Truly Trash to Treasure

The other day I was on my way to work and passed something I saw dumped at the side of the road. Of course I had to turn around and check it out. I took it home to see if I could do something with it. It had a bent leg and another bent piece in back but I can't pass up free!
Here it is:

I walked it around the house setting it down in this place or that to see if it would work somewhere and decided that it should go on my front porch. Besides my pool area in back, my porch is one of my favorite spots to relax.

Now it was time to fix up the cart and my milk can which I have been meaning to paint for a while.
I found an old board in the garage, cut it to size with my trusty circular saw.

I got the idea here Ask Anna to make the design for my board.

I painted the board an ivory color with some brown accents. Then I burnt the edges of my paper to age it. Be careful if you try this. I wet my kitchen sink and light it with a bbq lighter a little piece of the edge at a time over the sink. Then I modpodged the paper to the board and added a bit of the brown paint on the paper. I put a coat of modpodge on it and then after it was dry, I sprayed some polyurethane over it for protection since it was going to be outside.
Here is the finished board on the cart:

 Next it was time to paint the cart and milk can. I used Krylon flat black paint

While they were drying I worked on making a stencil for my milk can. I designed and printed out our address on a piece of paper

I grabbed some contact paper I keep on hand. I found that I could see the design under the contact paper, so I used a marker to trace the design and an exacto knife to cut out a stencil.

I stuck it on the can and used the ivory paint to stencil the number on the can.

Here are the finished projects.

Did I mention that I love my porch?

I think the cart is a nice added touch. Best of all it only cost 10 bucks! Four dollars for a can of spray paint and six dollars for flowers. From the side of the road Wednesday, to my front porch today!

Tailgate Table Time (with apologies to my Georgia friends and family)

So we have always been Mizzou and Georgia football fans. My daughter, her husband all live in Athens, home of the Georgia Bulldogs. She frequently has bought us Georgia apparel. Now Mizzou and Georgia are in the same SEC division. While this is exciting, it puts me in the middle. Now I am a Mizzou fan, but I do have a small spot in my heart for my daughters home team, Anyway, today is the BIG MIZZOU/Georgia game and we have tickets! We will be leaving to go up to Columbia in an hour. I was getting tailgating supplies together and realized we never have a table to just set our drinks or dips on. So I grabbed this old TV tray I have had and decided I should paint it.

 Got out some old black spray paint

Found me a nice pic

Then I used my trusty ModPodge and glued it to the tray and put two coats over it.

I sprayed it with two coats of poly:

Looks good!

Well, gotta go! Off to Columbia. GO TIGERS!

DIY Weekend

Love when I have a long weekend to get some projects finished. I was able to make 3 canvases and some curtains for the bathroom which I will post later. This project was an afterthought today. It was pretty quick and easy to do. As I said before, I am in the process of working on my master bath. I had this old chair that I bought at a garage sale years ago. It was originally a maple color and I used the crackle paint technique on it and the vanity that I had since I was a little girl. It looked fine when the bath was yellow, green and blue but I figured I would be covering the seat sometime since I painted the room in the brown with turquoise accessories.

 I taped the edges. I first used some gesso paint to give it a nice surface to paint:

I got busy outside with the grandkids at the pool and forgot to take the next few pics, but I then painted the seat with a nice ivory paint and used brown to paint the piping on the edge. I then went to my new favorite blog site for graphics and grabbed this one from "The Graphics Fairy?"  http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/ 

I used my scapbook software to reverse the image. I printed it on freezer paper. I got the instructions for this at this blog site: http://home-frosting.blogspot.com/2011/08/transfer-using-freezer-paper.html
I carefully put it on like she said by getting my surface wet, but it just smeared, so I wiped  the graphic off the freezer paper and tried again without wetting my chair. It went on still a little blurry, but I want it to look old anyway. After everything dried I used a waterbase acrylic varnish to give it a protective coat. Here is my finished product:

I really like it and think it goes well with my bread box graphic project I did a few weeks ago. I figure if it does not hold up, I can always go back to my original plan and recover the chair!