CWTS Projects Archives • Vintage Revivals

DIY Faux Fireplace

Mandi — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 07:04:00 +0000

WE ARE THE CRAFTING WITH THE STARS SEASON 1 CHAMPIONS!

I just need to start this post with a BIG FAT THANK YOU!

First of all to {Tam @ Sew Dang Cute Crafts} for coming up with the ingenious concept of Crafting With The Stars. I am so grateful that I had the chance to participate.

Second to {Becca @ Blue Cricket Design} for being the BEST Star partner that a girl could ask for.

Third to the other contestants for bringing your crazy skills and making me step up my creativity.

And fourth and MOST IMPORTANTLY….You! Thanks for cheering me on and voting! For all of your kind words and still liking my blog when there hasn’t been too many “Meaty” Posts. You are the best virtual friends that I could ask for! Now on to the Tutorial!

Mantle Surround:

So when I was trying to figure out what I could submit for the Christmas round at CWTS it took me a day or two to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I was looking at blogs that inspire the crap out of me and {Ms. Funky Junk Donna} has been on my mind lately. Originally I was going to build the entire fireplace with pallet wood but….that just wasn’t {Thrift Shop Glam} enough.

As I was looking around my house for inspiration I saw {these} and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Cabinet Doors would be perfect! Now to find some….. Of course they didn’t have any at the thrift store. So I called a few cabinet shops to see if they had any left over from an uninstall or anything. One did. Drew’s Cabinets, they were so nice and I got 9 cabinet doors for $30.00. (If you live in St. George they still had some more.)

You will need 4 doors that are the same size and one smaller one to connect them.

I started off by washing them and priming them with Kilz Spray Primer. Then I used the only kind of spray paint that I will use Krylon. In Classic White.

Their nozzle is by far the best. Their coverage is by far the best. Their true-ness to cap colors are by far the best. Their price is….well you know where this is going. After a couple of coats and adequate drying time I glazed them with my BPF (Best Paining Friend) Ralph Lauren Faux Glaze in Black Silk. I used my {Flat Surface Glazing Technique} and this is what they looked like:

Now is the fun part. I went to Home Depot and bought some L brackets and Straps (I think that’s what they are called) Then….ALL.BY.MYSELF without my husband I used 2 of the doors and had them meet at a right angle. I put the edge of the back piece on the backside of the front. Then all I did next was screw 3 L brackets on each corner (top, middle, bottom) and then I did it to the other side. (Sorry no pics.)

Once they were securely in place I laid them down with the front sides on the ground and put my middle piece in between. I used the metal straps (4) and secured the center piece to each of the side pieces. Stand her up and she now looks like this:

Pallet Hearth:

At about this time Macho was getting home from work….hee hee hee. So outside we went to work on the pallet wood hearth. Before he got home I sanded the crap out of it so that little toesies wouldn’t get slivers. I put his muscles to work pulling the pieces off the back and by the time I got back with my camera he was already to this point:

Good job honey! I decided that I wanted the hearth to be about 4 inches longer on each side than the mantle surround and it magically worked out that way with the wood. Some things are just meant to be I think. Long story short, he cut down the long support boards, nailed the short boards between the ones that were on the top side already, and put a short board on each end. I need to do something to the wood to make it look finished but not new, so I went to Home Depot and got Minwax Paste Finishing Wax ($9.00). Its basically, well, wax that you rub onto the wood with a soft cloth, It kind of brightens it up without making it look unnatural. Its perfect for pieces that you want raw wood.

Painting The Background:

So whilst Macho was slaving away in the cold night I was nice and warm in the house painting the silver and white harlequin background.

Get your gear. I LOVE Americana Gloss Enamels Paints. They are really thick and glossy and don’t have that uber matte finish that regular acrylic paints have. I just dry brushed it onto my board so that it was streaky and oldish.

There are quite a few different techniques on painting Harlequin Diamonds…most include math. Not happening on Vintage Revivals. So I cut a diamond shape out of some plastic folders I had left over from my {Seizure Wall} and used Krylon Easy-Tack Spray Adhesive to hold it in place.

Then I stenciled Deco Art Dazzling Silver around the edges of the diamond:

(The white is where the pattern was, you can see on the top row how its only covering the edges, once all 4 edges were painted on I filled in the center) Looking back I should have drawn lines to vertically line the diamonds up….but I didn’t and they ended up getting a little wonky the last row…. no big deal to me but to those who might be a perfectionist, potential melt down moment.

Mantle Shelf:

This is where Donna @ Funky Junk comes into play. Have you seen her {mantle}? It is awesome! I knew I wanted the chunkified-ness and rusticallity (not a real words) of hers.

For the top of the mantle I used some super old 4×4’s that I got from my husbands Grandma. We (meaning Macho) cut them so they were 3″ longer than the cabinet doors on each side. Then we used L brackets and straps to mount them to the cabinet doors and to the studs in the wall.

How many of you have husbands that flat out say they dont like something? In normal circumstances mine is very open about his opinions but when it comes to my “decorating skills” he just repeats the same things like for the mantle top he just kept saying “its really thick.” and then I would say “I love it, its perfect!” and then he would say “ya but its really thick….” LOL oh husbands they are just the best, right?

To light it up I just put 2 bunches of white Christmas lights in the corners, so simple and so pretty. I have plans to put something on the sides of the background connecting it to the front of the fireplace but I have too much going on to do it this week. When I do I will post an update.

Check back tomorrow for a full tutorial on how to make a {Miss Mustard Seed} inspired book page garland!

UPDATE: Here is the link for the {Book Page Lighted Garland}

Linking Up at the parties on my sidebar and the DIY Club Nov. project party

worth $1,500! Bring your projects too!

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Sewing Room Scraps Bedding

Mandi — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 07:16:00 +0000

Thanks to everyone who voted for my project this week! I am extremely excited, humbled, and baffled all at the same time!

DISCLAIMER: If you are one of those “sewers” that pins and measures and junk YOU WILL HATE ME. Like as in DEATH hate. I am so sorry! I don’t really know how to sew, I just know how I want things to turn out and work backwards….I still love you though!

The most important thing to remember during this tutorial is all it is are STRAIGHT LINES. That’s it. No awesome techniques, no weird stitches, nothing like that. Straight lines with a straight stitch.

Oh and don’t you judge my messy house.

Now that you have been properly prepared lets begin.

MAKING THE TOP:

The fabric that I used:

The white quilted and the touches of Hounds tooth were from my cute Grandma. (free!)
The Black and White Swirls are from Ikea (when I bought it a few months ago it was on clearance for $3.99/yd)
The green zebra is from Joann’s. (I think around $9.00/yd but I used a 40% off coupon)
The Gray Chiffon is also from Joann’s ( $.99/yd)

I got all of the fabric in my sewing room that “went” together and laid it out on the bed so that I could change the order etc. before I started sewing.

Then I laid out a top sheet to see how big my duvet needed to be. (Crap, first hurdle none of my fabric was the right width.) So I figured out that if I cut some from the bottom and moved it to the sides then it would be the right width. But hello that’s not cute! So I made some contrasting piping to join them together.

Now for the ruffles. I used chiffon because when you wash it it still has life. It doesn’t get all matted down like ruffles do that are made out of other fabric.

I cut 4 6.5″ strips that were about 4 yards long each. I joined 2 for each stripe (end to end)
then i started ruffling. *If you have a ruffling technique you love use it! I am sure its better than mine…If not then here you go.)
Set your stitch length as long as your machine will allow. And set your tension as far to one side as you can without your thread breaking. I set mine to +2. Your fabric should ruffle itself. If it doesn’t or if its not even, (because lets face it when do things ever work out the right way?) you can hand ruffle it, its no big deal.

Then do the same thing to the other side:

This is what it will look like when both sides are ruffled evenly:

The next step is to sew the ruffles onto the normal fabric. I sewed mine in about 3 inches from the edge, right sides together on each of the pieces.

*IMPORTANT! After you have one side sewn lay it out flat and make sure the ruffle is straight across itself.

Otherwise it will look like this when you sew the other piece on….

See how its not straight? Oopsie.

Then do it to the other side. Right sides together and in about 3″.

This makes it so that the ruffled piece is connecting the other two.

Then I sewed down the edges of the overhang so that the ruffle was not the only thing holding them together

Underside:

Topside:

Do this for as many stripes as you have!

MAKING IT A DUVET:

OK so you have the top of your bedding done. The next step is to make it a duvet by sewing a flat sheet on the back. I laid the top piece out on the bed (right side up) and then laid the sheet down over it.
Then, because I didn’t have pins I used painters tape to hold the 2 pieces together….
Do you hate me?
I hope not!
You will stitch around the 2 sides and bottom, trim the excess and flip it right side out! I left about 8″ at the top of the flat sheet (the length of the top was 8″ shorter than the sheet) so that I could fold it down over the opening of the duvet. I did a super large binding on the top of the sheet in the green zebra so that it was well, you know, cute. Just remember to not sew the top shut…otherwise you wont be able to get your comforter in! Ta Da! You survived this crazy tutorial!

DROP CLOTH DUST RUFFLE:

The drop cloth was originally going to be one of the fabrics on the duvet. I had pleated it perfectly but it just wasn’t working so I took the stitches out of the top and bottom that held the pleats in To make it look like mine, all you need to do is measure the distance that you want between pleats and mark it. Then iron where all of your marks are and sew down them. Really that’s all there is to it. Then just tuck it under your mattress.

PICKLE BUTTON PILLOW:

My daughters name is Dylan she is the cutest thing ever, see:

She has the most heart wrenching little raspy deep voice. Its makes you want to suck her cheek off. When she wakes up from a nap she always says “I mish you Mama” Love that baby!

I digress.
So her nickname is Dillers, and keeping with the {Thrift Shop Glam Rules} I needed something quirky and unexpected in this room. Enter the Pickle Pillow.

I went on a treasure hunt through all of my buttons and got literally every single green one. Then I just kind of moved them all into a pickle shape. No technique involved. Just formed it into the shape I liked.

Then I drew on my fabric a shape similar to the shape and size of the one I made out of the buttons.

I started with the large buttons and positioned them about the same spot where they were in my formation on my fabric and stitched them on.

Once the large buttons were in place I worked my way down to the smallest ones and filled in as many empty spots as I could.

Then I used the raised buttons to fill in everything else. Easy peasy.

I printed the wording off on my computer and cut it our of freezer paper with a razor blade. Then I mixed blue, yellow and orange paint together cause I had no green. Thank goodness for Preschool! This is an awesome tutorial on {how to make freezer paper stencils by Char @ Crap I’ve Made}

Then I used some left over fabric on the edges and made a basic pillow cover {awesome pillow making tutorial by Brooke @ All Things Thrifty}

and you are done!

GRAY RUFFLE PILLOW….KNOW AS “THE LUCY PILLOW”

If you want to know how to make the gray ruffle pillow you can find my tutorial {here}

I apologize again for any lack of information in this tutorial. I don’t technically know how to sew, if you have any questions you are more than welcome to email me and I will help you the best I can!

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Anthropologie Acid Mirror

Mandi — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:03:00 +0000

There have been a few versions floating around blogland of how to make mirrors like this:

This was my inspiration:

The issue that I have with most of the tutorials are the mirrors are just completely gone in spots. Theres no color variation, no depth. This is the difference:

This mirror was done using oven cleaner:

See how ALL of the reflective coating is gone?

These are what some done with acid look like:

Much better right?

So heres how to do it.

You will need:

Neoprene Gloves
Jasco Brand Paint and Epoxy Remover
Muratic Acid
Old Shirt or Carpet (So that your mirror doesnt get scratched)
Possibly a scraper.

Ok so first you want to lay your mirrors out face down on a surface that cant be damaged by the paint remover.

PUT ON YOUR GLOVES!!!

Pour some of the psint remover onto the back of the mirror and with your hand gently spread it around so that the entire surface is covered.

Wait 15 minutes.

In an ideal world every mirror would do this:

and that would turn into this:

but it doesnt always work that way. If your paint doesnt bubble then you will have to scrape it off. I use a floor scraper (I think thats what its called) with a razor blade on the end. I hold the mirror still and my husband Macho slowly scrapes the paint off. This will work just as well but it will take a little more work.

Once you have taken the paint off the back take your mirrors somewhere that you can wash them off with the hose (empty lots next door work great or the curb.) Then dry it off. The back will look pretty much like the front of the mirror.

WASH OFF YOUR GLOVES, BUT STILL KEEP THEM ON!

Next you are going to bust out the Muratic acid. If you do not have any at your house you can get it at Home Depot. It is a chemical that they use to clean swimming pools so it will be by that stuff. As far as I know you can only buy it in boxes with (2) 1 gallon jugs. Its about $11.00.

Pour some acid into a spray bottle and spray around the edges of your mirror. IMPORTANT! Each mirror is different! If you have compromised (scratched) the surface of the reflective coating then the acid will work faster so be prepared!

After 10 seconds wash off the acid with your hose and see if it has started to work. If it hasnt put more on and wait a little longer, keep doing this until you get the style that you like. If it has make sure that it is the effect that you want. There was one mirror that I did for this project and the acid worked instantly and pretty much ate all of the reflective coating away (its the small rectangular red one on the left side). If your acid isnt working then you can gently take a piece of sand paper and sand the coating a little. If you do it too much then it will look scratchy and not eaten. Basically dont be afraid to wash the acid off and let it work slowly. You can always take more off but you cant get it back! You will notice after the first time you wash it off what is going to happen. If it comes off in big reflective flakes when you put water on it but didnt seem to be doing anything until you rinsed it off BEWARE it will be gone extremely fast. If you can start to see it eating away at the coating before you rinse it but it hasnt made it through all of it let it sit a little longer and you will get a mirror with more color variation.

This is a mirror that the acid slowly ate away. You can see parts where the stripes from the stool are starting to show through.

A great way to see what it looks like is to lay it on the grass. You can see the places that are gone really well.

Once you have done this the rest is CAKE!

Use your favorite spray adhesive on the back of the mirror and lay your fabric right side down on top of it. Cut it to shape and put it in your frame.

Hope this makes sense!

Feel free to leave a comment or email me with any questions!

UPDATE:
A reader just informed me that mirrors that are made before 1941 can have mercury in them. 90% of the mirrors that I do have to be cut for the frames, so I dont worry about it too much BUT if for any reason you think that your mirror might be close that that era. DO NOT RISK IT. Just have another piece cut. You and I will both sleep better at night!

{To see the best glazing technique ever click here}

To see part 2 of this project click here

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Awesome-fied Desk and Mirrors

Mandi — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:03:00 +0000

I hope that everybody had a chance to go and check out the Crafting With The Stars entries this round. They were in a word INSANE! Every.single.one of them. This was my entry:

This is a little desk area in my 7 year old daughters room. I found the desk at the DI for $5.00. I peed a little when they told me that’s how much it was……cause I was so excited!

It needed a TON of work though.

There were HUGE gouges in the top and the veneer was peeling off of the drawers. But I thought she was Beautiful!!

Kind of sick right?

I started by peeling off the veneer on the places where is was chipping (the arch at the bottom of the drawers and the middle drawer) Then I used drywall putty and covered the entire spot. Once that was dry I lightly sanded the entire desk down.

And then I sanded the top more heavily with an electric sander to remove some of the scratches. (don’t forget to leave some character ladies!)

Once all of the sanding was finished I wiped it down with a wet rag and primed it with Kilz Spray Primer. (It took 1 and 1/4 cans) Then I went to bed. (which is why there are no pics)

The color I used is my favorite red ever. Its Krylon Banner Red. It has more of a orange undertone than pink. The best advice that I can give regarding spray paint is make sure (especially on the first coat) that its light. There is no way that you should even attempt to cover everything in one or 2 coats, you will just get a drippy mess.

Next comes the LOVE of my life (besides my hubs) Ralph Lauren Faux Glaze in Black Silk. You can see my glazing technique {here}and {here}

Glazing is really easy to do on heavily carved pieces, because there are lots of nooks and crannies to stick to. A piece like this desk is a little harder because its almost 100% flat. So I am going to show you my technique to glaze a flat surface.

Get your gear! I use an old t shirt with 1/2 of it wet. My glaze and one of the $.99 crappy brushes from Home Depot.

Start by putting the glaze in whatever crack you do have.

now here is the tricky part. Wipe it in the opposite direction from your edge ONLY! No swirling, no wiping back and forth, no down the crack, nothin. It will just pull all of your glaze out and you will have to start over. Like this:

It will leave glaze in your minute crevice. Here is another example:

For the drawers I spread a small amount of glaze on the whole surface (concentrating on places that had cracks and dings.) Then I really lightly wipe it off. (picture the way the the 4th grade lunchroom workers would wipe a table off)

I loved the tarnished brass handles but the drawers needed a little updating so I moved them from the middle of the drawer to the top. Its a simple change but I think made a huge difference!

And there you go!

Now if you want to learn the {Anthropologie Acid Mirror Technique Click Here!}

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Anthropologie Teapot Lamp

Mandi — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 06:05:00 +0000

So for Crafting With The Stars this week I knew I was going to have to make my own Anthro Lamp. I love this “One Lump or Two” fellow. The teacups and teapot are so whimsical and totally my style! My knockoff turned out WAY better than the original. So heres how to do it yourself!Ok people, when I saw this lamp a few months back on Anthropologie I knew I was going to have to bust it out.

Apparently, I needed a special occasion. Enter “Crafting With The Stars”.

The Anthro version retails for $198.00, the grand total for mine? $31.99 and most of that was for the drill bit.

Any knick knack that you have will work, you can have a crazy awesome lamp for FREE. It’s genius I tell you….. GENIUS!! Muah haha ha ha (lightning bolts crashing and me with crazy hair, cause you know that I haven’t changed my ponytail for 2 days.)

OK so how many of you knew that this project from “Crafting With The Stars” was mine?

Do you love it? Do you want to make your own completely interchangeable lamp? Well good cause I am going to teach you!

So you need to start by rounding up a bunch of dishes, knick knacks, basically random stuff that YOU LOVE! This is a lamp that you are designing, so make it yours!

FIGURING OUT YOUR LAYOUT

I tried about 87 thousand ways before I knew exactly how I wanted my lamp layout to be. Here are some that didn’t fly:

Once you get it figured its time to start drilling!

DRILLING YOUR JUNK

The type of drill bit that you need is one like this:

I got mine at Homie D’s for $18.00 (EXPENSIVE! I almost slapped the guy when he suggested it…..but so worth it) Mine is only the 1/2″ bit.

DO NOT BUY ONE LIKE THIS: This is what I originally bought but it wore out after 1 plate.

SO SO SO IMPORTANT!

You MUST use water to keep your drill bit cool while you are drilling. Otherwise it will ruin your bit. For instance I put as much water as the underside of each dish would hold. You can also pour it on as you are drilling if it is on a surface that wont hold any water.

Also, don’t put a ton of pressure on the item that you are drilling, let the drill just grind through it. If you put too much pressure when it goes through the other side you most likely will break something….:(

Start with your drill bit as parallel as possible to your surface:

Slowly start drilling while firmly holding the drill in place (cause its going to start to dance like Derek Hough) Once it gets through the hardened glaze it will not move and you can drill at full speed.) It will start to look like this:

Keep drilling and SLOWLY while you are drilling move your drill into a perpendicular position with your surface (the way you would drill into anything normally)

At this point your hole should look like this:

Just keep drilling and move your drill into a normal drilling position. You can kind of start to feel when its getting close to breaking through the other side, it will catch a little and BAM your through. So that I didn’t damage the surface that I was drilling on I used a teacup underneath to catch all of the water, and the core that you are drilling out. Also it protects your surface:

And this is where you will end up:

Also you may have notices in the teacup of remains larger bits of cuteness. When you are drilling through the tops of lids (mine were on my Teapot and Sugar Bowl) make sure that you drill from the underside and it will just take most if not all of the handle. If not I bet you could just “sand” it on your concrete or something.

REVAMPING

Sometimes whilst thrifting you find something that has major potential but needs a little love. This is what I did:

I found this Teapot at TJ Maxx for $9.99, Its not bad at all but it needed a little Vintage Revivals Jazz.

I used this vinyl tree branch:

And stuck it on my Teapot. Its not perfect but as long as the edges were sealed I wasn’t too concerned.

I think that its kind of cute just like that. Then I took it outside and sprayed it with Krylon Classic Gray. Then I took a razor blade and carefully traced it along all of the edges. You have to be super careful while you are peeling it off because paint will come off ceramic pretty easily. I found also that if you start at the tips and peel toward the center it works much more smoothly….

Originally I was going to Gorilla Glue everything together but as I was disassembling a lamp that I just put a new lamp kit on I decided to use its innards.

ASSEMBLING YOUR LAMP

You will need a lamp kit (about $5.99 @ Wally’s)

A threaded rod which can be found at Home Depot, and some washers.

Get your gear:

(The top of the rod is cut off in his picture)

Start by feeding your wiring through your base (bowl):

**In these pictures I used a lamp weight. You DO NOT need this. I actually took mine off the lamp. Thought I should clear that up since its in the pictures….

Next you will feed it through the hole at the bottom of your rod:

Feed it all the way through so that it comes out the top:

Now feed your bowl onto the rod and make sure that its all good underneath:

Now stack your dishes or whatever you are putting on your lamp. You need to make sure that when its all stacked up it is tall enough that it will pull the weights to the top of your base so that it is all held in tightly. (You will have to hold the weights up with your hand until you get your socket screwed on.)

Most light kits come with different size rubber washers. You can use them if you need a filler to hold your weights up. I didn’t have to use them on mine but they would be awesome.

Before you put your light socket on make sure you but the harp holder on….not that I did it in the wrong order or anything…..

Assemble your wiring according to the manufacturers instructions.

When you pick up your lamp it should be tight and not move. If it does then you need to add one of the rubber washers that came with your lamp or change out some of your junk to make it taller. Make sense?

Tada! You have just made an AWESOME Anthropologie Knock Off Lamp! Congrats!

Now here is the genius part.

Because you didn’t glue anything together EVERYTHING is interchangeable! How cute would it be to have a Halloween themed one with pumpkins, some spell books, a jar of candy, and a little witch hat at the top? Or one that is made out of birds? This is a variation that I made with some things that I had around my house:

p.s. I am addicted to skeleton shades right now.

Here are a few more pictures:

If you make a lamp PLEASE let me know I would LOVE to Feature you!

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