Dropcloth Ruffle Pillow

Using THIS as my inspiration, I used dropcloth to make more neutral {inexpensive!} pillows for my living room chairs.

Remember the before.....

Here's the after.....

Instead of buying new furniture, I spent about $35 on a 12 x 9 dropcloth

from Home Depot.  

It took 3 packages of drop cloth to recover 2 living room chairs and 6 dining room chairs.

The cute basket on the left was from Goodwill....$4!!!  Don't you just love a great deal!

HERE's the tutorial for the Faux Grain Sack pillows.

Now to tackle the couch......

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Faux Grainsack Pillows

I love dropcloth! It is just so inexpensive to decorate with!

Recently, I have been continuing to work on my family room furniture.  It's about

10 years old and the fabric is falling apart!

Armed with drop cloth, heavy-duty needles and a tutorial from Miss Mustard Seed,

I began recovering my chairs.

Marian's tutorials are amazing and I successfully neutralized my room, but I was still left with the "coordinating" floral pillows.

So using the same technique that I used here with my dining room chairs....

......I made myself some pillows.

I'm thinking about making some red-striped pillows to get ready for Christmas!

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Distressed Chalkpaint Corner Hutch

I shared earlier with you about my first experience bidding in a silent auction and 

how I had to outbid a sweet little grandpa for this hutch....

She was a beauty wasn't she!  I had some friends scratching their heads as to

why I was nervously bidding on this piece, but I had a vision!

And here's what I saw in my head....

My photos don't really capture her in all of her glory, but she IS a beauty!

I made my own chalkpaint and painted and distressed her.  

I even added a topcoat of Annie Sloan's wax.  

The round knobs are just spraypainted with black spraypaint and I bought inexpensive

black handles for the drawers at my True Value hardware store.

I took the glass out of the doors and went to my shed for some chicken wire which I just stapled right to the back of the doors....cobwebs and all!  

I mixed up some more homemade chalkpaint and using a sample can of paint, I painted the inside a pretty blue color.  I've been using sample cans more often for smaller projects.  

I realize that there are not hardeners in sample cans, but if the painted area is not going to get heavy wear, the DIY chalkpaint recipe helps it to hold up!

I've had some major scores recently at Goodwill and have been outfitting the hutch with white dishes.  I got the soup tureen for $5.00!!! Woohoo!!  

I think that I skipped out of the Goodwill that day!

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The post that keeps getting spammed....

I've been getting hammered with spam and it has revolved around the following post...

I'm pretty sure it's because the post had the word *patriotic* in the title, so

around Memorial Day, I started getting up to and sometimes over 100 spam comments a DAY!

I had a break for about a day and now it's starting again.

So I removed it from my past postings and am reposting here....

Enjoy and hopefully the spam will slow down!

Yesterday, I showed you how I took this old ugly sign that was in the way...

and turned it into a Rustic Flag....for FREE!!

When my hubby cut my wood for me, there was about a 5-6 inch 

scrap leftover that I didn't want to throw away.

Andy, over at Poppies at Play, has been making very fun patriotic 

crafts and printables and she offered this one for free! 

It is part of a set of 3 and she also has the vinyl available for purchase! 

I haven't quite figured out how to do printables....I know that you need to somehow send it to a photo processing place....some day I'll figure it out!

Instead, I copied the picture to my desktop and inserted it into a new word document.  I resized it and printed it out.  At this point, I was interested in the numbers and not the printable.

I cut out my numbers....originally, I had tried to find a similar font on dafont.com, but I was overwhelmed by the choices.....I don't function well when I have too many choices!

I wasn't concerned with cutting the numbers out exactly....am I ever???  I knew that I was going to sand them. 

I painted my board red using a dry brush technique that I talked about in my Rustic Flag post....

I traced my numbers with a pencil and painted them in with white paint....my hubby was over my shoulder saying, "Don't you want to use a lettering brush?" No....it's supposed to look rustic!!

I sanded down my letters, added a little "somethin', somethin'" twine and went over it with tea-dye distressing ink.....it was still missing something.

I cut out a free-handed star and painted 3 blue stars, sanded and distressed them.

I love my little piece of wood scrap that turned into a patriotic beauty!

What do you do with your wood scraps?

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Faux Grainsack Dining Room Chairs

I am so excited now that the pieces of my dining room are starting to fall into place.

I originally purchased the chairs from the Habitat 

Restore....remember what they looked like?

They were a lovely shade of.....BROWN!!

For their new look, I was inspired my THIS pin from my dining room pinterest board.  I used homemade chalkpaint that I had on-hand, leftover dropcloth from my slipcovering projects and leftover gray paint from our basement remodel.   

Voila.....

.....a whole new look!

I decided to make each chair seat a different "grain sack."

I used a foam brush, painter's tape and gray latex paint.  I wasn't overly concerned 

about perfection.  In reality, these are dining room chairs....there 

will be spillage, it's just a fact of my life!

Using materials that I had on-hand, the cost of this project was.....FREE!

All the materials that I used were leftover from other projects!

Total Project Cost:  $60/cost of 6 chairs

One more project check off my list....only a thousand more to go!

Partying at Beneath My Heart!

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Dining Room Peek...

The saga of the dining room may be coming to a close....

I have been pinning like crazy to my Dining Room Pinterest board and
one picture in particular has been providing inspiration...

{Source}

Have you discovered The 36th AVENUE?  I LOVE this blog.  
Her rooms are simple, bright and beautiful!


So...I have been painting, Craig's-listing, dreaming and pinning!


The first thing that I did was list this hutch on Craig's list...

As much as I liked it, it was just not working in the space.  I had painted it a pale
blue and found that I was planning the whole room around a color that I just didn't love.


I flipped that piece of furniture for this piece of furniture....

Can you see the potential with me??? {as well as my vacuum cleaner in the reflection..oops!}


I have never bought anything at an auction before and I saw this at a
youth mission trip fundraising auction....talk about stressful!


If was me verses a 75 year old man for this piece.....UGH!  But, I won!!

A lot of people gave me that raised eyebrow..."What are you thinking" look, as 
I hauled away my loot, but here is a sneak peek of what I've been doing with it....

I am just GIDDY with how it is looking!

As for wall paint...I have my color picked and am waiting for 9 AM tomorrow when

True Value paint goes on sale...Buy One Get One FREE!!!!  I have a 

whole LIST of paint that I am planning to buy this week!

My goal this summer is to finish all my half-completed projects with the dining 

room taking priority.

I finished painting and distressing my Craig's List Dining Room chairs today.

It has only taken me, what...six months???

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DIY Stenciled Pillows

I recently had the opportunity to review the Julia stencil by Cutting Edge Stencils.

I just LOVE it!!


I had a hard time deciding which stencil to review.   Cutting Edge 
Stencils  has so many amazing designs to choose from!





The stencil came packaged with a free stencil and wonderful instructions.  It 
was a lot bigger than I expected.  If I were doing a wall, the coverage
of one pass of the stencil would great.


I've had the stencil for weeks (months!) and couldn't decide what I wanted 
to do with it....there are just SO many great ideas.


I decided to start small and make a pillow.  I've been recovering my living room 
furniture with drop cloth and needed new pillows.


I started with a piece of drop cloth...

Because the stencil was so large, I taped pieces of newspaper under the parts 

that I didn't want to paint.  You can just use blue painters tape on the stencil.

I watched the online videos to make sure that I understood how to correctly

use the stencil.  Even though my project was smaller scale, I still wanted to do it right!

One suggestion was too roll off the paint on a paper towel or piece of newspaper. 

 Because this was my "test" project, I just used regular acrylic paint. I did not add a fabric additive to it.  I plan to do this again because I want to paint a pair of curtains.  I will add a fabric additive that time.

To make the pillow, I used my favorite stuffing method....old bed pillows!

Isn't drop cloth fabulous!  It has given my living room an awesome

new look for very little money!

I love my Cutting Edge Stencil.....it is very versatile and can be used

for so many different projects!  Painting a wall, stenciling a piece of furniture, 

stenciling curtains or even.....a pillow!

What have you stenciled recently?

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