Re-Painted Lamp with Burlap Ribbon Shade

I've had this lamp in my living room for a while, but haven't been happy with the way it "fit in" with everything.  Do you have things like that in your house - they belong, but not really?  Anyway, I bought this lamp at a garage sale last summer for $2.00 (no pics before the first makeover - sorry) and I painted it in this Annie Slone gray color, and covered the existing shade with fabric.  

After covering the shade, the light just didn't shine through very much so it was rather worthless to use for actual light.  I know, so why even have it in the room house then... 

I decided that It needed a fresh coat of Annie Slone white paint and a shade that made it a little more useful.  And this is what I ended up with....

   Looks much better, doesn't it?  I actually used a different shade that I had removed all the fabric from, so that I was just left with the wire frame.  Then I wrapped it with burlap ribbon and secured it with a pin.  I could have used hot glue but I wanted to be able to change it out again easily, when I change my mind again....  Which is often!!

 

Hope you are having a LUVLY day!!

   

Welcome, Come In

I've been looking at the empty front door for over two months now and decided it's overdue for something to welcome everyone in.  So after gathering up a few odds and ends I had laying around, this is what I came up with....

The grapevine wreath was in the garage (since who knows when) and I found the burlap in the ribbon box leftover from a past project.  The little wooden bird houses were in another box of miscellaneous craft supplies picked up at a garage sale last summer that I spray painted with whatever colors of paint I had on hand.   The moss was purchased last year for who knows what - and never used - Do you have lots of purchased and unused items in your craft supply???  I forgot I even had some of these things!! 

Anyway, I thought it looked rather blah.  It really needed something else... So, I added the welcome banner and this is how it ended up...

The banner is made from paper scraps that were left from the happy spring banner project, and sparkly letters I had in my scrapbooking supplies were added. 

I think it all came together nicely, considering I didn't have to purchase any of it!

Do ya think it's Luvly??

Now I think I'm going to paint the front door.  Maybe red!?  Hmmmm....

Thrifted Chalkboard Makeover

I've seen all these super neat chalk boards lately and decided I needed one too.  Sooo, I was at the Goodwill store recently and found this beauty.  Does anyone remember this lovely picture from Home Interiors???

And for only 1.99 (yea!), it was the perfect frame for my project.  :)

After removing the picture, I painted over the entire picture with chalk board paint using several coats.

I want to hang this in the kitchen so I decided to paint the frame red -  Because that's the color I'm wanting to accent the kitchen with when I start it's makeover later this spring.  Plan a kitchen makeover around a homemade/goodwill/$1.99/red chalkboard - makes sense, right?  Well, it does to me...  :)

As everyone knows, it's been a brutal winter and it was about 15 degrees outside when I decided to do this project (and that's withOUT the windchill), so spray painting outside was not an option.  

Now, this is not AT ALL recommended (do as I say, not as I do) but, I decided to spray paint this in my basement - because I thought spray painting would be "quicker and easier".

I probably haven't told you this yet, but I'm the queen of impatience.  And impatience usually kicks me in the butt, and this time was no different.  The paint would not dry and it started to crackle, but not in the "crackle good" kind of way.  I don't have any closeup pictures of this "mess", but trust me - it was not pretty!  I'm sure this happened because it was too cold in the basement as well.  Anyway, out came the sand paper. So much for quick!  After sanding the areas that were crackled and getting a smooth surface to work with again, I got out the Annie Sloan chalk paint in Emperor's Silk.

                                     

I should have done this in the first place, as chalk paint adheres to anything and always seems to work out better in the long run.  It certainly looked MUCH better.  I used dark wax to finish it off and I think it finally turned out Luvly! All for less than $5.00 when you include the cost of the paints and the amounts used.  What do you think?