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A Snowman Christmas Tree Ornament / Tutorial

December 3, 2012 By Laura 32 Comments

Winter used to be my least favorite season, here in New England.  But I have chosen to embrace it, for there is no doubt that there is beauty in every season, and things that I love in all of them, too.  For winter, snowmen are one of those things, to me!  I’ve just always loved them. So I thought it would be fun to make a snowman Christmas tree ornament.

  It was not only more fun than I expected, I think it came out absolutely adorable. So I’m going to show you how easy it was to create!

Here’s the simple supplies that you’ll need:
Crayola Model Magic, in White.
Craft wire: 20 gauge or so
Wire cutters
An old sock for the hat
Yarn – Homespun Style. (I used Lion Brand, in Waterfall)
(The sock & yarn will be your snowman’s clothing, so you’ll want to pick co-ordinating or matching colors that you like.)
Embroidery thread (*optional accent for buttons)
Black beads for the eyes
An orange bead for the nose
Flathead pins, small, like used for tailoring
Pinkish chalk
A tiny brush for the chalk.
E-6000 or a good glue, may come in handy.
Black and Orange permanent Sharpie Markers


This is the Crayola Model Magic. It’s ‘modeling material’.  It’s lighter and softer than clay. And yes, it’s for kids, I guess.
Have you seen it? Have you ever played with it? It’s great stuff!
–

Take a chunk of the Model Magic into your hands, and roll three balls each smaller than the other. These are the body parts of the snowman: lower body, middle, and head. So size accordingly. My bottom body ball is about 1-1/2″.  Now I’m sure you’re dying to, but don’t build a snowman yet!!  You’ll put them all together in a couple of steps.


Cut about an 8 or 9 inch piece of wire.
Straighten it out as best you can, and then bend it into an L-shape, folding at the middle.


Now, thread the wire up through the center of the big ball first. then middle size, then head, really trying to keep it though the center of the ball and piling them neatly, as shown in the photo above.  Why are we using the wire? Well, the modeling material actually sticks together pretty well. But the wire, which will be cut again in the coming steps, serves two purposes: It gives the whole snowman core stability for years of use and packing and unpacking, and we’ll also be making a loop at the top to hang the ornament from at the top.
–


Using your wire cutters, cut the wire at the top leaving an inch or 1-1/4″ or so.
–

Then using the nose of the pliers, twist the wire into a loop.
There is still the long wire off of the bottom, but let’s leave that for now. I felt like it just helped the snowman stand up while I was working on him.
Let’s make his hat now. Shall we?

Cut the ankle part of your sock off of the foot. The ankle/ribbed part of the sock will be the hat. Lengthwise, cut about 1/3 off, as shown in photo.  This makes the hat narrower, as you need.  You can check for sizing on your snowman head first before you get sewing.  Now, fold it the opposite way to get ready to sew it closed along where you just cut, because you’ll want to sew it inside out so the stitches later will be on the inside.
Now you all may use a sewing machine if you’d like. But I just stitched it by hand quickly.


I tied off the cut end of the hat, with a matching piece of yarn.  And put the finished edge over the head.
But first, I put some thread through the wire loop, and then threaded a needle with both ends of the thread, to pull it up through the hat, so it can be hung on the tree.
And I also did something else before putting the hat on . . . . . .


Do you see that light pencil line right under the hat brim?  Right above there I put a dab or few of E-6000 (you can use any glue), before carefully pulling that hat over the head. Just to secure the hat, so it doesn’t keep slipping off the head while being handled over the years.
The needle can be taken off now, and just tie the ends in a knot. As I said, you’ll use the thread loop to hang it on the tree.

Face time!

Call me an over-planner, but I laid my face out in beads on the table first. Hey, it’s the distance of our features, and the curve of our smiles,that make us uniquely looking like US.
Same thing with snowmen! They are individuals too!  What a perfect orange bead, for a pointy nose, huh?

For every bead you have, cut a flat head pin to shorten the unnecessary length.


Again I laid out in pencil dots, exactly where I wanted each bead, to form his face.
Much like Mr. Potato head, just put a pin through a bead, and stick it into the snowman head.
(Mr. ♪ Snowman ♫ head ♪ , I-love-you! ♪)

I waited on the mouth, so it wouldn’t be in my way to apply some pink blushing cheeks!

You can use any pink colored chalk dust. I just happened to have this chalk palette, and used a tiny pointed brush.

Have you ever heard the saying, that you can always tell someone’s age, by looking at their hands?
Right.  I’m like, 106.


The mouth is all added.
Now here’s another tip:  The flat-head pins are silver, right?  So, my snowman looked like he had braces! Nothing wrong with braces. But it wasn’t the look I was going for. So I used a black permanent Sharpie marker, to color it. And an orange Sharpie for the nose. Worked well enough for me!

Buttons:  I used some teal colored embroidery thread, to thread my buttons. Then, because my holes were filled and I couldn’t put pins through them, I just used a dab of my E-6000 again, and just pushed them right into the soft modeling material.
Scarf: 3 equal length pieces of the homespun yarn, knotted on both ends, and tied around his neck.

Once you’re done crafting your snowman, or sooner, you can take your wire cutters, and cut the wire extending way out from under the snowman. Leave the L shape, so your snowman doesn’t slide off.  But it doesn’t need to be so long. Cut it short enough so it’s hidden underneath.

So how does he look?

Cute, right?
I added little stick arms, because seeing snowmen with no arms gives me a little anxiety.
I mean….HELLO!  What if he had an itch?

Let’s try him out in the Christmas Tree.


I think he looks right at home!
And he is.

Another cute idea if you’re ambitious: You could make a whole family of snowmen, and put them all together on a tabletop.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my ornament, and how I made him.  It really was fun, just like building a snowman really is. Without the cold. ; )
You can do this!
What do you think?
* * * * * *



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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, Holiday Crafts, Seasonal Crafts and Creations, Tutorial, WINTER Crafts and Creations Tagged With: Christmas decorations, Christmas-crafts, Christmas-ornament-crafts, Crayola-Model-Magic, Crayola-Model-Magic-crafts, handmade-Christmas-ornaments, handmade-Christmas-tree-ornaments, holiday-crafts, snowman-crafts, snowman-ornaments, snowmen

Decorating with Autumn Leaves; Door Garland and Candle Jars

November 10, 2012 By Laura 26 Comments

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone on God’s green earth, who appreciates the foliage that Autumn brings, more than I do.  I am mesmerized by the leaves, from beginning to end.  Ask my kids.  They are often amused at how taken I am, with the beauty of this season.  And they’ve certainly come to understand that I don’t want them to miss one bit of it, any more than I do. I get especially excited when we are driving here and there, which with 4 kids I can tell you, we do a whole lot of.  “Oh!! There’s a tree starting to change right there! Do you see it guys?” And as fall progresses., each week is more full of awe than the last. As we go along, I’ll burst out “LOOK!….at that GORGEOUS tree guys!! LOOK AT THE COLORS ON THAT THING!!”  I’ve startled them. And they’ll be like, “We know Mama! Watch where you’re going!”  It’s true. I probably shouldn’t be driving at all in the Fall. Certainly not during peak foliage week.  There is just a span of weeks in this season, where the trees are all I can talk about, everywhere we go. Sometimes, I feel God made Autumn, just for me. Perhaps not. But gosh, it sure feels like such a gift of love.

The peak beauty of the season, is really all too fleeting for me.  I want it to stay just as it is in those weeks, forever.  At least, I want to save as many beautiful leaves as I can.  But I’ve never found a great way to preserve them for a while, until this year. Oh yes, there was the waxed paper trick but, I heard that never worked all that well.  And besides…..Confession of Domestic Shame:  I really hate ironing.  So when I learned that using Glossy Modge Podge really worked well, I was so excited to try it.  And I immediately started dreaming up a very simple, very rustic leaf garland for my home.

 The kids helped me Modge Podge countless leaves they had collected for me, over the weeks.  We had them drying and being pressed between the pages of newspapers and magazines all over the house. I’m willing to bet we’ll be finding several we missed finding again, well into spring.  But I found you can actually Modge Podge a fresh leaf right away, anyway.  I do recommend the Glossy medium. I tried the Matte finish just as a test, and it seemed to strip the color, and not look very impressive once it was dry either. Something about the Glossy really does enhance the color of the leaf, and add lustre.  To Modge Podge (MP) the leaves, we just poured some MP in a non-pourous bowl, and used foam brushes to apply it to our leaves, doing the back of the leaves first.  Then you can lay them on newspaper or whatever, until they dry. They don’t really stick anywhere as drying, because they are not flat or heavy.  MP is so easy to clean up anyway.


I wanted my garland extremely simple and rustic.  Jute was just the kind of string for the job. I love this stuff.

 I took 4 pieces of equal lengths of the jute, knotted the ends, and twisted the quadruple strand quite a bit before push-pinning it over the frame of our sun room french doors.

 Then, I just stuck my leaves in between the twisted jute string, arranging as I wanted to, all the way across.

 There it is. Done in like, . . .a couple of minutes.
And I didn’t fall off while standing on the chair I had to keep moving, even once.
(Although I think I had my husband and kids nervous, because they kept reminding me to be careful. That might have to do with the many happenstances I have had. But not this time!)

 Look how pretty!  Honesty….my heart is racing a little bit right now, just looking at them.
No two alike….such beautiful shapes and colors.

 Do you see that long pointy leaf? After being out and about collecting leaves, the kids came running in, so excited to give me that one. They call it my giraffe leaf.  I love giraffes, and they saw a giraffe skin pattern in it. I do too now.  I felt the love, and that leaf makes me smile even more than all the rest now.

I also used the glossy Modge Podge to apply more leaves to jars.  I love that you can just slap that MP all over the jar with a foam (or flat bristle) brush, and everywhere it dries where there is not a leaf, it looks like frosted glass.

Isn’t it beautful?
I’ll warn you that this project took a little more patience than I had anticipated. Certainly not as easy as my garland! It’s worth the little bit of trouble I think though! It’s just that the leaves, which I had MP’d the back of, as well as the jar, don’t want to lay down flat right away. It’s all kind of slippery. It’s only once the MP glue starts setting a little, that is starts sticking as you need it to.  You need to MP over the leaves too anyway, so I kept kind of poking the leaves down where they were sticking up. Once the whole jar was dry, I did one more final coat.  Oh and I just let stems hang free off the glued down leaf. I liked them that way anyway, if they didn’t want to stick.

 They give such a warm glow of radiance.

 I can see myself doing these same projects with leaves every year, from now on. And other preserved leaf projects I’ll think of I’m sure now too.
I so enjoyed every minute of working with the leaves, and I am so very happy I found a way to preserve them, and let the beauty live on in my home, as the world around us outdoors drains colorless.

Thanks for coming by, and listening to me go on and on about my love for the colors of Autumn.
It sure was an amazing Fall season this year, and I thanked God for it every day.
Do you get a colorful foliage season where you live, in the Fall? And if so, have you done anything with the leaves?

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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, FALL Home Decor, Home Decor, Seasonal Home decor, The Homestead, Tutorial Tagged With: autumn decor, autumn-crafts, decorating-with-leaves, door-garlands, fall-craft, fall-decor, leaves-candle-jar, leaves-garland, Modge-Podge-crafts, modge-podge-projects, seasonal-decorating, simple-rustic-decorating

Halloween Craft | A Dripping Paint Pumpkin

October 8, 2012 By Laura 42 Comments

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 Last year for the Halloween/Hallowtide season, I went bat **** crazy (no Halloween-pun intended ;), with the decorating, inside and out.  I did a huge photo-galore post on it, and it’s a popular one, come that time of year again. There is some real creativity there, for you to see. This year, however, I didn’t need to do much of anything, because I have all of last years stuff! So I’ve mostly just been doing little fall-fun crafts, and baking. I did however, decide I wanted to do a little pumpkin project I thought of, and I thought I would show it to you all, and tell you how I went about it.

001_faux-pumpkin
I started with a medium sized faux craft pumpkin.  You absolutely can use a real pumpkin if you’d like, but obviously it will not last beyond this season. So if you want your pumpkin craft for keeps, than faux is the way to go!

I also covered my table as always, to protect it, with a cheap party table cloth, of which I always have a bunch on hand from the Dollar Tree store.  Unless they get real messy (and it sure will this time), you can use them over and over.  Of course old newspaper or something else disposable will do.

002_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft I cut out an appropriate sized BOO! for my pumpkin, out of vinyl.  I don’t know why, but I have always loved the whole BOO thing, for this time of year. Probably because it’s so . . . . . . childish. Elementary. You know, not a serious scare kind of thing, because I’m really not into that.  Anyhoo, you can use any kind of graphic or word(s) you’d like for this project.  Use your imagination and put some of your own style into it. Or, you can copy my BOO, and I won’t BOO-HOO about it.

003_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
So I properly positioned my vinyl design and applied it to my pumpkin. Now you’ll notice it’s got wrinkles in it all over the place. That’s ok!  My husband is a professional master with vinyl (for real), but I’m not so much.  Of course it’s harder to apply to curving surfaces but anyway, but also, I wasn’t extra careful either because this is just a mask! I am using the vinyl to protect the pumpkin for where I do not want paint, and will later be peeling the vinyl letters back off. So any wrinkles did not concern me.  I just made sure I went over every area of the vinyl with a lot of pressure with my squeegee.  (As seen in the next photo.)

004_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
What I did want to be concerned with, was doing my best to close any gaping holes that formed at the edge of the vinyl where wrinkles were.  Because I didn’t want paint to get under there.  If you do this project, you really want to do your best to seal down the vinyl edges. Especially at the top!  Chances are paint is going to get under the vinyl somewhere, but the better you have those gaps closed off, the less clean-up on the pumpkin later.  You’ll see what I mean in a little bit.

005
Black was the only color paint I’d be using, and I had two partial bottles in my storage. So I just mixed them up together in a glass measuring cup, because the spout on the cup would be coming in handy.

006_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft To begin the painting process though, I used a flat brush and painting out the top.  I imagine a foam brush would work fine enough as well.

After I had painted out the top all the way around, it was time to get messy. Thank goodness for the table cloth.

007_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
I just started pouring paint onto the pumpkin, right out of my cup, starting on the black where I had already painted black, and about the level where gravity would take over the paint. Because getting the paint dripping is the whole goal here.

008_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
And it was working for me. : )  Now….depending on the consistency of your paint, you may want to add water to it just a drop or 2 at a time, to thin it a little of you need to at all. But really just a drop or 2 at a time, and test it, because you do not want it too thin and runny.  I really loved the look of my pumpkin right there in this photo!  lol. The 3 dimension of the paint was giving me new ideas!  But, for my original project plan here, I needed the paint to cover my lettering, and yet still have a drip look to it.

009_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
So I really got the drip factor going. You see how messy this is getting? Oh . . . you haven’t seen anything, yet. LOL.  As cool as this looked, I knew peeling the letters off with even this amount of paint, would leave it unable to read.

010_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
So I just kept adding paint, and helping it along to drip, with my brush when needed.  The paint tended to puddle on top of the pumpkin too, so I helped that out and down. And, as the paint dripped onto the table, I kept moving the pumpkin back out of the paint-puddle.  I really wanted the dripping to be evident after the word, which didn’t leave me a lot of room. So I was sure to have the drips starting from higher all around the word, on the sides of the pumpkin.

Basically at this point, I had to leave the paint to dry a little. Not bone-dry.  But dry enough to be able to peel out the lettering.

011_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
Just awhile later, I did peel out the vinyl. I used the tip of an x-acto to do that.
Now, you can see it’s a bit of a mess.  It’s obvious where the paint did indeed get under the vinyl and onto my ‘negative space’ word.  But no worries:  I just used damp q-tips to clean it off.  It took a few q-tips in some areas, and sometimes a little scrubbing with it, but it worked well enough.

012_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
Much
better, don’t you think? Not perfect, but cleaner lines.  There is still something that bugged me though . . .

013_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft This little spot is where the paint over-dried at the vinyl edge, so when I peeled off the letter B, a little paint peeled off right there.  So to fill that area in, I could have just touched it up with paint. But I didn’t. I just used a permanent black Sharpie marker to fill it in there.  And while I was at it, I went around any areas on the insides of the letters, where it could have used a cleaner line edge. I cheated. Oh yes I did.  All over the place.

And I had to paint the stem a better brown; because whatever that color was that it came as, was not working for me!

It never did become perfect, and that was o.k. with me. Because I am working on embracing imperfections since, let’s face it….I can be a hot mess some days. And there is only so much time in a week!

014_halloween-faux-painted-pumpkin-craft
So I called it DONE, and put it on simple display, with a little bale of hay and little sugar pumpkins from my mother-in-law, and I think it came out rather cute.
So BOO!
What say YOU?!



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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, FALL Crafts and Creations, Holiday Crafts, Tutorial Tagged With: craft-pumpkin-craft-project, creative-pumpkin-ideas, Halloween, Halloween-crafts, pumpkin-decorating-ideas, pumpkin-painting

Terracotta Flower Pot Wind Chime | Tutorial

July 22, 2012 By Laura 104 Comments

terracotta-flower-pot-wind-chime-craft-3

Making this flower pot wind chime was a fun and simple project to do with my kids. I was really looking forward to hanging out with them and painting, and I knew I would also love seeing the wind chime in my gardens, where I had every intention of hanging it, when it was done.
While I think we kind of ‘made it our own’, this flower pot wind chime was not at all my idea. I have seen them so many times at crafty website now, and so many style-versions of it, that I’m not sure which style I saw first, or where! Someone must have come up with this adorable idea first, but I’ll be darned if I know who! Whoever did, we thank them for the fun inspiration, to make something (else) to have around, that makes me smile inside, every day.

Here’s the basics on how we made our terracotta flower pot wind chime.

001_terracotta-pots
We started with 3 different sized terracotta plants, that have drainage holes in the bottom.
The smallest is tiny, at 1-1/2″ tall. Then the 2 next sizes up: 2-2/3″ and 3-1/2″.

002_synthetic-flat-brushes
Using our little collection of synthetic brushes, we got to painting our pots.

003_paint-palette
We used Martha Stewart Craft Paints, which are an acrylic paint. We also looked around and found what wooden beads we had in the house, which we wanted to use on our wind chime as well. After choosing our colors of paint and how we were going to paint the pots, we wanted the beads the same colors. One we had already was the correct color-green. The other 3 we had were not, so we painted them correct colors. If you can imagine, painting small wooden beads was not that easy. But we quickly figured out a helpful trick: We stuck 2 toothpicks in the bead holes, to hold them while we brush painted them the colors we wanted them to be. You can see them resting on the palette, drying.

004_painted-terracotta-pots I really wanted to take photos of the kids painting, for me! But they were done and back outside, on the other side of my window, swimming again, before I ever got photos of them painting. But, since they weren’t paying any attention to me anymore, I did clean up the edges of their pot-rim painting, just a little. ; )

005
Our original idea, was to decorate our pots with little garden bugs.  Like butterflies, ladybugs, dragonflies, etc. It would have been so cute! Don’t you think? But none of us felt we could paint them that well, that small, and we couldn’t find any stickers or decals of any sort, to kind of Modge Podge them on. So, when it came time to decorate the pots, the boys were busy playing something else, and Alexis was at work. So O (Olivia) and I decided to just polka dot them.  I love polka dots, so I was sure I’d love it as much as the garden bugs idea.

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Applying the polka dots could not have been easier. Since we wanted the dots very small, on our small pots, we just used q-tips! We dipped the tip in the paint, and then dotted it right onto the pot! The hardest part was spacing the colors. I always drive myself crazy with that…..not wanting the same colors right near each other, and trying to get even spacing too. But we did a well enough job!

0071 O and I worked together, polka-dotting, and our q-tip trick worked like a charm.

Now, I didn’t take photos of the assembly. But it’s easy enough to explain:  We used jute twine, and strung it through the holes of the pots. We tied big enough knots on the string, to hang the pots on the string as we wanted.  So each knot was inside the pot underneath the drainage hole.

terracotta-flower-pot-wind-chime-craft
Now, some crafters who have made flower pot chimes, opted to have the string come down out of the pot, with a wooden bead on the string (held in place with a knot before and after the bead) to act as the ‘ringer’, that would hit the pot when the wind blows. So they designed it that way, spacing their pots out more.  We chose to use the pots themselves, to be the ringers, so that when the wind blows hard enough, the pots hit each other. That required (visually) setting the pots overlapping each other a little.

As an afterthought too, I decided I wanted to give the chime a quick UV protectant spray coat of clear acrylic.  Since my chime was all already assembled, I just put some tin foil over the spoon, and sprayed it anyway, getting some up into the pots as well. I do recommend spraying the painted pots before assembly, if you wanted to. But no big deal.  It’s an aerosol, so it worked easy enough afterwards.

terracotta-flower-pot-wind-chime-craft-1
Aside from the paint design, the other touch that made it more ‘our own’, was that we added a stainless steel baby spoon as the bottom ringer. It really is a special touch, to me, with the memories of giving Alexis her first baby food, and then the triplets coming along, and the 3 little mouths we were trying to keep up with come the spoon- feeding age, with them. We didn’t bother having 3 bowls and 3 spoons, or we’d spend as much time picking up and putting down bowls and spoons, as we did putting spoons in sweet little open-waiting mouths.  Go ahead. Imagine that for a moment. No…..1 spoon, 1 bowl of food….down line of sweet, messy mouths we went. And then started at the beginning again.  Gosh I miss those days.

Wait. How did I end up talking about feeding my babies? Oh yes….the baby spoon, and the happy memories it brings me.

terracotta-flower-pot-wind-chime-craft-2

 So, it was simple as that. Anyone can make an easy and whimsical wind chime, even if you’re not that crafty. It’s a breeze.
Anyway, we’re happy you caught wind of this little fun project, and came to take a look.  Even if you’re just blowing through.

Ok, I’ll stop now.

P.S. Feel free to chime in, in the comments.
(Oh my gosh! Somebody stop me!)



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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, Kids Arts and Crafts, Re-Purposing, Tutorial Tagged With: baby-spoon-chimes, crafts, diy, flower-pot-wind-chime, garden-decor, homemade-wind-chimes, kids crafts, Martha-Stewart-Craft-Paints, Plaid-products, polka-dot-crafts, terracotta-pot-crafts

Painted AMERICAN BIRDHOUSE – Tutorial

June 11, 2012 By Laura 27 Comments

Summer holds a whole lot of good things, and for us, it really kicks into high gear in the beginning of July, with back to back celebrating of the 4th of July, and our oldest daughter’s birthday!  Then the summer rides out with a little more down time, just chilling on the beach, making day trips, and hanging out chatting and laughing around the camp fire at night. So about this time in June, we’re getting excited for all of the fun to come, just around the corner! The gardens are planted, we’re reaching the end of our school books, and we can just feel the summer vibe coming on the sea breeze!

What really gives me so much joy, is helping make my home and gardens, reflect the seasons and holidays!  Around here, about mid-June through July, it is all about red, white and blue!  Our family’s homestead is that much more enjoyable, with the little bits of decor I add, and it just puts the happy in my heart, to see it.  But the greatest joy in it all for me, is planning and creating all of those little things around our home. Like this American Birdhouse I am sharing with you all today. Honestly, day or night, you can turn the music up loud, put some art tools in my hands, and COLOR ME HaPpY!!

So I’ll just tell you how I did this. While I didn’t photograph every step of the action, I can tell you what I did, and give you some photos I took of what the birdhouse looked like after those steps.


To start, I picked out an unpainted wooden birdhouse at Michael’s Arts and Crafts. There were a few styles to choose from, but this one would best work with the paint-job layout I had in my head.

I primed it with some grey primer I had on hand, and then I painted it white with acrylic paint. Because of the grey primer, it did take 2 quick coats of white to cover. This paint dries fast, which I love, so I can keep the fun rolling.

Next, I asked my husband, Michel, to cut some stars and stripes out of vinyl for me, the next job he ran, to use as masks. I wasn’t sure of the size I wanted to work with for either the stars or stripes, so he cut out 2 sizes of each.  Sticking some cut pieces on the house helped me decide which size I’d like better, and I went with the fatter stars and stripes.  NOTE: Just to confuse things, Michael used some scrap vinyl he had, that happened to be red and blue…to put on my white house. I know….it looks done already, huh? I would have preferred white masking, but c’est la vie….it was just a mask. Don’t let it confuse you-as it was trying to confuse me. It was going to be way better looking when I was done with it, but the colored vinyl did give me a good preview of the final layout!

So here it is, with the masking still on, and all painted in.  Looks like a hot mess to me! It did take more brain power than I had planned on burning, trying to think in opposite terms here:  “Ok….where the red and blue mask is, it will be white….and I am painting the white I see, red and blue. Right?….Wait……”. Ugh. See? White vinyl would have taken less thought for me.

 But I managed, believe it or not, to not screw it up much.  Although everyone was instructed not to talk to me or ask me questions whilst paintbrush in hand. I’m good, but I’m not that good. ; )

So here is what it looked like after all of the masking was peeled off.  Revealing that I really did it right!

It’s looking pretty good already, huh? But it was still not done yet!

 My vision was an older looking American Birdhouse. So I finally really attacked it, with my sand paper! I go to town, distressing.  I don’t know what it means, but I suspect distressing my creations gives me an unnatural level of joy.  Sometimes, I need someone around, to stop me. For me, this is when many things I make, really come to life, and become what I created them to be.

So, after Michael took away the sand paper, I did just a few more little things:  1) I dusted it all off with a soft rag.  2) I rubbed on a good coat of clear wax, and let that dry.  3)  Then, ever so tentatively, I added some dark wax too. I am so careful with that stuff, because it is powerfully staining!  I carefully and minimally applied it, to age it exactly to a specific, pinpointed year. (Ha ha…I have no idea what year, really….I’m just kidding. lol)  I’m not sure if you can even tell how much it was aged in these photos, with the effect of the dark wax, but it really was the final touch of perfection, for me to call it d-o-n-e.

And here it is! . . . . . .


This is the front and it’s left side, obviously. But I tell you this for you to notice, how the stars wrap around from one side, diagonally, all the way to the other.  And the stripes do the same thing.

So I am about to show you all sides . . . . . .

 

 Of course, I would love to show you close-ups of the detail in my distressing . . . . . .


It truly is what makes this an American Beauty, to me!

 I just love how it came out. Do you? You can bet your American bottom, I’ll be Pinning this baby!

Coming up soon here on the blog, I’ll be showing you where I put this, to be displayed for awhile this summer.

Tell us, do you had any special summer decor to your home this time of year?  We hope you have a moment to tell us about it, or say hello, before you ski-dattle! If not today, thanks so much for coming by! We’re always glad you did.



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Filed Under: Crafts & Creations, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Project, Home Decor, Tutorial Tagged With: american-crafts, american-home-decor, american-projects, birdhouses, crafts, decorative-birdhouses, july-decor, july-home-decor, painting-birdhouses, painting-projects, patriotic crafts, red-white-and-blue-crafts, red-white-blue-decor, stars and stripes

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