Phat Molding

Happy Monday everyone!  Today I wanted to share with you the awesome chair railing my dad installed for us a month ago.  I didnt do any amazing projects this weekend so I thought I could share this with you.

I know this is a Christmas tablescape, but its my before picture of what the room looked like.  Not bad right, but something is missing (besides me raising the curtains which did wonders) so I asked my dad to install some chair railing.

Originally I was thinking of just the standard thin railing and then adding the picture frame boxes all around, but my dad had another idea, which I actually like better so thanks dad for again being smarter than me :)  I wasnt home when he installed it so I cant tell you all about the cuts, but I can tell you from pricing out molding for our bedroom that this stuff isnt cheap so dont think that just because this project looks simple that it will be cheap, unfortunately molding in all forms is a little expensive, but I think well worth the investment.  Here check out the after and you will agree with me.

 

 Looks a lot better right!  And the curtains are raised here too so you can see how much taller the room looks.  Thats what I love about valances, the curtains are the regular 94inches, but with the valance I can make them look so much taller since the valance is dark and you cant see behind it, so we didnt have to buy more curtains or more expensive ones which, yay for saving money!

But looking at this it is missing something, so I decided it would look awesome to paint the bottom half of the railing a darker color than the top half.

And now I think this room looks pretty awesome...what do you think?

Project Housewife Out!

Pallet of Colors

I have a confession...I may be slightly addicted to pinterest.  Im sure most of you are too, its a sickness that makes me want to spend all my money on cute ideas.  While I was trolling pinterest, I saw this really cool looking headboard

Source

So cool right!  Well I already have an awesome headboard (which you can see here) but I need some cool wall art for on either side of my TV and I thought this was simple enough to do the trick without overpowering the TV.  Now let me should you my before shot

No bad, but not good enough for me.  So now I can show you the project!!  I got the inspiration to use pallets from here.  But I wasnt crazy about the flowers I thought that might be too busy for the TV area so it was a blend of ideas to creat my final project, which see below for the after!!

Yes I am about to watch Once Upon a Time, and why arent you its an awesome show!

I think it brings a lot more color to the roon and is just a little cooler to look at...what do you think?

Ok on to how to make this baby...first you need a pallet.  My husband works for a plumbing supplier and they have loads of pallets so that was totally free yay!  So before I get down to the nitty gritty...here is what you are going to need

• 1 pallett---all of the pieces (free)
• paint of your choice, varying shades (free)
• crobar (free)
• saw (free)
• nail/hammer (free)
• painters tape/paint brush ($5)
• pencil/ruler (free)
• screw/wire (for hanging) (free)

Total cost for this project...$5!!!  What, thats amazing!!

Looks kinda ugly right?  Well dont worry we are painting it so no worries.  Now you have to get the boards off, and if you have a cro-bar that would be best. Joe had to use a hammer and that was pretty hard so if you have a crobar make it easy on yourself.  Below are the boards cut down to the measurements I gave Joe.  I wanted the project to be 15wide by 30 long, so I plank from the pallet was long enough for 2 strips.  You can also see from the picture here that we used the pallet support beams as cross beams for the art. 

Here it is all put together ready for paint.

I first thought to whitewash it (I hadnt decided if I wanted to do the color blocks or the flowers yet) and that turned out pretty well, and I think also helped with the paint.  It was kinda like primer but didnt bring up all the pulp that comes out of the wood when you use regular primer (more to come on whitewashing later)

I let these sit overnight to make sure the paint had set.  The next day I started taping out the lines for the stripes.  I wanted each pallett art to be different so I measured the stripes at different heights.

I used a paint stirrer as my guide and a pencil to do the initial lines then went back and put painters tape over the lines.  Remember that where you put the tape you cant paint otherwise you will have gaps between the stripes so be mindful of that when you put the tape down.  You can see below what I did to make sure I kept that straight.

Now you have your painters tape down get to painting.  I had plenty of leftover paint from the walls and color samples so that was free too!

Let that sit overnight so that when you put the second layer of painters tape down it doesnt pull off you paint you just did.  Once it has dried and you get your second tape down, paint again.

Wait for the paint to dry and remove the tape.  Now if you are like me you will have to do some touch ups, but if you have one of those sponge paint brushed that has a stright edge this is pretty easy.  Once its dry, you can screw your screws and wire into the back of the boards and hang them up!  Make sure you use an anchor when hanging these babies are pretty heavy!

Pretty easy, pretty cheap and pretty fun too!  I feel like an artist enough though I cant draw to save my life!  DO you have a space that this art would be perfect for?  Let me know, and what do you think of this art?  Should I leave it or do the flowers pallet art?  I think I need a second opinion

Project Housewife Out!



Im Linking Up!  Come check me out at A Bowl Full of Lemons, I Heart Organizing, Southern Lovely, Lil Pink Pocket, Vintage Gwen, My Girlish Whims, Beyond the Picket Fence, House of Hepworths, Bacon Time, Addicted2Decorating, Six Sisters Stuff

         

Chipping Away

Happy Hump Day to all of you out there!  It has been a slow week, and when I say slow I mean slower than a snail, its verging on ridiculous but on with todays project.  So you can see below its not super pretty or super straight or super anything.  This project is by no means a failure, but I can see that it does need a little extra work that I had not thought about.

So lets start with where this inspiration came from...Im sure you can guess it came from pinterest, and here is the link so you can check it out.  I saw this and thought it would look great over one of the lights in my hallway going up to the media room.  For the example it looks like they used a small frame and I needed it to fit over a light so I bought some floral 10 guage wire and made my own form.  This was the first misstep because this floral wire doesnt hold up when it is sodered together.  I am going to have to make a new frame but that shouldnt be too hard.  I made 2 frames on big enough to fit over the light and another smaller to fit down the middle to make a layer for the "chandelier".

The circles arent perfect but I figured they would work.  So on to the paint chips.  I always go to Home Depot for my paint because I love Behr and the selection they have.  So I got a whole bunch of paint chips in purple.  What I love about Behr is there are 3-4 colors on the sheet so you can see how the color gets darker in color which is perfect from the ombre for this mock chandelier.

 I cut each strip apart (as shown below) so I could get the punch where I needed it to go to get the most out of the strip

So to cut the circles I used a whole punch from Michaels scrapbook section.  I think this one is a 1/2 inch but I cant remember.  I was able to get 3 punches from each strip so that was excellent.  I had to take the back off the punch so the holes would fall right out rather than stay in the plastic holder so I could see where I was punching to maxamize the punch, yes Im a little crazy but I think we all know that by now!  After I cut all the holes out I seperated them into baggies so I wouldnt get the colors mixed up (I did one color at a time also to not get them mixed up).  The I was ready to move on to phase 3...follow me this way :)

So this was the dumbest idea I had and will fix this too when I do my redo, but I decided it would be best to use string to connect each circle.  When I do the redo I will use metal sticks to make sure its even and not lopsided like this mess here.  But I used string on 4 sides and was ready for the next step.

I used a flat surface to line up all the paint chips in the order or color that I wanted (2 of each color)

The I flipped them over

Using tape and upholstry thread (because thats what I have in the house dont judge!) and taped the thread to the backs of the chips leaving enough string to tie the chips to the metal frame.

You can kinda see the string a tape better in this picture.  I did about 20 of these and was ready for the last phase...attachment.

I decided to hot glue these to the frame to make sure they dont swing around and show the backs, which started out as good idea as I did the bottom section.

See the hot glue here.

But as I made my way around, I noticed the biggest error which no hot glue can save me from...you can still see the backs because the circle is so big.  The hot glue worked great as was a fantastic idea, but since you can still see the backs I am going to have to take them all down and attach another paint chip of the same color to the back so it looks amazing no matter what.  I will give you and update when I have enough patience to get this going again. 

Now you go try this at home, trust me it was harder than I thought but I am sure once I make some adjustments its going to be awesome!!  What do you think, any suggestions on how to make this better?

Project Housewife Out!

Chalk it Up

I was working on 2 really awesome easy projects this weekend but right when I was about to finish I realized I was missing some final touches so those are going to have to wait...but today I have the super awesome chalk board paint to talk about!  No I dont know how to make the paint myself (but if you want to know check out this link), my neighbor had a whole quart left from her project and let me use it.  We have all seen the chalk board paint menu boards on pinterest, but they are so pretty how can you do it yourself?!  Well I decided to try my hand at the chalk board paint menu board and you can see below (along with a sampling of our menu, arent I making you hungry lol) how it turned out.  Yes I know its red/green/white, but sometimes its hard for me to give up Christmas, I cant help it!

This was really easy because I didnt do one step I will have to recommend to you.  We have textured walls (and I am going to assume so does pretty much the rest of America) so that presents a challenge when you write on the board.  People will tell you to smooth out the wall before you put the paint on and I will have to agree with them.  I didnt because I have engrained in me that you want to remember the re-sale value of the house and not doing anything to crazy to alter it.  I think if someone came to buy our house they would find it a little weird that one wall had no texture and the rest of the house didnt so I left it textured.  I put painters tape up against the cabinets and around the edge of where I wanted to stop painting, then busted out the paint brush and paint.  I used a brush because I didnt want to pour the paint out into a tray to use the roller but you can use a roller if you want, it didnt really take me that long to paint this whole area.  After I had the first coat I thought that would be enough, but after writing on it once I realized that yes I did need 2 coats.  After the second coat went on Im happy with it now. 

Ok this is where the "you want to smooth out the walls" comes into play.  I bought chalk board paint (which is so much more fun and easier to write with than real chalk) and wrote on the walls.  Well the texture #1 makes it a little harder to write on the wall and #2 makes it harder to get it off.  The chalk paint gets in the crevices of the wall and makes it hard to wipe it off, it comes off eventually but patience is required.  If you are ok with those 2 things then by all means skip the smoothing out of the wall!

I love my menu board, my husband has stopped asking "What's for dinner" and will even start cooking sometimes when its easy and he knows how to do it.  I also love that I had this one random wall that you cant see from the living room but it totally visable throughout the kitchen.

I hope you have fun with chalk and let me know where you used the chalk board paint and for what, I would love to hear your crafty ideas!!

Project Housewife Out!

Christmas Ornaments

Its almost Christmas!!  Is everyone as excited as I am?!  In honor of it being Christmas I am going to share with you my favorite Christmas ornament decoration.  I have been doing this for years and love them.  Hopefully you will too!!  The top picture is one I made last year and here are a few others.

This one didnt turn out so good because of the crappy paint

Now to tell you how to do it...its really easy but is a major waste of paint.  I love them though so I say its worth it.  As you can see from the white ornament though it does matter what kind of paint  you get, not all paint is created equal and you can tell from that pic for sure.  I buy Folk Art metallic pain and it seems to work the best

I use all colors, usually more red/green/white because those are classic Christmas colors, but I love using fun colors too like pink and blue.  I did black and pink once too so the possibilities are endless!  The supplies you need are:

• Glass ornaments
• acrylic paint assorted colors
• ribbon
• ornament tray (keep the packaging the ornaments come in you are going to need it)
• embelishments (optional)

First step is to take the top off of the ornaments, the top being the silver part where you hook the ornament to the tree.  Once you have the top off you can start pouring in your paint.  I do one color at a time but you can do whatever you want.  In the picture below you can kind of see an example of that.  I usually do 5 stripes of paint.  After you get the paint in, start swiriling it around.  The more stripes you have the easier I find it to be to get paint coverage. 

This is also why I said this is wasteful of paint, because after you have the ornament covered in the marble pattern you love, dump the ornament over and have all the paint drip out.  I use the plastic ornament try to do this, but I have seen people use plactic cups and that looks like a good idea too.  I usually let these sit like that overnight to let the paint dry and get all the excess paint out.  When you think yours are ready put the top back on, add your embelishments and top with a ribbon.  Pretty easy right!

I would love to see your awesome ornament creations, share if you have some awesome ones!!

Project Housewife Out!

Sharing My Failures

Up until today I have shared with you all my success stories.  Today, I am sad to say I have a failure to share with you.  A few weeks ago I tried my hand at crayon art and have to say it turned out pretty well.  You can see it here.  Since those turned out so well I decided I would try one for either side of my TV.  So here is what I started with.

Thats 2 15x30 canvasas, painted with the red "basic" paint covered in glitter.  Here is another view of the canvases.

You can kinda see the glitter better here.  So in my infinite wisdom, I thought this shade of red would be a good backdrop for my crayon art idea.  The bottom 1/2 would be the grass and the top 1/2 would be the sky.  I would add flowers and butterflies to make it 3-dimensional and it would be fabulous next to the tv.  Well I started with the hair dryer and here is what happened.

I wanted to melt the crayons down so you didnt really see them but didnt think that when they melted you would see the canvas behind it anymore.  I tried to put embellishments on it to make it look better but that didnt really work out, you can see that here.

I think the major problem is the red background.  Im going to try and paint over it with possibly yellow, but right now I just put it to the side because Im mad at it!  So there you have it...not everything I make looks amazing or even that good.  This is my cautionary tale that crayon art is NOT as easy as it looks.

What craft failues have you had?  I would love to hear from you!!

Project Housewife Out!