card stock or even the paper that comes with the frame flipped to the back side, if white.  Grab a branch from a palm tree.  We tried a couple before finding the one we liked.   This one here was not flat enough.

Then we found this one in my yard that was perfect.  Lay it on the paper in an angled direction

We then spray painted right over the branch.  The individual leaves seemed to lift a bit as we sprayed. This is not a problem.

Here it is.  You can see some of the over spray that got under the branches when they moved.  It actually gives it a nice effect.

We then placed it in a frame from Michael's.  (Which there happens to be a 50% coupon on my sidebar right now).

Here it is in my sister's little nook.  You can see it here with the zebra rug and the fabric memo board.

She found this beautiful mirror table at Pier 1 Imports. 

I love how the palm tree art looks with the zebra rug.  Do you have any easy art ideas?

I'll be linking up to these parties

and Beyond the Picket Fence, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Showoff

Blue Velvet Chair

We found these chairs a while ago at the Faith Farm Thrift store for $4.00 each.  They were pretty crusty.  I pointed them out to my sister and she loved the idea of them, but oh, they were bad.  The velvet was in horrible condition and the foam was disintigrating, but for $4.00, whatever.

I painted the legs using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old White.  I gave them two coats and then sanded down them down a bit to get the aged look.

We had them refoamed and reupholstered.  There was no way I would attempt this on my own.  My sister bought a high quality upholstery blue velvet from a local fabric store. It was kind of pricey at $35 a yard, but the quality and texture of the fabric seemed worth it.  It's hard to tell in the photograph. I didn't want to destroy the fabric, so we left it to the professionals.

 Here's the back of the chair with a few nailheads.

Pretty, right?  They will be used in my sisters dining room along with the two chevron chairs and the Turquoise Chandelier.  The crazy thing is, my sister has decided to rent out her apartment and move to Paris for 6 months.  After all that work!  I think I've figured out why I'm so exhausted lately. I'm back at work, trying to workout (which I am now doing Crossfit and it WEARS me out), some other crazy stuff, and trying to wrap up all the projects for my sister's place.  I am beat.  Writing that just got me even more tired. I'll be photographing my sisters apartment this weekend. We weren't able to finish everything, but it is a huge and adorable transformation.  Have a great weekend.

Stenciling Away

We started working on my youngest sisters wall stenciling over the summer. I think this has been the longest, slowest project ever.  Stenciling takes a lot of time. It's not the actual work, it's letting the stencil dry in between. Basically, you stencil, wipe the back, hang it on the fan to dry quicker, and sit there counting how many more you have to do.  It takes hours...but it's worth it.  We bought the stencil from Royal Design Studio.  

This was our first square.  As we were driving over there, I was envisioning the wall about three times the size.  With that being said, the wall is big, but luckily not three times what I thought.

When we got there yesterday after work, this is what we had.  It's gorgeous.

We worked for five hours last night. I would say we are 90% done.  It's taken us 3 sessions so far.  I'll give you more details later, but I'm too tired to think.  We questioned a few times if it was worth paying the $1,000 for wallpaper.  I think we made the right choice.  Now, I have to go to work and be alert, ayy.

Antiqued Silver Table

A few weeks ago, I shared this metallic paint with antique glaze finish side table on Craftionary.  I found this  table at a garage sale for $5.00.  It was faux painted in a wood/brown color.  I really had no idea what I was going to do with it, but the price was great.

Here you can see the texture on the top.

I applied spray paint primer and then I gave it a couple of coats of Rustoleum's Metallic Silver spray paint.  Here it is all nice and shiny.

I then used Valspar's antiquing glaze and gave it a light rub down.  I'm not a fan of heavy glazing, but I wanted some dimension to the piece.   I used a tutorial by Little Miss Penny Wenny (you must see the chair she did) and it worked out great.

Here you can see the top.  The glazing added some depth to the top. 

It gave the table a whole new life and it was such a simple fix. I painted it and called my sister to the house and she decided it was hers. Have you tried glazing furntiure before?  Are you a fan of heavy glazing? 

I got so much done at work yesterday and I'm totally inspired to keep going. I'll post pictures of my office as soon as it's all put together.  Thanks for all your sweet comments and words of encouragement.

I'll be linking up to these parties

and Beyond the Picket Fence, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Showoff

Painted Striped Rug

I've had a few projects on my Pinterest - DIY to Try board that I've been wanting to try, but was lacking the motivation to do it.  Last week Young House Love, Bower Power, Joey and Lana, and Emily Henderson announced the Pinterest Challenge on August 2nd and that's all I needed to get motivated.

This is one of the projects that I fell in love with.  I'm loving the yellow and the stripes.

After painting my sister's zebra rug a couple of weeks ago, she was wanting another rug.  She decided, well, after I convinced her, to try this striped number.  She bought a rug for $19.99 at Big Lots in a cream color.

We taped up varying stripes.  We used the piles of the rugs to determine our lines.  This made it so much easier than having to measure.

We used some leftover paint from her house in a bluish grey color and we painted away.  During our couple of hours painting.

She painted this for me.  Cute, right?

It's sitting on my parents dining room table drying. 

When we got it back to the house, I tried to get a good picture...

Finally, my sister got their attention and sent them to another room.  You could see a bit of the texture of the paint.  We didn't have this issue with the zebra rug.  We are thinking it was the actual rug fibers/materials.  Even with that, it just looks like a natural part of the rug and it came out awesome.  My sister loves it!

One problem, we painted at my parents house while they were on vacation. My sister's kids were running loose as we painted.  We finished painting and ran out of their exhausted.  Yeah, we forgot to clean up.  There were drips of paint all over the glass table and milk left in sippy bottles laying around the house.  We both got a phone call Saturday night...I blamed it all on my sister.  Pure exhaustion, I tell you.  

I'll be linking up to these parties

and Beyond the Picket Fence, Between Naps on the Porch, DIY Showoff

Zig Zag Painting Pinboard

I hope you all had a great weekend.  We celebrated my parents 40th wedding anniversary on Saturday at our house.  We had a great time, even though it rained.  I had spent all week fixing up our dilapidated backyard, only to have to move everyone inside about thirty minutes into the party.  My dad got all sentimental talking about my mom.  It was a great night.  I'll be posting pictures of my backyard later this week.  I got the house cleaned up yesterday morning, but all the tables and chairs are still all set up in the backyard.  Ugh.

Here's a cute project that I worked on for my sister's apartment.  I found this flower foam tile rose painting at Goodwill for $2.00.  I knew the print wasn't for me, but there was something about the texture of the tile that caught my eye.

I gave it a coat of Rustoleum's Aqua spray paint.  The color seemed a little too strong for what I wanted.

I wanted to soften it up a bit so I used the same technique that I used for my cherry blossoms painting. I filled a cup with about two fingers of water and then I dipped the tip of a paintbrush in the can of paint and then dipped it in the water and mixed it up.  I then brushed the tile over and over. It's a weird finish at first, kind of bubbly, but just keep brushing and brushing.  Eventually it evens out and softens the color on the tile.  Then I taped a zig zag pattern to the tile.  I tried to do my best measuring it out. 

For the final step in painting, I used Annie Sloan's Chalk paint (not watered down) to fill in the spaces between the tape. 

I then removed the rope and added a pretty satin ribbon.  I hot glued it to the back of the tile and here it is.

Here you can see detail of the tile and the softness of the blue after using the watered down chalk paint.

I made this for my sister and it will be sitting by her new chevron chairs and chandelier.  I'm thinking it might work great as a pin board.

I'm so excited about setting up her apartment. I've been working on projects for what seems like months.  I think the painters will be going this week and then we are ready to get everything in there.  We will be heading to the beach today (weather permitting), I LOVE summer.

I'll be linking up to these linky parties.