Dear Clever Chick: Painting Basics
Naive Person Who Thinks I Have Skills: I have an art project question for you. I bought these ornate, fancy picture frames on craigslist and they turned out to be a yellowish gold color that doesn’t look good with any of my pictures. I want to either distress it or paint it (I’m leaning towards painting). Do you have any tips or ideas I can try?
Me Pretending to be Competent: I wouldn’t try distressing, just because that yellow color might still be visible (depending on the frame). If you’re going to paint it, since it’s a small project I would just go to a craft supply store and get a tube of acrylic paint that you like. Acrylic is the kind you can clean up with just soap and water, whereas oil requires turpentine, and also takes days to dry.
Acrylic will dry a tiny bit darker than it looks when it’s wet, so if you’re trying to match a specific color that might be important. If you don’t have a brush already, just get a cheap-ish one at the craft store. They should have the brushes grouped by what they’re used for, so just find one for acrylic paint.
I would take the whole frame apart (Edit: What I mean by this is separate the wood frame part from the glass and backing, so you don’t worry about getting paint on them), paint it over newspaper, then let it dry overnight. It probably won’t take that long to fully dry, but I can never be patient, so I always end up with finger prints on stuff where I “tested” it (Edit: This is completely true).
If you want to protect the coating once you’re done, you can get clear spray paint to coat it with. You can get different levels of shininess, and they have it at Wal-mart for around $3. Since it’s a picture frame, you might not have to worry about that. We use it on things that will be handled and moved around to prevent chipping. (Edit: Higher gloss levels make the object easier to clean. I have used clear coats on things I’ve spray painted as well, and it works great).
So there you go. Advice, basic knowledge, and the laziest blog post possible. Do you have blog fodder crafting questions? Send them to me, and I’ll do my best to stay sober while I respond.
Yes, even more skulls!!
I guess you guys have figured out by this point, that I’m a little obsessed with skulls (as you can see here, and here, and here, oh and here, here, and here). I could wear a different skull t-shirt everyday for a week, and now, I can also accessorize with skulls! When Beans and I went to the thrift store, we found a tangled pile of mardi gras beads with skull and crossbones on them. Of COURSE I brought them home.
I simply cut the skulls loose from the rest of the beads, and threw those away. Yes, they are shiny silver, but that’s nothing some matte white spray paint can’t fix! A few of them, like those in the picture, were missing a bone or two. Hubby snapped the extras off for me, and sanded down the sides.
I decided Day of the Dead was the way to go with these (especially appropriate for Cinco de Mayo). I pulled out my paints and tiny brushes and went nuts! Here’s a mid-way through work picture:
And a couple of finished ones:
I used a fine point sharpee to do the detail work. The one with blood pouring out of its eye sockets is my favorite!
I just mixed small amounts of the colors I wanted, and went from skull to skull adding flowers, leaves, hearts, and other details. I just googled images of Day of the Dead to get inspiration. I can’t wait to do more stuff like this!
Several of these will be for sale at the Rockin’ Mama’s Day Celebration this Saturday, May 7, to benefit SafePlace. I hope to see you there!
Thrift Store Treasure
The other day when my sis Beans was in town, we went thrifting. I don’t mean stop-in-at-a-goodwill thrifting, I mean hardcore, forget-to-eat-all-day thrifting. We stumbled across this plastic candle holder that I instantly loved. I was painted a spatter blue, which was okay, but not ideal. It was also starting to chip. I got Hubby to spray paint it with white primer for me, but I forgot to take a “before” picture. Once I whined and moaned enough to get him to do it for me, I didn’t want to interrupt him for the pic.
So this is after the white primer is on there. I’m hoping that will allow my glorious paint to stick much better than the previous. I actually washed it before he painted it also. I had some gorgeous blue paint around from when we redid our coffee table and a small shelf, so I decided to use that. I know it will match, plus having small amounts of the same color around the room makes it look like I actually PLANNED the design. Try not to laugh too hard, it’s possible. I could plan stuff.
I did one coat of paint, let dry completely, and then did another coat of paint. I let it dry overnight, then had Hubby spray it with a clear coat:
You probably can’t read it there, but the important part to me is that it says “Non-Yellowing”. Many of the other products I’ve found say on the label that they cause things to yellow, and I hate that. I went through all the work of painting this a specific color, not a slightly yellower shade. So Hubby did one coat, then let it dry overnight, then I braved the can and did a second coat today, and let it dry completely.
Now it’s hung up with another thrift store find:
I’m calling her Death Nun. I was so excited when I found her, I snatched her off the shelf and looked around to make sure I wasn’t going to have to fight for her. I know she looks like just regular Death, but when you see the back it looks much more like a nun’s habit, or whatever Virgin Mary is always wearing. Plus Death Nun sounds cooler.
You can see a tiny bit of the ticky tac I used to secure her on there. Meh, I’ll get Hubby to fix it when he gets home. I just love the shapes of the candle holder, and I think Death Nun has a lot more visual impact than a boring candle would have. Oh yeah, and Death Nun was a dollar. The candle holder probably about the same (it was from the $1.39 per pound thrift store).
I LOVE THIS THING!!
Flip Flop Revamp
For some reason, I have a weird love for those flip flops that have the cane or whatever woven for the bottoms. I usually own at least one pair, and I prefer black ones. My current pair had gotten worn down to the point where my big toes were basically on the bare ground when I wore them.
This sent my sis, Beans, into fits of laughter. She happened to have these extra flip flops laying around, and took pity on my poor feet by giving them to me:
They’re fine, and fit great, but plaid? No thanks. I think that’s why Beans never wore them. You can’t really tell from the picture, but there’s red glitter thread running through the plaid. I decided to revamp them into what I will actually wear.
You will need black shirt paint (it’s waterproof, and acrylic isn’t) a small paint brush, and the flip flops. I very carefully painted only the plaid areas. That’s a challenge when your small dog decides it’s play time in the middle of one flip flop. I painted the thong part last, and wore them while they dried to make sure they dried in the right shape for my feet.
The big reveal! I think they came out pretty good. Now I can finally retire the previous pair, or just save them for beach shoes. I am praying for winter to end. It should not be this cold here!
