wood letters – A Smith of All Trades

Sorry I disappeared off the face of the earth this past week. The medicine I was taking for my poison ivy was worse than the poison ivy itself. I stopped taking it two days early, but it took about three days to get out of my system completely. I felt so icky that all I wanted to do was lay on the couch and do nothing. I didn’t even feel like watching TV or browsing the Internet. Weird.

The hubby was starting to get a bit concerned: “Are you sure you’re OK? You’re not gluing or crafting anything….”

A week later and I feel just lovely again, now that the stuff is out of my system… and my poison ivy is gone! Woo! It’s also pretty much all dead in our yard, so that’s just lovely too.

On to the crafting (and gluing… because apparently that’s what I do. I glue…)!

I’m happy with the progress we’ve made in our house since we moved in in March, but I still feel like it looks like a house anyone could live in. So I’m trying to pick out pictures to decorate our home. I had more than 100 photos ready to print online, but Snapfish failed the upload and my hour or so of time was completely wasted. Such is life.

I’ve taken a break from sorting through our photos to redo some of our picture frames. I’ve got this great idea for a gallery-style wall in our master bedroom that will include pictures, mirrors, a shelf and maybe something else. Here’s what I’m thinking…

The gray frames are mirrors, the empty frames would likely stay empty to show the wall color through and act as architectural elements. The frames with pictures would be, you guessed it, pictures! And the center frame would be an empty frame with some sort of wood letter in the middle that reads “you & me,” sorta like this:

Right now, all of the frames I have are boring black, super ugly or just won’t go with my grand idea. So I decided I’d do a simple makeover of some of my picture frames to give them a more cohesive look. I want to use silver and white because those colors will pop of our blueish-gray walls.

Enter my new favorite paint: Martha Stewart Metallic Silver. I can’t get enough of this stuff. I used it to paint an ugly, thick wooden frame, a cheapy wood frame from a thrift store, a bright blue frame, and two resin frames (I picked these up at a yard sale for $1!).

Here’s the resin frame. This bad boy is heavy… and gold… and green. Yuck.

For one of these frames, I did a light dusting of silver paint using a sponge brush. By only applying a light coat of paint, a lot of the dark tones still have a presence. For the other frame, I used a sponge brush to get into all of the nooks and crannies of the frame. Same frame. Same paint. Two different looks.

For my other frames, I used the same brush and applied several coats of paint. Several. I started painting two of these frames before I got poison ivy and have probably done three coats on each.

They don’t take long, but to get each side you have to wait for others to dry. You also have to make sure any angle of the frame that might be seen is painted. For example, if you know you are hanging your frame on a wall, you don’t necessarily need to paint the back; however, if you plan on propping your picture frames up on a shelf, the back of the frame will likely be visible from some angle so you should take the time to paint that, too.