When the Going Gets Tough, Paint It Blue

Which I guess should be my motto or something.  People make fun of me for my blue obsession.  But hey, in this case it works!  Remember the nightstand that I picked up on Bulk Day last year and refinished?  I recently moved it out into the living room and put my TV on it.  But it was missing something...color.

Painted black some time ago.

The top...nope.  Boring.  Liquid Sander to the rescue!

A very subtle blue.  The color's more intense than it looks here, but not by much.  I really wanted to go for a chalk-paint sort of look, but as easily as that stuff flakes and mars, I didn't want to risk the finish being completely destroyed.  The top of this thing takes a beating.

Now if I could only find the missing bracket so I can put the TV on the wall!  I can't find that thing ANYWHERE.  Grrr.


















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It's Here! It's Here!

The gift package that I won from Surya arrived today!  I'm THRILLED with all of it - so beautiful!  It all went into the living room:

The rug is sooo soft and cushy, and I LOVE the colors, even more than I thought I would.

My favorite, of course, is the blue in the center...that you can't really see in this shot.  But I have plans for a new coffee table soon, and I'm thinking it'll all look smashing together.

The GORGEOUS artwork - a framed textile - that now hangs over my fireplace.

The pouf also went into the fireplace, although I'm sure that's not where it'll stay.  I'm not sure exactly where to put it, but you know me - even if I was sure, I'll end up moving it all over the place anyway.

I keep waiting for a cat to sleep on it.

I guess I'll settle for Daisy smelling the heck out of it.

It's all hand-embroidered, and covered with all kinds of little seashells.

Rabi is very confused by the rug.



















YAY! Thank you, Surya!

You can follow Surya by on Pinterest,   Facebook,   Twitter - and everywhere else as @suryasocial.

Drt-Drrrr! I made a belt.

1 

Parts and tools, and the original belt that I'm copying -
broken piece on the left, and the buckle end on the right. 

2

 Craft poop!  :D 

3

New belt, with the old buckle on it.  Favorite!Belt rides again! 

And now back to your regularly-scheduled whatever.

Fail.

This past week, I've been focusing my attention on knocking out some little things that I've had looming on my to-do list for a long time.  Simple, quick, easy, small projects - like swapping out cabinet knobs, spray-painting some doorknobs, cleaning up the weird clutter that keeps accumulating on my fireplace hearth for some reason, getting some "landing strip" areas of the house re-organized and cleaned up;  stuff like that.  The desk lamp that I posted about the other day was one of them, too.

I also tried a few ideas that I've had that didn't work out.  I thought I'd share them with you, because some of them are funny:

This lady painted some chairs with Rit dye!  I can do that!

KaraPaslayDesigns.blogspot.com

I tried it on the big green wing chair that I brought home a couple of weeks ago.  I didn't have Rit dye, but I had a ton of India Ink lying around from my calligraphy studies.  I've actually used it on fabric before, so I knew that it would stay put, not run or fade, nor rub off on my clothes when I sat in the chair.  I decided to try it in a tiny area on the back of the seat cushion where it wouldn't show, and I'm really glad I did.

Apparently the stain-treating chemicals in the chair are really good at their job.  The ink didn't soak in, it just dried on the surface of the chair, into this gross, crusty mess that blackened my fingers the second I touched it to see how it was coming.  FAIL.

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Several months ago, Kress' mom left us some of those plug-in air fresheners with the oil bottle that you pop in, that fill up the house with this nasty, cloying, putridly-sweet, disgusting fucking smell that gives me migraines and makes me sick to my stomach.  She loves them, and it was sweet of her to buy them for us, but, um, EW NO.   I saw this on Pinterest:

Essentially, you take the air freshener apart and refill the bulb with your own blend of essential oils.  Not one to waste anything, I tried it.  And I really should have tried it with gloves on, by the way, because after scrubbing my hands with soap, dish soap, vinegar, orange cleaner, and finally BLEACH, the residual smell on my hands is STILL making me sick as I sit here typing this.  *barf*

Needless to say, it didn't work.  Maybe it works with some other types of air fresheners,  but on the kind that I had, the wicks broke while I wast trying to get them back into the bulbs, so the whole thing was just a waste of time, effort, and expensive essential oils.  FAIL.

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Here's another one from Pinterest, although I originally got the idea from a friend who did this and had great luck with it:

That's right, bubble wrap window insulation.  My bedroom gets HOT in the Summers, y'all, and not in that fun way.  The idea here is that the air in the bubble wrap insulates the windows and keeps some of the heat from coming through, without blocking light.  It's not terribly attractive, but behind curtains?  No big deal.  The cool part is (wa waaaa get it) that it works - I've seen it in action, and I know it works.

I, however, didn't have any bubble wrap, and that crap's expensive.  What I did have was leftover foam underlayment from back when I put new flooring into the craft room and guest room.   It's light and clear, and should do the same job, right?  I never got to find out, unfortunately:  when I went to put it up on my bedroom windows I realized something I'd forgotten.  There are big, red manufacturer's logos stamped all over the damned things.  The foam itself wouldn't have shown behind the white sheers in the bedroom, but the logo sure would have.  FAIL.

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Tomorrow's another day, though, and I have lots more small things to catch up on. For the moment, I'm going to go saw my hands off now, because the bleach (or the devil air freshener oils!) is making my hands peel and burn.

In the meantime, everyone have a safe, happy Memorial Day...and remember to stop and say "thank you."

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Cowrie Shell Bracelet FTW

I won this ankle bracelet in the raffle at my annual women's festival, oh, about 10-11 years ago.  I wore it to death, literally - about four years ago the elastic had degraded to the point that it became crunchy, and finally snapped.   I had no idea how to fix it, and I kept meaning to try, but none of the ideas I could come up with seemed like they'd work the same way.   It went into a drawer of mementos, to be sighed over every so often, but never worn again.  

Until this past weekend, when, going through that drawer looking for something else, I came across it, and picked it up to sigh over it again...and realized that the shells had just been crocheted into the black elastic thread!  I couldn't crochet before, and I'd never figured it out before - but I can sure crochet now!  

This time it's not elasticized, it's just plain black cotton crochet thread, because that's what I have.  So rather than just snapping it on like I used to, now I can tie it - and I made the ties long enough to wear as an anklet, double-wrapped around my wrist, or even as a choker!  I'm SO HAPPY to have my beloved cowrie braclet back!  

So, in my life, I'd only ever crochet with round beads, and only once.  This was NOT the same.  This was a pain in the ass, but I'm not complaining.  You may have noticed, I have a few dozen hobbies, hehe.  I like it when something's new, or hard.  I enjoy the challenge.  

In case you were wondering, this is just a single chain, with a loop drawn up through one end of the shell and then picked up from above (the hard part was the tension, and poking the thread through the shell).  When I got to one end, I just made the tie double-length, folded it over, and picked up the last shell on the other side. 

* Note for people who'll get this:  did you notice that the shells are purple inside?  I was wearing it during The Grape Ape Incident of 2004.  

Henna Lamp: Redux

You may remember this lamp from 2011:

(the original shade makeover is here)

It's undergone a base swap since this picture - a bronze-y "iron" stick base with a really ugly fake-marble ball in the center.  The original base is still in my bedroom, with a new shade on it.

This shade, and it's new stick base, have been living on my computer desk in the living room, and I loved it there, but I hated the base the way it was, and I was ready for the shade to have some color.

So I spray-painted both: the base with black and hammered silver metallic spray paint, and the shade with a very watered-down acrylic paint, mixed with a little bit of fabric medium, in a plain old spray bottle.

After painting

in situ

Yay!  I love it.  Quick, easy project.

Well, easy except for the part where while spray-painting in the garage with the door open for ventilation, I accidentally let two of my very indoor cats outside.  I got them both back, and one of them was easy - he came when I called.  The other I had to stalk, decieve, and finally pounce on like a rabid animal to get ahold of him, and he's REALLY pissed at me.  Price you pay, little dude.

That's him.  And hey, look, it's the lamp!  LOL

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Hoop There It...Nah. I can't. I Just Can't.

I almost did.

YAY I MADE SOME EARRINGS!

These were inspired by an Etsy pair that I saw on Pinterest not too long ago.  I really love the ocean tones of the original pair, but I have a LOT of blue and green jewelry, and I wanted this shape, but something more neutral that I could wear with black.  I wear a lot of black, and while I like adding color with jewelry, sometimes I don't want to - and sometimes I want more than plain silver or gold.

Hence:  these.  They're just made with leftovers - glass pearls and beads, and some silver and pewter spacer beads.  The ear wires and hoops are all one long piece of wire from a spool of memory wire.

I had hoped to get several more pieces made; but I ended up spending three freaking hours cleaning up my jewelry supplies.  Loose bits strewn all over the four boxes of parts and tools that I keep, two bowls of discarded and broken necklaces and bracelets as well as a bunch of widowed earrings.    I sorted through it all, fixed several pieces and returned them to my jewelry box, put everything in its right place, and dismantled  several old pieces to use for parts for new projects. Whew!  My hands were SO TIRED.

I did, however, throw a couple of old charms onto a scrap of chain, which I'm wearing with the beaded hoops today:

A clear Fluorite half-crystal, and an old ring that's too small

In related news, I got a new phone that takes WAY better pictures than my old one.  The bad news is, I haven't figured out how to do the "selfie" thing with this new one, which is why I had to take these off to show them to you.  Derp.  I'll get the hang of it eventually.


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This Is a DUMB Chair.

I didn't even think this fabric pattern, and those like it, was cool when it was new and supposedly "hip" and "contemporary."  Gag-nacious.

The cats started fighting over it the second it was in the house. 

But, it was free!  Tomorrow's bulk pickup in my neighborhood, and I scored this hideous thing a few blocks over.  The fabric is narsty-looking, but it's clean, and comfortable, and in great shape, aside from a bit of cat damage on the front corners.

And it's a fabulous shape.  That's why I grabbed it.  It's just a little club chair, and while I haven't yet decided if it'll remain in the bedroom, where I stashed it for now, or if it'll eventually live in the living room, but one thing's for sure:  this is SO getting reupholstered. As soon as possible.

Yay!

This is what I see when I look at this chair:

overstock.com

Or something more like this:

countryliving.com 

To be continued...

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Nailed It: Adventures In Surface Tension

One of the blogs I read is Pintester (dot com), by Sonja Foust, who is rapidly becoming my hero.  ine.     I ADORE her posts, her videos, and her series of "Cocknails" where she drinks and fucks up manicures.  She's hilarious, and my kinda gal.

So the other night, sitting in my living room with a glass of rum in one hand and no nail polish on either hand, I thought, "Hey!  WWSD?"  So I set about testing out this whole marbled fingernail polish thing.

The first attempt came out better than the second, which we'll get to in a minute.  The first time, I didn't feel like messing around with glasses of water and what-not, so I just drooled some random nail polish on my fingernails and scootched it around with a toothpick.  It's messy, and it didn't come out at all looking like I know what I'm doing, but it wasn't that bad - I think if I practice this, I can get the hang of it:

Pinky and pointer are done with blue and pale lavender.
My thumb and Driving Finger are also mixed with pink, which came out looking like vomit. 

The next night, I thought, "I got this".  About 3/4 of the way through another glass of rum, I might add.  This time I got down with the water marbling.  Afterwards, I consoled myself by paging through pages and pages of "nail fails" on Pinterest, laughing at both those poor bastards, and also at myself.

Because, I mean, SERIOUSLY:

colors are Blush and Bashful  white and Fuck Me Red

That is disgusting.  After the first few minutes of staring amazedly into my glass of water and watching the effects of the water on the nail polish and vice versa, and playing with the way the colors interact with each other, I threw all my supplies out and started again - this time I put it on my nails, and the result, well, look at the picture.

Nail polish in water looks, at first, like it dissolves, but actually, it spreads out into a very thin skin on top of the water.  The idea is to dip your finger into this skin, and it adheres to your nail (and everything else that goes into the water, by the way.  The how-tos on Pinterest all say to protect the skin with Vaseline;  I didn't have any of that, and I can report that Neosporin kinda works, but not really).

Let it sit a second longer than necessary, and the entire nail polish skin on top of the water's surface comes off at once and wraps itself around ALL of your fingers, your glass, your coffee table, pants, you name it.  And it's slimy.   My index finger is the only one that looks marbled at all; and all of them have teeny bubbles and cracks and wrinkles in the finish; and all of them just look like I put stickers over my fingernails. Oh, and?  This crap got UNDER my fingernails as well.  What a gross feeling.

This "manicure" is still *on me* as I write this, so, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get rid of this hideosity and paint my nails BLACK in protest.

Don't try this shit at home, kids.

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Door Envy

Ever since I painted my hallway doors black last weekend, I really want to replace my laundry room door with something like this:

(via Pinterest; image from No. 29 Design)

Wouldn't that be awesome?  And yeah, you'd be able to see my dirty laundry and cluttered shelves...but that's what glass-frosting spray is for, right? :)

that one. 

Dear Craigslist...


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Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Guess what!

I won the Surya Pin It To Win It Inspired Home Sweepstakes!! 

(image via Apartment Therapy)

I can't WAIT to see the lovely new things they're sending me.  I chose the "travel" package pictured above.
Should be sometime later this month.  I'll post pics as soon as I have some. :)

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April In Review!

April In Review

• cute little shelf in the kitchen
• thrift store wing chair
• rug swap, bedroom/living room
• re-arranged the bedroom, still trying things out
• some jewelry and crochet small projects
• re-arranged the garage, yay! 

:) 

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Black Hole To Black Door*

So, about that hallway.  While priming the bathroom and all the trim and doors, I did the same in the adjacent hallway.  The trim there was also in need of a refresher, and the color in that hallway! Ugh!

Actually, it was a lovely color, in and of itself - a deep, shadowy olive green.  It was pretty, but it was WAY too dark for a teeny tiny hallway that gets absolutely *no* natural light whatsoever.   I completely forgot to take a "before" pic, but imagine a hallway where this thing might live:

So the entire thing got primed:  walls, trim, doors, ceiling, and even the attic hatch.  Then nearly all of it got painted in the White Clay, just like in the guest bathroom:

that's the bathroom door at the very end, then clockwise, the
guest bedroom and sewing room.  Around the corner on the
left is the hall closet. 

sewing room door, and laundry room on the right

Pretty! Bright!  HUGE-looking, after seeing that cave-green for several years!  But there was one more step - which you may have guessed if you noticed that the doorknobs on all the doors are taped off.  After seeing stuff like this on Pinterest for the past couple of years, I couldn't resist anymore:

bathroom door straight ahead

That's the same near-black that I mixed up from leftover  black and charcoal paint that I used on the dressing table in my bedroom, and the little candlestick table. I also removed the gold-colored brass doorknobs and spray painted them all silver (mostly - at the time of that picture, I still had one to go).

laundry on the right

This and the bathroom, together, took me about three hours on Thursday night, about six hours on Saturday, and about four hours on Sunday.  NO MORE PAINTING EVER OMG!  *falldowngoboom*




*  Know what made me giggle the entire time I was planning, and painting, and blogging about these black doors?  The Black Door is the name of the vampire night club in Austin, TX, in my favorite vampire novels, The Shadow World, by Dianne Sylvan.  So now I have like, five secret vampire night clubs in my house.  Six, if you count my front entry, which is also black.   (^_^)

Guest Bathroom: A History

Once upon a time, there was this white-with-blue-accents thing that was too sparse, boring, and filled with shells, for some reason:

2008

And then there was this boho weirdness, which I loved at the time, and was a LOT of work (sponge-ing the walls and stenciling the border), and now I'm like...the fu...?

2010

(Although I really did love the stenciled border and two-tone effect)

Then there was white:

2011

Which I LOVED...but it needed...something...

2011

...eh? Yeah, not so much on the gray.  The whole house is gray.  And while I love it in the common areas, it was just plain boring in here (and in the craft room, but we'll get to that in a few weeks).  I found myself longing for that white again - the white on the top half of the room was just primer, so I primed over the bottom, and then painted the entire room in that same White Clay (Behr) that I did some of the ceilings in the house in a few months ago:

no, I haven't hung the mirror yet.  I can't get it up there
by myself! 

I also took the opportunity to prime and re-paint all the trim molding in the room, the cabinetry, and both sides of the door, since all the glossy oil paint on the trim and doors in the house is getting yellowed with age.   I love the blue-on-blue effect in my master bathroom, where all the molding is painted the same color as the walls,  and I'm loving that effect in this room, too.

I also put a leftover piece of door molding that I'd had sitting in the garage for eons up on the wall here - eventually, it'll have more than one hook on it, but at the moment, the one I had works fine, hehe.

The White Clay is quite a warm off-white;  on its own it's more of a meringue color, or maybe like a latte foam color.  Vanilla creme cake frosting?  (I'm hungry).  I like it!

There's more to come in this bathroom, but first..the hallway outside of it...


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Time Out For Some Bandwagon Jumpin' and Pin Testin'

You guys, surely, are aware of this whole smoothie trend.  If you follow anything on Pinterest at all, I bet you see at least fifteen "recipes" a day.  I wasn't into the idea until it started involving booze, myself.  Of course, I can't find the pin I took inspiration from, but here's something similar:

(pin)

That would be a Champagne Mimosa Float, made by pouring champagne over orange sherbet.  Mm-mm!

I didn't have any champagne at home, but I had tequila, and as luck would have it, I saw another one like this (there are many versions) using lime sherbet and tequila.  I had both of those!

big. ass. straws. 

I'd call these "Margarita Smoothies" a flying success!  They were tasty and sweet and smooth, and there was a LOT of it once I realized I'd used WAY too much tequila in the blender and needed to add more sherbet.  Um...twice.  (The original recipe was for a float like in the picture up above, but my BFF and I both wanted it blended, because us + straight tequila, even if there's ice cream in it = bad.  And since I apparently didn't actually pin the lime version of the drink on Pinterest, I couldn't remember the proportions, and so I guessed.  Wrong. Twice).

I can't wait to try the Mimosa ones next!  Or raspberry sorbet...mmm... maybe raspberry sorbet with rum, as another friend of mine suggested.  HOORAY BOOZE!

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Broken Table Win!

What do you do with a dumb little Ikea table that finally breaks after you've refinished it umpteen times and have never really been happy with it?

This:  

• A gigantic candlestick (with a paper towel roll on it. 
• An Ikea FORNSBRO side table (which looked like this, originally) 

Plus this...

• The BEST GLUE EVER.  
• black paint (the same as I used on the dressing table in my bedroom recently) 

Equals this: 

EPIC. 

...now, what do I do with it?  It's very short - maybe 22" high. Coffee table height. Too short for a night stand, or a side table in the living room.  Hmm...

When next we meet - the reason I painted for FOUR FREAKING HOURS tonight.  

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