Marble Candle Holder

I thought this clear glass bowl (from an estate sale, 50 cents) would be beautiful covered with glass marbles.  It took me forever to get this far…the marbles are difficult to glue onto a round surface as they slide off.

I had it probably 75% covered when this happened!  The glass just gave way.  There was not a crack before I started…but there certainly was more than a crack afterward!

I had a jar that I couldn’t find the lid for and started covering it with the leftover marbles.  I had used E6000 to glue the marbles onto the other bowl so I had to toss the whole mess into the trash, carefully!

I taped each row on as I glued it on until the glue was dry. Love the I heart nerds washi tape?  Nice, huh?  I found it at Claires on clearance 4 rolls for $1!  I grouted the jar after the glue had set.

Drum roll please!  Here is the finished product!

I love how the light of the candle shines through the marbles.

I made this for Sarah for the August sister present exchange.

I might be linking up to these great parties!

California Sun Yellow Table

Here’s my newest project…the table, not the dog!  It was a butcher block style chunk of wood that I wanted to use as a table top, it was given to me so I didn’t pay anything for it. 

I looked into metal table legs and they were pricey!  I found all sorts of wooden legs, but they weren’t what I was looking for.  Metal hairpin legs were what I really wanted, and I found some here and here but they were just too expensive for this project.  I’m saving those for a really cool table!

So, I had been thinking about this and was browsing at Hobby Lobby when I ran across this metal legged table with a wood top.  It was 66% off so I paid $18 for the table and couldn’t wait to take it apart when I got it home.

This was my first time to work with chalk paint.  My sister Sarah had given me CeCe Caldwell’s chalk paints in two colors, California Sun Yellow and Destin Gulf Green.  I used the yellow (obviously!) on this table.  I was a little nervous putting the second coat on because it took off some of the first coat…I read the directions about ten times and finally sorted out that I should have just used water as the second coat.

The colors are so vivid and fresh, I am definitely looking for a project for the green color.  I am definitely going to use just water for the second coat. 

I love the varied color…

Beautiful color!  And Milo approves, so it’s all good!

I will be linking to some of these great parties!

A bench makeover…

I have been working on this project for weeks!

This is the only before picture I can find of this bench/footstool.  It has sat on my deck for probably 10 years…every few years I paint it again and buff it up, but this year the two corners of the wood slab top were rotted too badly to ignore. 

One day I decided to take the legs off since they were still in great shape and replace the top.  I tried to remove the screws and couldn’t (weakling), so I asked a friend to try.  He tried it and couldn’t either, so he told me it couldn’t be done without breaking the legs. 

OK, now one thing about me…when someone tells me something cannot be done, I can do it!  I have done all sorts of things because I was told they couldn’t be done.  So I went to Lowes and got this WD-40 Rust Release Penetrant spray after talking to a salesman about my problem.  

Most of the screws broke off, all were rusted badly, but after that WD-40 was sprayed on I could loosen the nuts and get the legs off that bench!

You can see how badly the wood is rotted here.

I started stripping the two thousand layers of paint off them when my friend offered to sandblast them (the same friend that told me that the legs couldn’t be taken off because the screws were just too rusted!).  They were so smooth and pretty when he brought them back to me.  I painted them with two coats of Valspar indoor/outdoor primer. 

Next I started looking for a top…boards at Lowes and Menards were either plywood,  too costly ($75!!) or not wide enough.  I needed a board that was at least 16 inches wide because of the space that the legs took.  I didn’t want to use two pieces of board until…my brother offered me a really nice 1 1/2 inch thick board (10 x 6) for free!!  This board was even rounded down one side but square on the other.  Perfect!!

So to make the top of the bench sturdy, I glued and screwed a series of 1/2 inch boards across the underside of the top.

Then I used copious quantities of some wood putty to fill in the imperfections in the wood; I cut the boards and they may or may not have been imperfectly cut!  At this point I debated about leaving the natural wood, but decided that I had used too much wood putty, I was committed to painting!

I still wanted the bench a rich blue color, so I used Valspar Deep Sea Diving spray paint with primer.  It was exactly the right shade!

Don’t judge and don’t be envious of my two buckets of joint compound work space!  Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!

I measured and taped off a wide stripe and two narrow stripes and painted them off white.

I was so happy it was done I just sat down and looked at it for probably 20 minutes!  After it dried inside for a few days, I finally put it where it belonged!

Loving it!

The stripes turned out better than I had imagined they would!

The chevron pillow I made from fabric leftover from my mom’s pillows I made a few weeks ago.

The flowered pillow on the bench my sister Sarah made for me…it came in my last sister package. We exchange handmade gifts every other month.

I am linking to some of these great parties!

Cuteness for the craft room

These are really cute little craft room signs I made for Sarah for our bi-monthly gift exchange for June. I paid nothing for the rectangle and square pieces of wood (leftover from other projects) but I did have to pay a whopping 50 cents for the photo holder. 

Underneath that cute scrapbook paper is the word Girlfriends and a daisy.  I filled in the word with spackling about five times before I gave in and realized it was still visible under the coral spray paint.

So anyhow I lost that battle but love the way the scrapbook paper looks too!

The sayings I found online some where and just printed them off and Mod Podged them to the sanded and painted boards.  Covered it all with a few coats of Mod Podge and it was done!

I am making one of the creativity signs for my craft room too!  Somehow it seems to fit my life story…

 

I am linking to these great parties!

A thrifted and made-over wooden box

I wanted to show you the end result before I showed you this…

I found this Christmas box at the thrift store…a big fifty cents!  About the only thing it had going for it was that it is all wood and put together well, so it’s sturdy!  I sanded it down a bit, and it took about four days, seems like I sanded off 12-13 layers of paint!

I had been saving a card I got from my package pal Michelle with the cutest owl she had made on the front!  I cut that puppy out and added it to one side of the box, three of the sides I added this…

Yup, a vintage dictionary page with my sister Sarah’s last name on that page…

and her first name on another side…Sarah—Hebrew for Princess!

And on the last side I painted on chalkboard paint.  I painted the inside because you can see so much of it, it’s a few shades lighter than the outside, because I was trying to use up some paint that I had already.

Isn’t that owl cute??  I filled the box with some craft supplies, some washi tape, some stitch markers I made like earrings.

I gave it to Sarah this past weekend with another gift I made which I will post about soon!

I will be linking to these great parties!