Izzy Pic

Izzy was groomed yesterday and she looked cute playing in the flower beds so I thought I would share an Izzy pic. 

I hope you are having a great weekend.  I am loving that it is no longer 100 degrees. 

Pumpkin Clock

Our annual decorate a pumpkin for work is approaching and this year we are raffling our pumpkins and donating the proceeds to A Race for the Cure.  I thought a functional pumpkin with a working clock in it would be fun.  I got it all to work, but I can’t help but look at my pumpkin and images of those crazy hats that were worn in England at the royal wedding pop into my head. 

 

It started out simple and plain.  A white faux pumpkin.

I used a clock template that I found at Buzzle.com to plan my working clock.  I bought the parts at a craft store.

The hands were originally gold and I painted them with oil rubbed bronze spray paint. 

My husband and I used a drill to make the holes for the different hours and to insert the clock mechanism.  I had to cut a hole in the bottom so I could reach inside and be able to place a light in it. 

I glazed the pumpkin and then hot glued the greenery and feathers to the top to create my English hat the decorative part. 

When it is darker you can see the light better.  It flickers which I couldn’t recreate in a photo.

So what do you think?  Is it a pumpkin you would love to win at our office raffle or if you won it would you ship it to England where it might be appreciated? 

Linking to

Saturday Night Special @ Funky Junk Interiors

Weekend Wrap Up @ Tatertots and Jello

Potpourri Party @ 2805

Sunday Showcase @ Under the Table and Dreaming

It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot like Fall. Time To Start the Front Porch Decorating.

Tomorrow is calling for a high of 59 degrees.  A cold front and some much needed rain are coming.  I am still waiting for pumpkins to go on sale,  but I did start my front porch decorating. 

I have this clay oval planter thing (if you know it’s correct name would you please share it with me?).  It was my mom’s.  She use to keep it next to her pot bellied stove with fire wood in it.  She loved plants, so I know she would like that I used it for a planter. 

I planted some cabbages and added some faux pumpkins while I am waiting for the real ones to become available. 

I have this metal pumpkin that I added, but I am undecided if I should keep it in there or if less is better.  What do you think?

Linking to

Weekend Wrap Up @ Tatertots and Jello

Peacock Table Tutorial

Yesterday I posted about my table redo and now it is time to share how I did it. 

I printed a peacock feather I found online because I wanted to try to do an acrylic paint transfer that I read about here. 

I have painted furniture many times using craft acrylic paints.  I have always liked them because they are cheap and easy to work with and come in many many colors.  I am a green fan and I really like Americana’s slate green.  It is kind of a blue green, but with a little glaze the green comes out more. 

I knew it would be good to use the acrylic paint because I needed to use the same acrylic paint for my transfer.  After I sanded, painted and distressed the table I painted a layer of acrylic paint onto the copy of the feather and placed it onto the table.

I worked the bubbles out with a food scrapper.

After it dried for just a little bit, I sprayed the paper with water and peeled it away.  The very bottom peeled away completely.  I think because the paint had dried too much before I applied it to the table. 

This is what it looked like after the paper was peeled. 

I really didn’t know what to do because this wasn’t the look I was going for.  I am not sure if I did something wrong or this is suppose to happen or it is because I had to paint past those fine little feather hairs and it left the paper where the paint was.   Anyway, I had to sand it regardless so I sanded carefully to see what would happen. 

After I sanded it looked like this.

So it is there, but faint.  At first I was going to just call it distressed and leave it as is ( I even glazed it and gave it a coat of polyacrylic) , but I thought I would try to paint over the feather and try to bring back some of the vibrancy of the colors. 

I sat on my front porch and enjoyed the beautiful day while painting.

Here’s what it looked like while I was working on it.

You can see how painting it helped to bring out the colors.  It was tedious, but kind of relaxing too.

I protected the feather paint with more polyacrylic and I ended up with a fun table.

If you try the transfer I would love to hear about it.

9/11 I Remember

 

Ten years ago while at work I heard a plane hit one of the World Trade Center buildings and thought how ridiculous that was because they were so big.  How could the plane not see the building and hit it?  Just the month before I had stood on top of one of those massive buildings with my coworkers.  We were attending a dental conference in NYC.  Then I remember the horror I felt when I learned a 2nd plane hit the other tower and I knew this was no accident.  Concentrating on my patients and cleaning teeth was so very hard that day.  I just wanted to go home and sit glued in front of the tv while hugging my family.  It was even harder for my husband watching from the safety of his fire station while his NYC brother firemen were losing their lives.  Yes I will always remember. 

Peacock Table

My coworker’s daughter is getting married and the theme is peacock.  So I have had peacocks on the brain which lead to my new table redo. 

 

I found this little table on Craigslist for $10 and thought it would be a fun table to try something I had read about online. 

Things didn’t go quite like I planned, but I still got a result I like. 

I will share with you how I redid my table and painted the feather soon.

UPDATE:  Click here to read the tutorial.

Linking to

Saturday Night Special @ Funky Junk Interiors

All Thing Furniture @ Perfectly Imperfect

Sunday Showcase @ Under the Table and Dreaming

Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps on the Porch

Piece Of Work @ Primitive and Proper

Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed

The Cute House With License Plate Siding

This week’s theme link up for Funky Junk Interior’s is license plates.  Although, I personally didn’t create this cool siding idea, I did snap these photos while I was on vacation in Colorado this summer.   We visited Crested Butte, CO.  The town has some fun quirkiness to it and this house fits right in. 

If you had a huge collection of license plates would you put them on your house? 

Linking to

Saturday Night Special @ Funky Junk Interior