I Have Been MIA

 I know I have been MIA.  So sorry.  I feel paralyzed right now.  As I mentioned before we are selling our house.  I spend most of my time right now keeping the house up for showings.  I am afraid to cook or start any projects for fear an agent will call and want to show the house.  On top of that,  I either have to take the dogs with me wherever I go or take them to my parents.  I will be glad when this part is over.  The good news,  we have an offer, so hopefully we are on the home stretch.

Since my creative mind never stops working and I am starting to go a little crazy, I decided to focus my thoughts on my oldest son Tyler's upcoming graduation.  We just had his Sr. pictures taken and I should be getting them back soon.  I have been scanning Pinterest for ideas and of course they have plenty.

These are my favorite invitations so far.  I like simple.  I want the color to come from the picture.  I also like a little country flair.  I will get this from the font and the picture.  That is what is great about outdoor photos, they automatically look a little country.

Don't ask me why they are all of girls.  I think a boy photo will look awesome in all of these.

I will hopefully be back to my old self soon.  I am sure once we move I will have more projects than I can imagine.  Have a fabulous weekend.

The Next Chapter

We have put our home on the market and so will be moving shortly.  Y'all know how stressful moving can be.  I have put projects and crafts on the back burner cause I want the house picked up for potential buyers.  I have to be on the ready at all times.  That is exhausting.  I don't even want to cook right now, no dirty dishes.  Haha.  Good excuse.

So, posts may be sparse over the next little bit, but I promise good stuff once we get to our new location.  Having a new living space will get me all fired up with ideas.  Soooo exciting.

Havin A Blue Mood

I don't usually do blue.  My blue is turquoise, but my sister called in a favor.  She decorates her home in blues and reds.  She wanted a distressed look, so I thought it was a good time to try Miss Mustard's Seed Milk Paint in Flow Blue.  I also wanted to try her dark wax.  I am happy to report I absolutely loved the results.  I did do a light sanding even though she says you don't have to.  I wanted to make sure that the paint stuck.  My last project was a disaster when I didn't sand.  All of the milk paint just flaked off.  I will go into it more when I post that project.

The original color was a light grey, so when I distressed it the perfect amount of lightness popped thru.  When I added the dark wax I was in love.  It took the finish from so so to awesome. I will definitely do this technique again.  In fact, I can't wait to get to paintin.

To get back to Miss Mustard Seed press here.

Plate Wall

Happy April Fools Day.  I have no tricks to play on you today,  just fun decorating to share.  I head to Santa Cruz tomorrow for Spring Break so hopefully I will find something fun to post about from there.  I have been scouting out Thrift Stores and Antique Stores online in the Santa Cruz area, so hopefully I find some treasures.

Without further ado,  here is my latest project.  My good friend, Nicole, asked me to create a plate wall in her kitchen.  It turned out great and added that little something her kitchen needed.  

It is simple and clean.  I added jute twine to some of the plates just to add a little interest.

Before

I found these plate hangers on Amazon.  I love that they are hidden as opposed to traditional plate hangers.

This is the inspirational photo I found on Pinterest.  It gave me the idea to add twine to some of the plates.

I found most of the plates at Homegood's and Marshall's.

I so enjoyed spending Easter with all my boys.  It was the perfect kick off to Spring Break.  I hope you guys have a fabulous week.  I know I am going to as I bask in the Santa Cruz sun.

Another Door Opened

Happy Saturday!  I can't believe tomorrow is Easter.  Even though it is not as early as it has been in the past,  it still got here quick.  So quick that I have not even decorated and I have amazing Easter decorations.  I am a Spring baby, March 21st, so I love this time of year.  Well, I haven't been lazy with my time.

We have a local nursery that has been here forever.  I don't know how long, but as long as I can remember.  It recently changed ownership.  I thought this was the perfect opportunity to exercise my quest to make myself do things that are uncomfortable.  I have recently been advised and realize unless I start doing things I am not already doing my business is not going to grow.  I do not like putting myself in situations that I may get rejected, but it is time to grow up and not take everything so personal.  So, I sent the owner a text along with some photos.  That lead to a visit to my house to see my pieces. That lead to, "I love your style, bring it all down to the shop". Yippie Skippie.  Somebody, other than myself, likes my stuff. Validation is beautiful.

You have seen the pieces that I put in their shop already, but they look so different in another setting.

Take a look.

Ok, you may not have seen these.  I don't think I have posted about my love of message boards.  I have an assortment here. Most I do out of old windows but sometimes I will use an old frame.  The tall skinny one with chicken wire is an old cabinet door that the glass broke out of.  I figure everyone could use a message board or two.

Here is the little end table that I did the grain sack look on the top of.

Remember the iron parlor chairs?  She had a cute little table to pair them with.  Adorable.

And here are the little iron tables that I did the antiqued mirror top on.  Very cute with these black and burlap frames.

I love the children's section of this shop.  My Union Jack cabinet fits right in.

For all of you Woodland Ca. locals, go take a look.  It was Youngmark's and now is Boxwood Nursery.  The new owners are Ryan and Erin Fullerton.  They have done a beautiful job transforming the inside and outside of the business.  All of the flowers are blooming so it is just beautiful walking through the nursery.  I am very grateful for the opportunity to display my goods in their store.  I am also proud I made myself get a little uncomfortable.  It definitely paid off.

I hope all of you have a wonderful Easter.  I am headed to Santa Cruz for Spring Break.  I will post from there next week.  I am ready for a little vacation get away.

French Grain Sack Side Tables

Happy hump day y'all.  That just reminded me, I was born and raised in California but I have always felt like a Southern Bell.  My Mom is from Oklahoma so maybe that is where I get it.  I have been told I have a slight drawl.  Anyway, I was at the post office today and a homeless man said, "good afternoon".  I responded, "well good afternoon to you too".  His response surprised me.  He said, "oh my, you are a Southern Bell".  I told him, "so I have been told".  It just made me giggle that a 5 second interaction was enough for this down on his luck gentlemen to make a small assessment of me.  Kinda funny.

The point of this post is not my "Southern Bellness".  It is to share my latest project.  Do not get overwhelmed.  I tried a couple of techniques I have been wanting to try all in one project.  So I don't want you to think that this is too complicated.  If you just try one thing in this project, great.  If you try them all, well you go girl.

About a year ago I bought two end tables.  Yes, I said a year ago.  They had a cararra marble inset that I fell in love with.  I use them a lot for staging pictures for posts.  I also like to use them to serve a variety of cheeses when I host parties cause I am fancy like that.

See how pretty everything looks against the marble?  Anyway,  I didn't want to just toss the tables.  But what do I do with two tables that basically have no top?

First, paint them.

Oh my those are white, really white.  But, still what should we do for the insert?  For starters I had wood cut to size.

One of the techniques I tried was transferring french typography onto fabric creating a french grain sack look. The other was to Mod Podge fabric so that it was water proof.  So here we go.

First of all, I got my french typography image from The Graphics Fairy.  You have to go to this site.  First of all, she has amazing french typography and images.  Second, she goes into great detail about how to achieve different transferring methods.  Whether it be fabric or wood etc.,  she outlines the best way to achieve successful results.

I chose this image.  She gives you the option to print an image in reverse.  This is what you need if you are going to transfer an image.  Per her suggestion, I ordered Lesley Riley's Tap Transfer Artist Paper.  I found it on Amazon.  I printed my image on the paper according to the directions.  Then I transferred it to my fabric.  It was incredibly easy and efficient.  I am so using this product again. 

You can kinda see where the clear part of the transfer is.  I wasn't to worried about it.  I figured when I added my Mod Podge that it would disappear and I was right.  

I then taped off stripes to create my grain sack look.  I brushed on black paint with a sponge brush, making sure that there was not too much paint on my brush.  You want your stripes to look faded and aged.  After the paint had dried I set the paint and transfer with an iron.  I put a piece of wax paper between the project and iron so nothing would stick to the iron.  I then washed the fabric on the gentle cycle.  I wanted it to not look too perfect.  It helped age the fabric, paint and transfer.

I then laid the fabric over my cut piece of wood and centered it exactly where I wanted it.  I then did a coat of Mod Podge.  That is what is giving the white appearance in this photo, but it dries clear.  After that was completely dry I did the sides and cut off the excess fabric.

Wha la.  How awesome is that?  The Mod Podge will protect the top from glass marks or spills. 

I love the way it turned out and I can't wait to try this transfer method on other projects.  

Can you see why I couldn't just toss these tables in the garbage?  They have a lot of charming details.  I love the shell like design on the drawer, very cute.  Also, earlier I mentioned that the tables were too white.  I just sanded them a little and added a brown glaze to antique it and warm up the finish a little.  Much better.

Look how pretty these legs are.  

Another project success and it only took me a year.  Haha!

Have a great day.

Union Jack Cabinet

Happy Monday.  I am 3 days late on my promise to deliver my Union Jack Cabinet, but it is done.  You know how life gets in the way?  With three boys, I just have to go with the flow.

This cabinet has been quite the process, in fact it seems all my projects of late take a little more effort than originally intended. That's ok.  That is how I learn.  I figure out what works and doesn't.  It is all good.  I am learning, painfully, to just go with it.

How ugly is this?  This is not what I envisioned in my head.  Yuck!

Ok.  It's better, but it is still not right and I don't know what to do.  So I look at it for over 3 months.  It was killing me.  I knew it had potential, but what?

I see this picture on Pinterest.  I get inspired.  I can do some version of this.

Didn't it turn out great?  Union Jack was just what it needed.  I am sad to see it go, but I don't have room for it.  Hopefully it will find a happy home.

Have a great week guys.