Redressing an old breadbox

Hi! It's the weekdnd!!! Yay!

Thought I would show you what you can do with something like this.

Have ya ever come across an old bread box and thought "Cool, but what would I do with it?  Well this hand made bread box was just screaming for me to save it. Some one had lovingly built this and that is one of the things that really draws me to a piece. One of a kind, I like it.  Sorry I am so poor at taking before pictures, but as I blog more, I will get better. Promise! 

I am so lucky I have ANY pictures of it that are decent because I was running out the door suitcase in hand to fly off to Alaska and forgot to take pictures when I dropped it off at the gallery! My sister Mary Ann was here, and took some pictures, ...and she reminded me that I needed to get pictures of it when I displayed it at the gallery...ppppffft   like I needed reminding, ha.....well of course I ran into the gallery and set it up on display and raced off to catch my plane...I remebered it about 20 mile down the road.  Thank you Mary for these pictures!

Here I am putting the final touches on it before I take it to the gallery

 

Dancing flowers...I love them and people start acting disappointed if I don't put them on a piece..

 

You can see the shelf inside peeking out before I put the front doors on, it is green with aqua polka dots.

This was a fun piece to work on ( I know, I say that about everything I work on, don't I??)

Hope you've gotten some ideas for some fun projects of your own. I'd love to see them if you want to share. Just email them to me at csoconnor1@gmail.com
Have a wonderful Fathers day!  Tata for now, Carolyn

A Trash bin too pretty for trash

Cheers everybody! It's a wonderful day in the studio and I wanted to share a recent project. This is a trash bin I found at a garage sale for 5 bucks!!  For several years it sat in the garage by the door, holding huge bags of dog food for our little Pollydog. Honestly, I don't know how much I thought she was going to eat....but I bought it in 20 pound bags and I would store them in this. Anyway, every time I walked by it to go into the house, I would say  "I should paint that".  Well, I finally did~!


As you see it here, I have sanded it and am ready to put a coat of primer on it.  I have wiped it good with a tack cloth to remove any sanding dust. 

I find it easier to paint if I take it all apart. That way, I get to waste a day looking for the hinges when I am ready to put it back together. I swear I always put them in a place that would be the first place I think I would look for them, but it always turns out that, it is the ...always... the last place....   And sometimes I don't find them until after I replaced them with new hinges that will fit the indentations and holes.....not an easy task because the new hinges are not shaped the same. This is important, because if I were going to replace them from the start I would sand any indentations and fill the holes when I was prepping the piece.


You can see it does not have a back on it and I knew I wanted one. (No, I didn't just take it off...)

I was planning on bead board, but then I decided to just go with plywood. So I bought a piece of quarter inch plywood and painted the background green.  Then I put a big heart on it. I had just gotten some Copic permanent markers (thank you sister Mary for chipping in!) and I used them for the final little sprigs out the top, sides and bottom. I was so excited that it was much easier then doing them with the brush and having to have the brush loaded just right with the right consistency of paint blah blah blah..... so here is how it turned out.

Copic markers are alcohol based and "permanent"...
..water proof..
BUT NOT POLYURETHANE PROOF!! :(

I had tested it on a small patch and it looked great... but when I applied the polyurethane it started bleeding and smearing!!! Oh NO!!!!  
So I did what anyone would do. I immediately spit on paper towel and started trying to clean the lines up !  Hey, you use what is handy and all the water in my containers were full of paint water from swishing paint out of the  brushes. I couldn't let it start drying for over 30 seconds and it worked.  Whew!
  I was able to clean the lines up enough that the smearing was not noticeable, and then I retraced the lines with a paint pen.  OK, now on to the next step...

Oh, here's a tip, I would have been fine with the copic markers IF instead of brushing the Poly on, I would have first sprayed a light coat of poly on, and that would have sealed it so that I could then brush the poly on without worrying about it bleeding.  When ever I am doing black and white I do that if the paint has not dried  for several days........but I was in a hurry.... Hmmmm I vaguely remember "Haste makes waste.."



I decided on some flowers for the front, and again used the copic pens on the bottom of the flowers forpart of  the ground, but the smearing on it was fine and actually added to the blending of the earth look so no heart attack there.

 This is how the cabinet looked when I was done, and everyone was impressed that I had been able to paint the heart on the inside......when I actually painted it first, and then attached it after the fact!  The green background looks yellow but it is actually green.  My friend Jenna took these pictures in her kitchen because I stopped by her house on the way to the gallery (where I was going to drop this off) and attached the  "heart back" to the cabinet. Thank you Jenna! If you wouldn't have taken these pictures, I would not have any to post because it sold within the week~

 

 

Here's a close up of the drawer, I like to make the polka dots different sizes so I purposely make some of them larger every so often..
This picture of the handle is bad I know but you get the idea. I put together two strands of beads with wire and then wrapped colored  wire around them for the handle on the drawer.

OK, guess that is all the damage I can do for the day here, guess I will go paint!
Ta Ta for now, Carolyn