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

Have You Heard About Tasty Kitchen?

While on Pinterest the other day I came across a food pin that caught my attention.  I wanted to read the recipe and discovered that it was from a place called Tasty Kitchen.  It’s a website that is described as “favorite recipes from real kitchens everywhere”.  It’s a cooking community.  You can add recipes, rate recipes and collect recipes in your recipe box.  I plan on exploring it more, but so far I find it to be very promising as a go to place to look for recipes.  I joined and already had 2 friend requests so I think it will be a friendly place to visit as well.  Want to check it out?  Click on the screen shot of the site below and see what you think.  I would love to know if you like it too!

No Project Just Popping In

The idea of a long weekend brought all kinds of accomplishments to mind.  Well most of them just didn’t happen.  I have been trying to learn about Lightroom photo editing. I downloaded the free 30 day trial from Adobe for now to see how I like it. 

I do better with video tutorials than self learning so I am viewing Amanda from Everyday Elements Tutorial that I purchased. 

Of course I had to take some photos to edit and my sweet little neighbor happily posed for me even though I caught her off guard while eating ice cream outside.

Not bad for impromptu huh?  I am sad because they are moving.  I will miss them. 

I also took a photo of a cute watering can on my porch and added some textures to it.

Here’s how boring the photo looks without the textures. 

I learned about textures at Kim Klassen Café blog.  They are really fun and help you enjoy your creative side with photography. 

I had to get away from the computer monitor for a bit and I decided to try wearing my hair curly which I rarely do.  It didn’t look too bad, but it really reminded me of my hair in the 80s.  Someone said it is making a comeback.  Looks like I will be ready.

Can anyone give me smiling lessons?  Please!  And thank goodness for makeup and photoshop because I am sporting some red alligator skin right now.  I had a breakout that looked like I was a teen again.  I decided to use my teen’s Clearasil.  BAD idea!!!  I had an allergic reaction and my skin burned and itched.  Now it feels like and alligator and looks bad.  The zits are still there too! 

I let my curly hair blow in the wind while my son and I drove around in my 73 Karmann Ghia with the windows down and the music cranked. 

When we arrived back home,  it was a beautiful cool night so my son and I took off for a 3 mile run through the neighborhood.

I was stunned at the end when he took off and blew me out of the water and made it home way before me.  This is only the 2nd time he has run 3 miles.  He has really become motivated this school year and I am so proud of him.

Oh and one more thing.  I ordered a smart phone.  I have been wanting one for a long time, but finally made the plunge.  I am pretty excited to play with it when it arrives in the mail. 

Today I think I will try to be domestic and do some cooking.  I better get going and decided what to buy at the store.  Happy Labor Day!

A Coke and a Smile. Oh …. And a Flash.

What a great start to the month of September.  I came home from work ready for a 4 day weekend and spotted a couple of packages on my front porch.  One was from Old Navy.  I broke down and bought some skinny jeans.  Funny thing.  I don’t feel very skinny in them! 

The other box was from a blogger friend, Jen from These Are the Days to Remember, who read that my son wanted some Coca Cola accents in his room we are eventually going to redo.  She knows we both like vintage too.  She found a really cool old Coke can at a thrift store and sent it to us!  My son and I just love it.  What a great surprise to come home to. 

Take a look.

Want to see the most interesting part?  You know you do.

It doesn’t have a pop top!  This Coca Cola stuff is growing on me. 

Jen also sent the cutest card with the can. 

Blogger buddies are the best.  Thanks Jen for making our day. 

On a side note.  Yesterday one of my patients that came in is professional photographer.  We were talking cameras and such and she was telling me how my photo world would change if I would learn about flash photography which is very confusing to my blogging mind that reads at least once a week how flash is bad and not your friend.  I decided I am going to learn about it and decide for myself.  I played with my external flash a bit last night and have some more reading to do this weekend.  Here’s a few fun photos I took on my porch last night with my bad ol’ flash.

I have a funny for you.  I took lots of photos on my porch last night trying out different things.  As I was taking the above photo of Izzy, she started barking and took off.  I hear, “Tracy what are you doing?”  I look up and see my neighbor walking across the street with a scope in his hand from one of  his guns.  It seems he and  his wife kept seeing a red light and then strobe lights going off on my porch and moving in different places.  He got out his scope to see what the heck was going on and spotted me on the porch.  He had to come over and see what I was doing.  I was in my pajamas on the front porch at 11pm practicing flash photography of course.  Isn’t that something all neighbors do?