Find and recycle a piece of furniture by painting and embellishing it...

This weeks challenge is from Laura McHugh West! and I love this challenge...its not really a challenge for me at all....because I have been painting and re-finishing furniture for years.....and always embellishing it in some way or another....

 I love finding vintage chairs and stools and re-doing them into something special....

I sand them, strip them down, then love adding my shabby colors and vintage trims....

this cute shabby stool has been in my home for years and just loved the shape.....its has been used and is showing its age but that makes me love it even more...

this dining room table I  got in a trade....I traded my more modern glass table for this plain wooden table and then my hubby and I did our thing....he cut the 1/2 circles that we added to the sides of the table and then I painted it to match our dining room....

I love pinks and greens and got this love of color from my dear grandparents that I miss so much.....

I found these beauties at a flea market and can't wait to  shabby them up to match our home.....this cute chair was only a few bucks and the chandelier was $5.00...I am planning on spray painting it a nice bright color and have it re-wired to hang in my bathroom.....

isn't she  sweet, maybe some added trim and I'll make a cute little pillow and she will be all glammed up!

What interesting furniture makeovers are you working on???
would love to see them....come on don't be shy...

Recycling Furniture

I picked the challenge for this week, I think because I remembered I had this project sitting in my room for a couple of years. If I made it a challenge, I might get it done.

My sister-in-law gave me this little trunk. It's kinda cute the way it is, but not my style. I've been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since she gave it to me. Last year I was at a craft faire and my neighboring vendor had all these super cute little suitcases holding her stuff, but they were distressed and old looking. She told me she would buy the pieces at TJMaxx and then just paint them with regular off-white paint. 


I decided to do that with my little trunk and my personal goal for this project was to not buy anything to do it.


I had the trunk, so major mission accomplished. I bought paint samples last week to paint my front door; this slightly lavender colored paint would have to do. I wiped down the trunk to remove the dust, then took an old paintbrush and painted away. I didn't worry too much about getting paint on the handles - I figured I could just sand or scrape off the paint.

 

Here's the trunk after I used my little hand sander to distress the paint after it dried. It only took one coat of the lavender paint.

 

Here's a close-up of the handle after I sanded it and removed some of the paint. 

I had painted and sanded it and still wasn't sure what to put on the outside of the container. I had a ticket that I had to cash in earlier in the weekend, so travel was on my mind. I was also working on another art project that involved using some travel stickers, so there was the inspiration - a travel trunk!

I had a few good stickers, but needed more so I "googled" luggage sticker images and found these four that fit my need. I just printed them out on my color printer on regular paper.

I used Golden acrylic medium varnish to adhere them to the trunk after cutting around them closely with scissors.

Here's the finished trunk. I did a bit more distressing of the decals on the trunk to make it look more authentic.  It makes me excited to take my trip to France this Fall, though I will probably stick with a regular small suitcase!

 

Things Made of Book Pages & Covers

This week's challenge from Laura McHugh East was to recycle a book or book pages in an interesting way!

This piece above uses an old child's math book cover that I separated and stamped with a large foam stamp in black. I attached an embellished card a friend gave me in the center by adding watercolor, stitching around the edges and cutting with a scalloped scissor. To finish, I added a wire holder and some decorative coordinating ribbon.

Though our art can be similar in many ways, it is fascinating to see how we each come at the mixed media art genre in different way, with different techniques, materials, and results!


For this week's challenge, I felt right at home. I learned a great technique from Anna Corba several years ago about taking book covers and making decorative wall hangings from them. Anna is the author of several amazing books on mixed media art and I have learned so much from her.


For this week's challenge, I am going to show some things I made in late 2010 right after returning from a workshop I took with Anna in France, because they fit right with the theme and it is nice to go back and reminisce about fun art times of the past. Plus the photos I took of these items in my lightbox are better than what I could take today.


So here goes, and I'm going to include some instructions for a new technique I came up with for some of these.

Here's another one done on a book cover - this one a child's French book. I embellished it with some wire brads, stamped items and a picture of a French gentleman from inside the book itself.

Now, for my new technique.  

I felt bad taking apart books because I was taught as a child to revere books and I have a strong ethic around not wasting things. The book cover method is great, but you have the guts of the book left over and I wanted to do something with those piles. 

First, here are some examples of the work

These hangers are just as sturdy as the ones made with the covers, but they are made with 10-15 of the pages only.

I tore out several pages and dipped each side in melted beeswax, one edge at a time. After that cooled, I coated the front and back generously with beeswax. This stiffened up the pages and made for a nice structure upon which to collage. I attached my center elements, smaller collaged pieces I created separately, using more beeswax.

To finish, I punched two holes at the top to attach the ribbon through and added a word by doing an image transfer from a reverse printed word on plain paper on a laser jet using the same technique Laura and I used last week (adding water to rub off the paper). This technique works really well on beeswax. Just rub the image with the back of a spoon to transfer to the wax, then rub the paper off gently with some water.  

I hope you enjoyed seeing these book cover and book page creations!

There's some more info here on my blog about them. 

 

Recycle a book or book pages in an interesting way!

It was my turn this week to pick a challenge...and I love working with vintage anything, especially vintage books....using their pages to make banners, beads, paper flowers, using them in my art work and transforming them into art journals.....


Here's my photos for this week.....


I took a mixed media book altering class a while back with 
Julie Fei-Fan Balzer of Balzer Designs http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/  NYC....It was a fun class loaded with all kinds of interesting mixed media techniques....love using them in altered books and in my paintings...

I asked my librarians in the district if they have any older books that they are getting rid of, or are going to be recycled .... I would love some of them to use in art projects...and before you knew it I had boxes loaded with books of all shapes and sizes....

I love looking for hard covered books with and interesting title or has a great color cover....

next you can remove some pages to make the book a little thinner because you are going to load it up with all kinds of embellishments.....you then glue several pages together to make the pages thick  and sturdy using glue sticks......

then have fun painting and gluing things in your book....

I just used white acrylic paint but you can use gesso if you like.....and I like to leave some of the type showing....

here I painted areas that I will glue pictures down and a spot to journal....sometimes you have to go back and re-glue the pages if they are coming apart.....

have fun making your favorite patterns and shapes....with what  ever paints, markers or crayons you like....

I love adding black sharpie to everything to make those colors POP!!!!

Because the pages are so thick you can cut crazy shapes into the pages.....like these heart shape pages....

here's a page waiting for me to journal or glue my favorite pictures to.....

This is the altered book I did in Julie's class a while back....I loved the mustard colored cover and the Title..

We painted, stamped, glued, cut...and had a blast....She is a wonderful teacher....with so many creative ideas....and she is so funny...so calm and easy going....

Love that each and every book will be totally different and unique.....

Love adding my flowers and glitter (can never have enough glitter!)....

It took me some time to complete my first book with all of my other projects going on...so somethings there were winter themed pages and some spring...and that's nice to have a book that takes some time to complete and you get to include something from all the  different seasons.....

So this is the end of my 1st book......thanks Julie for all your inspiration....

what a great coffee table book.....your friends will be amazed that you made it.....

off to start another book...would love to see your altered books....

Spring Image transfer is what my friend Laura McHugh West wanted us to do for a challenge this week.....

Have to say I have never done this technique before...have heard about it and read about it but never gave it a try...... I was excited to learn...and did I learn, just what not to do.....here is my little journey on how to make an image transfer.....

used heat gun to help in the drying process......

then used brayer to make sure all was adhered.....when dried

added some trims and fabric scraps......

 I was pretty happy as to how they turned out.....

might have to make some  of these for my etsy shop.....hope you have a chance to give it a try...... transfer some of your favorite images, would love to see what you do.
HAPPY SPRING!!