Table Makeover

So most of you recall when my sweet, sweet angel baby managed to climb on top of my bar height table and with his baby Hulk muscles open a bottle of finger nail polish (that I couldn’t even open) and pour it all over the table, place settings, and himself in a matter of 60 seconds. If you haven’t tried this at home, DON’T! The result…..

Yes, apparently finger nail polish will completely eat through lacquer and stain and leave a sticky, and in my case, pink mess! I will admit I sobbed uncontrollably for a solid 10 minutes while I tried to remove the nail polish from both my son and our table until I was able to get a grip of myself and the situation and realize that this was the perfect opportunity to take boring blah table and turn it into some kind of shabby chic awesomeness! So here it goes…..for all of you who have asked about it…..

Step one. I began by sanding down the table. I sanded lightly over the entire table with a hand held sander to rough it up just a bit for the paint to stick.

(This is it sanded.)

Step two. I had some extra white paint just lying around the house, so I decided to white wash it. I made up a mixture of half paint and half water. To white wash, I dipped my paint brush in the paint/water mixture, and then with a clean rag wiped most of the mixture off. I then applied it to the table in small back and forth strokes going with the wood grain. After painting the entire table, I let it dry, and then repeated with about 5 more coats of white wash. You can apply as many coats of white wash as you want until you get your desired appearance.

(After it's 5th coat of white wash)

Step three. After the paint had dried, I took my hand sander and lightly sanded the table top and the legs paying special attention to the corners and edges to give it that shabby chic distressed look.

Step four. I then wiped down the table with a dry cloth to remove all the dust from sanding and then sealed it with a clear gloss wood finish. I got this at Lowes.

One day I plan on getting around to painting the chairs. Maybe I’ll give Mad-Man another bottle of finger nail polish to pour on them so I’ll start on that project sooner than later. Haha. No. But really, I am thinking a nice light blue or even pink or even mismatched blue and pink! What do you think?

Studded Chucks

I am off to a terrible start. I told myself when I started this blog that my goal was to write atleast one post a week. Two weeks in and I am already one post behind. Go figure....

I have had so many people ask me about my dining room table that I upcycled after my 19 month old ruined it with finger nail polish, so I am currently working on getting a tutorial written for all of you folks who have asked. I will have it up on the blog by the end of the week. Until then I thought I would leave you with this juicy studded makeover I gave my fancy white Chuck Taylor's. Hope you enjoy!

A Pair of Chuck's.

A pack of Leather Studs.

(I found these at Hobby Lobby next to all the leather, feathers, and beads.)

Start studding.

(Gloves and needle nose pliers are helpful in assisting with punching through the fabric and clamping the studs closed)

Ta-Da! Rad shoes!

I finally decided to start a blog to give those of you with nothing better to do a little insight to my boring but crafty life. To be honest, I really just need an outlet where I can pretend someone is listening to me, because let’s face it, my 19 month old I stay-at-home with doesn’t care that I improved the value of our home by upgrading the kitchen cabinets with a little bit of glaze or that I up cycled his old denim jacket into a rad new denim vest! I mean really, it’s awesome. One day you'll see it!

Anyways, for anyone who knows me knows that I can’t go very long without taking on some kind of new crafty project. Pinterst has only fueled this flame and every day is something new. I’ve gotten a lot of questions regarding some of the projects I have posted on Facebook that I have done, so I thought by starting this blog it would give people who were interested a place to read my tutorials. I will warn, I am a bit scatterbrained, so this blog will be sort of a random diary for me, from everything to style and DIY projects, to my life events. I hope you all enjoy though!

With all that being said I would like to introduce my first post project. DIY AMERICAN FLAG SHORTS!

I’ve been feeling very patriotic lately. Maybe it’s because it’s finally summer around here and I am stuck in between the Memorial Day and July 4^th holidays. I first saw these lovely shorts on Pinterest and then found an amazing DIY tutorial for them via ASCOTFRIDAY you can find here. (BTW, she is amazing and has a fabulous style blog if you would like to follow her.)

My shorts basically followed the same idea; however, I started out with an old pair of jeans. I always seem to get a project in my head at like 10 o’clock at night but, I don’t ever have the right supplies for the job. And again, if you know me, when I have an idea, I run with it. There is no waiting until tomorrow.  It has to be done today. Well, that happened a few times with this project. First, I didn’t have a pair of shorts that I really wanted to sacrifice for the project…. so, I found an old pair of jeans I haven’t wore in forever and just cut the legs off.

 

My jeans were also a bit of a darker wash, so I decided to bleach them first to make them look more faded and worn. All I did was mix 2cups of bleach with 4cups of water in a bucket and soaked the shorts for 10 minutes and then washed them.  You can soak your shorts for less or more time depending on the color you want, or if you like the denim wash they are, just skip this step.

They don't even look the same, do they!

After I washed and dried my shorts I got them ready to paint. In the tutorial by ascotfriday she used star stickers, and go figure, I didn’t have any, so I just printed out a star stencil and traced them onto my shorts. (With that being said, I had to paint around my traced out stars. This was a bit tedious and time consuming. I would recommend getting some star stickers if you don’t have much patience and like perfection. I thought doing it this way added some rough but lovely character to them though!) For the stripes I used painters tape and just taped off one side.

Now for the paint…. I used Anita’s Textile Medium and Anita’s Royal Blue and True Red paint. They can be found at any craft store. I followed the medium directions and mixed 1 part medium to 2 parts paint and then I just got busy painting. Be sure to put cardboard or a few sheets of paper inside your shorts so that the paint doesn't bleed through to the back side. 

I let my shorts dry about 2 hours before washing them. They weren’t completely dry after 2 hours but, I wanted some of the paint to wash out so they looked faded. If you want the colors to be vibrant, I suggest you let the paint dry completely.

 And that’s that! Aren’t they just to die for!