First Etsy Sale!

I am so excited--this last week I had my first Etsy Sale! I sold the vinyl saying "Live Laugh Love" to a wonderful nice lady, and I had so much fun packing it all up and sending it out! I also sent her a bonus freebie--a super cute vinyl sewing machine--which she loved! Here are a couple pictures of what I did so you can get an idea of what you get when you place an order with me. Thanks for looking!

Mirrored Window Re-Do

{Before} I had already sanded the finish down a little...prepping for paint

I found this window at the Thrift Store downtown a long time ago, and I finally decided I wanted to do something with it other than let it sit in the closet gathering dust. It was actually in really good shape--real wood, nice stain and finish---it looked brand new. But I LOVE old, shabby, antique, almost ugly looking things---anything with cracked and peeling paint, rust, nicks and dents...you name it. So naturally, I had to do that to this. I decided to try crackle paint. Let's just say I've been trying to get this project done for about a month. I have FOUGHT and FOUGHT with the crackle paint. My original plan was to do a base coat of soft black paint, then use the crackle paint with a white coat over the top, so you could see the black cracks through the white. Well, I can't even tell you how many layers of black, crackle, then white I have on this baby. It was so frustrating trying to get the white paint to go on evenly with only one or two strokes (with crackle paint, if you overbrush it WON'T work). All I ended up with was streaky looking white paint, a few cracks, and lots of black showing through in a not very pretty way. Occasionally I'd get one side to look perfect, but the other sides looked horrible. I finally gave up and decided the black and white was way too stark of a contrast and that is why it wasn't working. So I went for a white base, then crackle, and a blue top coat. It WORKED! Boy was that a relief. I thought there was something wrong with me! After I did the white, crackle, then blue, I used some walnut ink stain over the top and stained it to give it an even older look. I finished it off with a sealer.

{Before the walnut ink stain}

{After the walnut ink stain} (please excuse the spots on the mirror--I hadn't cleaned it yet!)

{After} Doesn't the vinyl bird on the wall add a nice touch? :-)

Rustic Home Blocks

I love these blocks I made because they look old and rustic. The vinyl lettering was tricky because there are some super itty bitty pieces, as you can see. But it was well worth it to carry the old look from the blocks onto the letters. For the blocks, I painted them soft black first, then did the antique white over the top of it. I wanted the edges to look real old, like paint peeling (not just sanded), so I used my sanding block on the edges when the paint was still a little tacky. It kind of made the paint roll off, giving it that peeled look. I got that nifty little bird house at Real Deals---love that place! :)

Spring Has Sprung!

I just got this done tonight at about 11:30! My husband came to the rescue and watched the baby so I could get it done....I was waiting all day to finish it! It feels so good to have another project completed---and this one turned out even cuter than I had imagined! If you love it, check it out on my Crafts For Sale page! I cut out the flowers by hand from patterned paper, and then I used my digital craft cutter to cut out the leaves and the vinyl lettering. Then I Mod Podged it all to the wood blocks. It really brightens up the room! If anyone has a spring type craft on your blog that you'd like to show off, leave me a comment with your blog address because I'd love to see it!

So the next thing on my list is to finish the tea dyed purse I started.....