Kepping busy with crafting!

With a lack of internet at home I have had trouble posting some of my creations, but without internet I have been able to create a lot of lovely things lately. Which is nice since I will be a part of my first craft show on the 19th of November!  I'll be selling some very fun things that I wave wanted to sell for a long time, I will share pictures of my merchandise before I head out to the craft fair but for now I would like to share two other projects I have been working on.  

 

This is the first project; I used two framed screens and cleaned them well, first with soap and water then with bleach and water.  After rinsing and drying the screens I spray painted them, they are a nice bright addition to my room.  I used paper clips as hooks to hang the necklaces, I was a little worried about how the paperclips would look, but you can barely tell they are there and they hold my necklaces well.

I have also been working on this lamp, I found the the actual lamp a few months ago, at that point it was a dirty looking white color so I decided to change that and painted it pink!  I found a couple of really neat lamp shade ideas the first one I found was with ribbon, then while reading the paper I found the idea for this coffee filter lamp shade and loved it!  The lamp shade is a little big for the lamp so I do think I will find these two new mates eventually, but for now they work well together!  Doesn't my bed side table look happy?

Happy Desks

I have still been working on multiple projects to keep myself busy and here are five of them! These children's school desks were my mom's and she gave them to me to refinish.  

I started by sanding all of the desk, which was a task, because they were not in the best of shape and needed a great deal of sanding to remove the rust.  After sanding I started by painting the red desk with regular old paint and quickly moved on to spray paint realizing that regular paint with take forever on the metal and would leave streaks.  The spray paint was very messy, but I was much happier using it than the regular paint and paint brush.  If you look close to the black and teal desk you'll see they still have the tape and paper on them from the spray paint.  

The wood tops of the desks and the seats and backs of the chairs were, like the metal parts, not in the best condition so they also needed to be sanded.  I chose to paint the wood parts with a clear polyurethane, giving everything a nice finish.  What I am going to do with five school desk you ask?  I am going to try and sell the pieces on Craig's List or possibly at a Craft Bazaar in the next few months.       

A New Chair: Part 2

This is the second project I tackled this summer, another chair, but one with a lot more work.  In its previous life it was the Elton John of chairs, I mean check out this purple velvet, you cannot be serious?  While the fabric on this chair was in better condition than the other chair, it smelled horrible and had to go the chair was also missing an arm, so I decided to remove the still existing arm to make things a little easier. 

There were a ton of tacks and decorative tacks in this pieces so it took a little more work than the other chair. I also had to remove all of this chairs padding.  

 This chair was then sanded and repainted, I chose white - obviously I am really into white furniture lately - then a few coats of polyurethane for shine and added staying power.

I also added the detail of the last piece with the decorative chair tacks.  

While posting these projects I am working on others, currently I am painting metal, which is a huge pain in the butt.  I am starting to think it is not worth my time to use paint and a brush, spray paint would be a great solution and a time saver.  So while I work on my fourth coat of paint I'll also be planning to buy spray paint.  I hope you enjoy the cute a comfy chair!

A New Chair

I've been doing a pretty good job of keeping myself busy lately and one of the things I have been doing is refinishing furniture.  I have really been enjoying the furniture projects, they certainly give me something to focus on and I think the outcome is pretty great too.  Here is the first project I completed.

 This is what the chair started out as, pretty ratty.  The fabric on the seat obviously needed some changing, so did the padding and the wood. 

 After I dismantled the chair I sand it, keep the board and the hardware to use again later.  Nothing else on this chair was really worth saving, the next step was painting.  I choose white.  Then I put new padding back on the chair and covered it with fabric. 

This was the outcome of my project!  This was simple and I would gladly redo more chairs like this, I think I will be on the look our for a few more like this more to make a mismatched dining room set.  I love the finished result of this project, and was very proud of myself, who's ready to see my next project?