Baby Gift : Monogram Nursery Frame

We found out a little bit ago that one of our closest friends is expecting. I wanted to make something to show how excited and happy we were for them, and when I came across this tutorial from Cute as a Fox, I knew I'd found what I was looking for.

I started with this picture frame.

First, I painted it with a few coats of hi-gloss white.

I initially thought I'd like the look of the frame with glaze in the ridges. After I glazed one side I realized that it wasn't really the look I was going for, so I wiped off as much as possible and repainted another coat of white on the frame.

While that was drying, I took the cardboard from the insert of my picture frame, wrapped it in batting, and glued the batting to the cardboard using Fabri-Tac. I wanted the Monogram to look almost 3-D.

After that, I wrapped my piece of fabric on top of the batting and glued that down using Fabri-Tac. Chris and I spent entirely too much time in Jo-Ann's going back and forth on which piece of fabric we liked best. I have a hard time on decisions with gifts...I know what I like, but it's hard to know what others will!

While the Fabri-Tac was setting, I painted my letter white, then added glaze to the inside edges (again, to create a sort of 3-D look), and then painted the face white again.

After all of it was dry, I put my fabric piece back into the frame, and attached the letter to the fabric piece by applying a thin coat of fabri-tac to the back of the letter and pressing down for a few seconds to make sure it stuck.

And wala! Baby nursery gift! I brought it up to Gainesville (where they live) with me this weekend for the hot hot hot football game. They were out of town, so they'll see it today when they get back. I sure hope they like it!! And if not, I'm sure they can find something to do with the white frame.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

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Pool Deck Makeover Part 1 : Painting the Ceiling

In preparation for our paver's going down, we've got quite a number of pool deck area projects on our to-do list. One of them being to paint our covered area's ceiling.

When my step-dad came over and helped us paint the doors, he mentioned that many people think that blue ceilings keep bugs away. You can google painting your ceilings blue, and there's all sorts of theories from casting away evil spells to deterring bugs. Regardless of what's true and what's theory, we like blue and thought it would add a nice crispness out there, so we put - figure out a color of blue, purchase, and paint - on our to-do list for the long Labor Day Weekend.

I don't know about you guys, but I can look at paint chips for days and days and think I love a sample, get it on the wall, and hate it. So, when Young House Love posting their sunroom ceiling makeover, I was sold on their color (Tide Pools by Behr).

First up though, we had to caulk around the edges and fill in the gaps in the drywall.  We sanded these areas in preparation and discovered that once upon a time, this ceiling was pink (!).  I guess it matched the pretty in pink pool deck.

Chris either really wanted to procrastinate with his homework, or really felt bad for me, because he came out and helped with the trim, and then took over painting the first coat on the ceiling.  My shoulders / arms felt like they might fall off.

I was on my own for the second coat though, and we went through two full gallons of paint.  That ceiling is HUGE!

We love the way it looks though, and the way the water and sunlight bounce off of it.

The blue changes hues by where your standing and where the sunlight is.  The above and below pictures were taken of the exact same spot, but the blue looks more dramatic in the top picture and more subtle in the bottom picture.

That's step 1 of a bunch of steps, so stay tuned to see what else we've got planned for out there!  If you'd like to see the demolition part of the outside area, go here.

Deets rundown:  Paint:  Tide Pools by Behr.

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Pottery Barn / Goodwill Shelves

Since finding Ana's site, my list to build is 3 million miles long. I know how much things cost to build now, so I refuse to pay for things that are less quality than I could build on my own. Slight problem...I'm an Engineer 50 hours of the week. Time is not my friend.

To help save time on things, when I drop off stuff for donations to Goodwill, I scour to see if there's anything I can just refinish instead of building from scratch.

A few months back I came across two of these shelves.  They're Sophia shelves from Pottery Barn.

For $6.  SOLD!  They needed a little TLC though, so I got to work on refinishing them.  In my head I had a vision of finishing them the same way I did my mail holder, but with the turquoise (that I had left over from my sewing machine makeover) as the underneath layer, and white as the top layer.

First I painted it the turquoise color, and then I topped it with a thin layer of white.  After that all dried, I sanded with my 200 grit sandpaper and was not happy at all with my results.

Not exactly the look I was going for.  It wasn't awful, but it wasn't what I wanted either.  Back to the proverbial drawing board I went.

I decided to mix the turquoise with some of my glaze and a little bit of water and apply it to my shelves.

Too dark!  To lighten it up some, I mixed up some white paint, a little bit of water, and my turoquoise glaze together.

Too light!  Stupid shelves.  From there I started dipping between my turquoise glaze mix and my white/turquoise glaze mix until I came up with something I FINALLY liked.

And because I'm me, and I can't leave well enough alone, I glazed all of the edges.

After I matched that up in the room, I decided I liked the glaze a lot, so I glazed the entire bottom part of the shelves and left the top part with just the whitewash / turquoise color.  I had no idea these shelves would take this long to refinish, but sometimes working with color, and getting the color right is hard.

These shelves went in the someday kids room with the daybeds.  I've actually started calling this room the daybed room instead.  It's the room that my nieces / nephew will stay in when they come to visit, so I loaded the shelves up with things that reminded me of them.  I'm actually missing a picture of one of my nieces...I really need to update my picture selections.  It's on the mile long list.

Here they are on the wall (they're HEAVY!!!).

The tiny little monkey on the left shelf was given to me by one of my nieces as a birthday present.  I've found its perfect home!

I say the word fun a lot.  That little sign is perfect for me!

You know I couldn't leave out a details shot.  I'll end on a few full room shots.

For those of you that want the deets, here they are:
Paint: Behr's Aquatic Blue
Glaze:  Ralph Lauren in Smoke
Any white paint you have laying around.

For the whitewash / glaze mixes, I used twice as much paint as I did water and glaze.  So if I used 4 ounces of paint, I added 2 ounces of water and 2 ounces of glaze.  It all goes really far, so if you try this, don't mix too much!

Next up in this room...replacing the pillows so my living room can have pillows again.  Happy Wednesday!

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