Showing posts with label upcycle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label upcycle. Show all posts

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Making it my own: Tea Time

One of my most favorite things in the morning is relaxing on the couch, enjoying a nice warm cup of tea, while watching a chipper Lil E play with his toys. I would love to have one of those fancy oversized mugs to enjoy my hot beverage in but I haven't found one to my liking yet. We do, however, have a large mug that I try to hide from guests by pushing as far back in the cabinet as possible. It is pretty perfect for my morning tea but it is unsightly ugly. Now I do not blame FiancĂ© for having this ugly monster of a cup as I am pretty positive he did not and would not buy it for himself. I do blame the person who bought it and left it in his house for having horrible taste.
Anyways...
Today I decided to make this mug my own. I already have enamel paint so why not put it to good use?
Oh, BTW sweetie, I'm going to paint your cup...hope you don't mind!

Here's what I did:


Ugly isn't it!?
I cleaned the mug really good and made sure there was no soap residue left behind. Then I grabbed my paints and a foam brush and started covering the mug.


I had to coat it 3 or 4 times. I let it dry after each coat.
Ok I lied. I am impatient and I used my hair dryer between coats to dry it faster.
 
Goodbye ugly snowman!!
Once the basecoat was completely dry (again speeding up the process with my hair dryer) I got to work being all artistic and such. I used black and pink enamel paints, a small paint brush, and a cotton swab.

Done, Done, Done!
I let this dry and popped it in a cold oven at 325 for 30min then let it cool completely. The directions are right on the bottles of paint for this step. Dishwasher and food safe! Now I have a mug to call my own for my morning relax time with Lil E.

 

 

Saturday, April 21, 2012

DIY Upcycled old toy rack

This is my first DIY project of the season. It was a beautiful 80 degrees outside today and I was not about to waste this gorgeous day by staying indoors all day listening to 90's on 9 (Srius XM Raido yo!). I've been wanting to do something special for the front porch for a while now and after scouring the garage for stuff we never use anymore that I could re purpose into a porch planter for flowers I found this:





This is a toy rack I bought for Miss Priss when she was 3yrs old. She doesn't use it anymore because shes 9 now and "Princesses are for babies."
This is what it is SUPPOSED to look like ~~~~~~~~~~~~>>
But naturally over the course of the past 6 years and moving multiple times most of the little buckets were lost and the rack itself has suffered more then a little wear and tear to the paint job.

Ok so first things first, the supply list.
*a drop cloth (if I get paint all over the garage floor or the driveway the fiance might kill me)
*Some sort of Primer paint. I used Grey Gesso. I was going to use white but 1) I didn't have enough on hand and 2) I wasn't confident it would cover up the existing picture without using 50 coats of paint. Now I suppose this part isn't ENTIRELY necessary if you're going to use a dark spray paint.
*Paint brush for primer
*Spray paint of your choice. I had Green, black, and Pink on hand
*Stencil (optional)

goodbye Disney
Ok so here we go....
Lil E was supervising the project

Paint over the picture with primer. It doesn't have to be perfect just try to get as much covered as possible. Let it dry.









Next I drug the whole thing out to the driveway because if I got spray paint on the car I'd never hear the end of it from the Fiance. Then I spray painted the crap outta it :) I hung a stencil on the sides to give  it a design. This step isn't necessary but I thought I needed to jazz it up a bit.
GREEN!



Pretty leaves
Don't do what I did and spray too close.
Spray paint drips :(


While that is Drying I worked on the few boxes that didn't get lost in the move(s)
finding 4 out of 9 isn't  too bad

First I peeled off as much of the stickers as possible then I spray painted them. I had black and pink on hand. The black turned out really well but I had to do 3 coats of the pink to get it to cover correctly. I should've primed them first.
The Finished product

Now I just need to add flowers
When I was finished (so proud of myself) I quickly showed the Fiance and he grimaced at the pink. *sigh* Details, Details. To make him happy I will probably go back and paint them white so they look better against the house and the white railing on the porch. Also I may have Mr. handy man drill a hole in the bottom of my new "flower pots" to give them proper drainage.
And that's it folks!


*UPDATE*

I did indeed re paint the pink buckets to make them white. Here is the end result: