Furniture

Before & After: Sewing Stool

I’ve got some really exciting news to share today: I am starting to sell my furniture pieces at a local store in Howard County called A Slap of Paint!  #HoCoArts

A Slap of Paint is located in the Savage Mill, a historic textile mill turned into boutique shopping mall and basically one of my favorite places ever.

I cannot even express how excited I am for this opportunity. SO EXCITED! I have been a crazy lady on a mission to find pieces in need of some love and boy have I found some gems.

Take this lovely sewing stool, for example. This piece was too cool to pass up, but was a hot mess. The vinyl top was a goldenrod yellow with a big ole black stain on the top.

Here’s the before:
Stool_Before

After some white and teal paint (I mixed flat white paint with Paint Minerals for a chalk paint finish– this stuff is awesome!) and some gold fabric paint, I turned the ugly-duckling stool into this beauty.

After:

Stool

Home Improvement, Paint

Chevron Accent Wall

Last night I was beyond hyper and spontaneously decided to tackle my faux backsplash/accent wall in my laundry room. I think my spontaneity was key in the project, otherwise I would have over thought everything from the design to the colors.

I have seen so many designs online lately for accent walls: quatrefoil, shell, stripes, chevron… you name it, it’s been done. In my cracked out state, I went with a segmented chevron pattern and I LOVE IT. Also, it was way easy. Way.

I was too into groovin’ to my sweet tunes last night to take a ton of photos (imagine a quality mix of Bohemian rhapsody, Baby got back and Beloved)  but here’s the gist of what I did: I wanted the wall color to show through my pattern so it tied the accent wall into the rest of the space, so using 1″ tape I taped vertical stripes on my wall with no intention of filling them in. I spaced my lines out using a small level as my measurement. Honestly, I did this to avoid doing math. It’s about 9″ wide and was a perfect spacer. It also doubled as a level — go figure. I made sure my lines were pretty darn straight. They weren’t perfect, but they were mostly straight.

Then, I started to create my chevron pattern. I grabbed a pen and started marking my tape where other pieces of tape needed to intersect. Again, I used my level as a spacer. I placed it at the top of my cabinet and marked at the bottom, continuing until it wouldn’t fit anymore. I did this for all of the tape, then connected the dots.

Here’s a fun tip — if and when you run out of your painter’s tape, and if you just so happen to have masking tape or washi tape in the same width, you can use it as a substitute for painter’s tape. Yes, this happened. I was sad to paint over my mint tape, but didn’t want to lost my awesome energy and stamina with the project so I made the sacrifice.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up

With my pattern taped and ready to paint, I started to apply my paint colors: metallic gold (Thanks, Martha!) and ivory/manilla. I originally was going to do something with bolder pops of color, but went for the metallic paint as my bold choice. I also was going to add a third color, but my pattern only took up so much room and the third color probably wouldn’t have added anything to it.

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall taped up and painted

I painted two coats of each color onto the stripes before removing all of the tape.

*Drumroll*

{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall

Love love love love love love love. Love. Had I thought this project out more, I probably would have gone with a mint or teal chevron stripe, but I am so glad I didn’t. I think the gold tones play off the countertop wonderfully, and make the gray cabinets pop even more.

I started this project after dinner at 5:30(ish) and was cleaning up at 7:30 p.m. — not to bad for the fabulous result!

BEFORE:

{A Smith of All Trades} Laundry Room

AFTER:{A Smith of All Trades} Chevron wall again

Craft Projects, Jewelry

Geometric necklace

Update: I pretty much wear this necklace every day. I love it.IMG_0560

Ever have a project that starts out one way and ends completely differently? I wanted to make a pair of earrings that were inspired by something I saw on Pinterest a week or so ago, so I pulled out my beads and supplies and started fiddling with the beads. The further I got into my project, the more I wanted to create a necklace. I started with one color of bead and a small geometric shape, and I ended up with two tones of gunmetal and a wider pendant.

Onto the tutorial.

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace

I started this project with one long eye pin, and 11 head pins (eye pins hav a loop at the end so you can connect them to other things; head pins have a flat or round end meant to stop beads from falling off).

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace

On each head pin, I placed a specific number of beads. The number was important because it would help make my geometric shape later on. Here’s the pattern I ended up using (it’s not what I started with). 3: silver, 5: gunmetal, 6: gunmetal, 7: gunmetal, 8: gunmetal, 10: silver, 8: gunmetal, 7: gunmetal, 6: gunmetal, 5: gunmetal, 3: silver.

When each head pin had the correct number of beads on it, I twisted the end into a loop to stop beads from falling off the open end.

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace

Next, I grabbed my eye pin and started threading the head pins on the order I specified earlier. In between each head pin, I place one gunmetal bead.

One the entire eye pin was threaded with head pins, I closed the other end using round-nosed pliers.

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace

Time to add the chain. At first, I added a long chain so this would hang low in my chest. I later went back and added a clasp so it would hit above my chest (I told you I changed my plans a ton!).

To add the chain, I simply cut the amount I wanted, then opened each end of the eye pin and placed a link in the wire. For the clasp, you can attach it in the same way using a jump ring.

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace

I really like this necklace a lot. Now that I have a good pattern to follow, I think I’ll try to make it again in funkier colors.

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!

{A Smith of All Trades} Geometric Necklace