Tag: stencil

Craft Projects, Furniture, Jewelry

Jewelry Box reveal… finally!

Jessica Smith

How sad is it that I’ve had this project complete for months and still haven’t shared it!? Very sad.

Oh well! The time has come to share my jewelry box project that took me months to do because I couldn’t decide what the heck I wanted.

Jewelry box before

I found this jewelry box in an antique store for 50% off, so I got it for a steal of $20-some bucks. Some of the jewelry boxes I was looking into buying cost more than $100, so that seemed like a great price.

I wanted to get rid of the gold tone to the wood and the stinky smell in the drawers so I decided to paint the whole think and rip out the fabric liner.

Jewelry box drawers

It’s not that the liner wasn’t nice… it just was horrendous haha. And scratchy! The only really nice piece of jewelry I own is a strand of pearls that my hubby gave me at our wedding, and it would be ruined resting on that. So yeah, it had to go.

Jewelry box white

Once the drawers were cleaned out, I started to paint. And paint. And paint. And paint.

Sometimes I forget how many coats white paint takes to cover. Holy cow. When I was pleased with the coverage, I added a stencil.

Turns out, I am god awful at stenciling, so I messed up the paint job pretty badly. Once it dried, I decided to just distress the whole thing. Good choice!

I stained over the paint and gave the whole thing a coat of polyurethane.

For the knobs, I reused the same knobs that came on the jewelry box. They fit perfectly and I thought they looked nice with the distressed vibe. For the drawers, I lined each with jewelry making mat (after I botched lining it with velvet. That was just terrible).

After months of working on it off and on, I finally finished the darn thing.

jewelry box4

I am in love.

Jewelry box

jewelry box2

So it took me forever to show you, but was it worth the wait?!

Jewelry box finished

I hope so 🙂

Craft Projects, Thrift Store Finds

Bird Wall Sconce

Jessica Smith

Holy cow, this was an exhausting weekend. As you may know, our dishwasher has been broken for what seems like ages now. We finally got the go ahead from Samsung to return our dishwasher back to Best Buy, so we went there on Saturday to process a replacement. Turns out our dishwasher is already discontinued — guess everyone else thought it sucked, too — so we had to just return the dishwasher for a refund, wait for that to go through, and buy a new one. *sigh* As if that weren’t a hot enough mess, everything in our house seemed to leak this weekend… pipes, washing machine, sink, etc. Ahhhh the joys of being a homeowner. We are hoping to buy a new dishwasher tomorrow *fingers crossed*!!! I would love to fill the gaping hole underneath our cabinets with a working dishwasher and reattach the pipes underneath our sink. Can’t wait.

Luckily, that was the only bad/stressful part of our weekend. We went to a bonfire and I did lots of crafts. Lots!

On to the crafts!!!

I don’t even remember where I picked up these wall sconces, but they were in need of some l-o-v-e love.

I was originally going to spray paint them, but neglected to do so for real. So, I busted out some of my paint samples and got to painting. I went with a light teal and a light brown.

I took off the candle holder with a screwdriver, then painted the back of the sconce teal and the candle holder brown.

After several coats of each color, I painted the outer trim of the sconce a light brown, too.

Once everything was dry, I pulled out a stencil I’ve been wanting to try. This time, I used stencil adhesive. If you use a stencil, USE STENCIL ADHESIVE. It really does help keep the stencil in place while you paint.

I placed my stencil on the sconce exactly where I wanted it, dabbing on the adhesive around the cutouts right before.

Once the stencil was secure (I only waited about a minute after placing it on), I painted the tree brown, the leaves green and the bird blue.

I pulled off the stencil as soon as I was done painting. Once everything was dry, I screwed the candle holder back onto the sconce.

Now that’s an improvement, wouldn’t you say?

I love it!

I do have a confession, though. It wasn’t until I started writing this post that I remembered I have a second sconce somewhere around my house!! Should I make a second bird sconce since it turned out so well, or should I do something completely different?

I hope you all had a great weekend. And a special thanks to those of you who checked out my blog this past weekend — I had a record number of views on Saturday and was so very excited about it. You guys are awesome and I hope you keep coming back for more!

Craft Projects

Stenciled tray

Jessica Smith

I was so pumped by my first craft project involving a simple tray that I picked up at a thrift store, so when I saw another tray at a yard sale I of course had to have it. (I know I keep talking about yard sales… I totally stocked up when Beth and I went yard sale shopping in May. It was awesome.)

Unfortunately, I don’t think this project turned out all that great. You’ll have to let me know what you think. The main reason I’m even sharing this with you is so if you use a stencil you know the trick that I decided NOT to do. Big mistake.

Anyway, instead of turning this tray into something else completely, I just wanted to make the into a prettier tray. I figured the hubby and I could use a tray on our coffee table to collect our remotes since we now have three floating around.

I didn’t take a before picture, but the tray was a dirty white and needed a fresh coat of paint. I stuck with white because it will pop off the coffee table, which will eventually be stained black. I also recently picked up a few stencils at Michaels, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to try them out. I chose a stencil of a bird (I love birds) for the tray.

Using two different shades of bluish green, I painted over the leaves and over the bird. I didn’t use stencil adhesive, but I really wish I had because the stencil definitely moved around a little.

Once I had two coats of paint on my stencil, I peeled it back to reveal the stenciled design on my tray.

As you can see around the edges, the paint spread a bit — especially close to the base of the branch. I knew it was going to be messed up even before I peeled the stencil up because part of the small leaves came up underneath my brush (Crap! The worst part is I even bought stencil adhesive, but with all the craziness in my craft room I couldn’t find it. Oh well!). So, I improvised. I took an artist’s brush and some silver paint and traced the edges of the stencil.

To finish it off, I added silver dots along parts of the stencil and around the edges of the tray.

I think it was a good save, but here’s where you come in. Should I sand it down and try it again with no silver paint? I can’t decide if I like it or not (which probably means I don’t like it…). I kind of like the silver paint, and I think it needed something extra in addition to the stencil… but I’m not sure what.

I’m open to suggestions!

Moral of this project: Use stencil adhesive!