Happy Bloggyversary To Me

I just realized my bloggyversary was a few days and I wanted to give a BIG thanks to all the people who read regularly and have let me know that someone out there is interested in my projects.

Thanks guys!!! I would hug you all if I could!

Weathered Baskets

My dad got these baskets as part of a Grey Goose gift set and was planning on giving them away, but I knew I could make something out of them with a little spray paint.

I decided to go ahead and paint them espresso to match my wicker chairs, but I recently decided to put them in my (beachy) room instead.

The dark brown just wasn't gonna cut it, so I figured I would attempt to make them look weathered.

I started by dry brushing a coat of beige paint on the baskets. I should probably note that I didn't look for any inspirational pictures and I decided to just wing it, but looking back, I wish I had some inspirational pictures to make the process easier.

Next, I tried dry brushing on some tan paint.

Still not the look I was going for. I also tried some watered down white paint and that wasn't cutting it either. I finally realized I needed to paint it a little bit lighter than the original brown so there wasn't so much contrast and this is what I ended up with.

I'm thinking of using more of the light brown to cover up some of the light spots - what do you think? Leave it or paint more?

Menu Board

First, I have to start out by saying that I totally stole this from Stephanie Lynn at Under The Table and Dreaming, and she was kind enough to make the 'days of the week' printable available for everyone to use!

I started with this hot mess from the thrift store:

Yes, those would be flowers, from a calendar or magazine, decoupaged onto some fabric. But before I removed it, I tore the trim off first. Ahhh, how I love dismantling ugliness!

I took absolutely no pictures of the process because it was so straight-forward. I just painted the frame a flat black, glued a piece of scrap burlap to the backing, printed and cut out the days of the week, typed 'MENU' in Word and added a border, then hot glued them onto the burlap.

Super easy!

And super cute!

Lightning McQueen Painting

I decided a while back that Elijah would be having a Lightning McQueen birthday since he is pretty much obsessed with the movie, and I knew right away I wanted to paint a mural to use as a focal point. I have a little confession to make though - his birthday isn't until December! It's okay, you can call me crazy. I've already come to terms with that fact. No, but in all honesty, I just wanted to have it done before we move in 5 weeks (is it really only 5 weeks now??).

I was planning on doing a tutorial until I realized that would make for a ridiculously long post that nobody would want to read, so I am just showing you guys how things evolved and then I will point out a few important parts.

First, I started with a 4x5ft drop cloth from Lowe's (I want to say it cost less than $5). I ironed it, but the folds seemed to come right back. It's okay though because the paint flattens it out.

I found an image of Lightning McQueen on the internet (from here on out he will be called LM 'cause it's so much easier to type!), cropped it, then printed it out. I then made a grid on the paper with the lines spaced an inch apart. There was a little bit of ungridded (not so sure that is a real word) space that I just cut off. I then made a grid on the drop cloth, spaced a foot apart, and sketched LM onto the drop cloth the best I could.

TIP: Don't make the lines too dark because they will show through the paint. It's kind of hard to erase the lines so it's better too just draw them lightly.

You could use primer, which would probably give you a better end result, but since I am going to be rolling this up for our move, I decided to skip primer so that the paint wouldn't be too thick.

With this next picture, I had painted the base coat for his body and 2 of the tires. I get a little ADD when I paint and like to skip to some detail because I'm just a tad bit impatient and want to see how things will look, like, now! Hence the reason I painted the headlights and his mouth and did some shading.

He was still looking really funky, so I went ahead and painted his eyes. I had such a hard time getting the right eye color, but it turned out close enough.

Next, I painted the '95' and the base coat for the rims. Just ignore the black splotch under his back tire. I wasn't paying attention and I painted way out of the line ::blush::

Next up was the rim detail and learning that the tire wasn't quite round. Oh, and he also got his lightning symbol.

The picture below shows how extremely crooked I made the line for his hood. I had to go back and repaint it, but you can still see the original line in the finished product. Oops!

The background in the movie is very toned down and hazy so I mixed some blue paint with lots of white to get a good sky color.

I completely forgot to take pics from the last picture to the finish, so here is the finished product!

(Please ignore the totally crooked background and just pretend I did it on purpose to make it look like a hill)

Alright, now for some details!

I think when people think of shadows, they automatically think of black, but that isn't always the case. I actually used a dark, smoky blue. I mixed some black with the blue to use where the shadow meets his body/tires.

I also used a light blue to paint most of his teeth and reserved the bright white for the highlights.

To create a hazy look for the mountains, I just painted sloppily so that I wouldn't get a clean line for the outline. I had some issues with these and think they could use some work, but I am so done painting!

For the plants, I used a spouncer for the dark green and then an itty bitty spouncer for the light green highlights. I also used the little spouncer to create shadows with smoky blue.

For the little plants in the background, I used the small spouncer and made the plants smaller and more condensed as they got closer to the mountains. I also didn't use the light green for highlighting because colors look less vivid the further an object is from you.

Here's a closeup of the tire just because =)

It's hard to tell in this picture, but I added silver sparkles to his thunder bolt.

And here is the finished product again.

I'm not going to say this project was easy, but I know Elijah will love it which will make it all worth it. Stay tuned for more Cars projects. I have some more ideas whirling around in my crazy head and will show you guys how it all comes together in just a few months!

If any of you decide to try painting something like this, I would love to see how it turns out!  FYI the paint will seep through the back, so I suggest using a plastic drop cloth underneath. Also, the canvas will stretch as you paint the edges, so when you hang it, you will need to tack the bottom corners down too.

Starfish Video

Here is a great little video about starfish. It makes me laugh everytime - I hope you find it funny too!

Kitchen Artwork

Do you guys remember the kitchen towel holder that I just made? And do you remember how I had no idea what to do with the area above the knobs? Well, you guys gave me some GREAT suggestions and I had an idea of what I was going to do, until I got a random memory of how I wanted to use artichokes in the kitchen. Dilemma solved!...Well, sort of. I didn't want to go searching for the perfect artichoke print, which meant I would have to paint my own, and I haven't painted in a really long time (think last Christmas!), which meant super duper rusty painting skills...but alas, I bit the bullet and went to Michael's for some canvas. I bought a 3-pack of 11x14 canvases and used a coupon, so it came out to somewhere around $3 total.

Are you guys ready for blogland's worst tutorial ever? Sorry, but when I paint I get in a zone and kinda sorta forget to take pictures =)

So once the little guy was down for his nap, I brought out my good ol' paint supplies and painted my canvas white. Then I mixed what was supposed to be a lime green (according to the bottle, but it so wasn't the color I was expecting!) and just a smidgen of black.

TIP: It only takes a teeny tiny itty bitty amount of black to darken something and a lot of white to lighten something.

I didn't have an actual artichoke in front of me so I found an artichoke painting online and used it as a reference (is that like stealing??). I then drew an artichoke on my canvas with pencil and roughly filled in the spaces. I left some white around the edges so that it didn't all blend together.

Next, I mixed in a little bit more black and did some shading.

This is the point in my paintings where I usually think it looks so ugly and there is no way to turn it around and then I have to give myself a little pep talk and try and convince myself that it will get better.

So after my convo with myself, I took some black to do some more shading, and I also added a little bit of red on random spots.

TIP: Water is your best friend if you are using acrylics! If you get too much paint on your canvas, you can easily take some off or blend it if you add water. Sometimes I'll even dip my finger in water instead of using a brush.

It was looking a wee bit bright and the lines were too harsh for me at this point so I did a very light white wash over the entire artichoke and also added some Minwax Dark Walnut  to age the painting.

But I really didn't like how muddy the stain looked, so I went back and did another white wash over the entire piece, which gave it some dimension.

The last thing I did was paint some white on some areas that would naturally be highlighted.

At this point, I called it a day because it was late and I was tired of painting, but I kind of wish I spent more time on it. Oh well!

I felt like it still needed a little somethin' somethin' so I printed the word 'Artichoke', with a little border, out to attach to the top.

So, back to the kitchen towel holder. I didn't want to secure it directly to the front because I was afraid it might take some of the stain off the door if I ever removed it, so I ended up attaching a floor tack to the front and hanging it with twine.

Ready for the final product?

Please excuse the blurriness.

I wanted to add a little bit more interest to the  'Artichoke' label, so I added a copper brad in each corner.

And a closeup.

My kitchen towels are green and I think they will look great with this!