So, I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting to paint the condo we are renting. It took me a while to settle on the colors, but I’m so happy I finally decided to just dive in! Most of the painting will be shades of gray, however, I wanted to throw a pop of color in to make things a little more interesting. Yellow certainly brings that POP! Not normally one of my top color choices, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I like that when you walk into our condo now, it’s like you are bathed in sunshine! It makes me happy. I hope it will make our guests happy too! This color is called “Mellow Yellow”, but it’s anything but mellow! Here are a few really less than great photos to share with you. I just couldn’t wait any longer!
 

BEFORE :: In need of some color.

AFTER :: LOADS of color! 

I’m not certain yet if I will put anything else on the walls. 
This “Hi” sign is one of my favorite thrift store finds. (Thanks, Amanda!)
It was only $1.00. Not only offering a lovely greeting to guests, but
also reminds me of Hawaii where we lived for the past 2 years. 
 

Have you ever tried photographing yellow? It’s mighty difficult. These came pretty close to showing the true color, but it does look better in person. I’m thinking of doing some sort of interesting nature inspired graphic on this wall. I think it would be interesting and maybe break up a little of the yellow. For now, I’m happy with this, especially since I’m off to paint the living room now… it will be “Manhattan Mist”. What a lovely name. 

Hope you are having a splendid week so far. It’s almost the weekend!! 

A friend of mine had a Birthday yesterday, so I made some cupcakes. I must say, I had these grand pictures in my head of what they were going to look like. They were quite beautiful. However, don’t let these lovely little cupcake shops fool you, icing them to be so pretty and cute is harder than it looks! After testing about 6 different tips and failing miserably, I ended up snipping the end of the ziploc bag and just squirting that icing out! It was fun even though I did not turn out to posses secret Pastry Chef powers. 

Finished product. Only decent picture, sorry.
Only had the zoom lens at the time, and it was not cooperating in our small kitchen. 
  

Cupcakes cooling. I didn’t fill them up quite enough this time around.
 

See the ones I messed up on? No tip, just the Ziploc bag! 
It worked out much better for me.

This was a lot of fun. I will definitely do it again. However, I’d like to make the cake part of the cupcakes a bit denser to hold up to flavor and sweetness of the icing. Anyone have any recipes to share?

As promised, here are a handful of old, thrifted pictures frames to match the “new” mirrors I shared here. I really love how these turned out as well. I wish you could see them in person. You lose a lot of dimension adn detail viewing them via my blog.

*TIP: Picture frames and mats can be so inexpensive. I think it is pretty ridiculous. I always scour thrift stores and flea markets for interesting or basic frames that I can revamp to fit my taste. You would be amazed at how many cheap picture frames are out there just waiting for a facelift… and your photos of course! 

BEFORE: Picked up this large frame at a the Salvation Army in Hawaii before we moved. Replaced the photo, but never got around to painting it. This photo was at the top of Haleakala on Maui. I love this shot, but it was not quite right for the freshly painted frame. I replaced it with the shot below!
 

AFTER: This is our little Jack Russell Bonsai. I took this shot of him after an evening at the park where he decided to roll around in the mud! This is in the bathtub before Dustin gave him a bath. I just can’t resist that little face! I think this REDO turned out quite nice!
 

BEFORE: Two more thrift store finds. The one on the left was only $1!! I could not resist. I love the character of the frame too. I think the one on the right was between $3 to $5. Check out the after. There’s that chair again! Just a little tease. I will share them soon!
 

AFTER: This is not one of our favorite photos together, but one of the only “professional” ones, if you can call it that. All of them we are cropped off in weird places. Ah well. It’s still a memory!

AFTER: This one was a great REDO. Do you remember all the gold, even on the mat? Well, I salvaged the mat too! Just painted it white, and it looks great! This photo Dustin took while at the Honolulu Zoo. That was a fun day. 
 

BEFORE: Gold Frame, $3.25
 

AFTER: Clean ad crisp with my sister’s artwork! 
 

AFTER: Detail shot of the frame. 
 

AFTER: This is a collage I created from moving stickers a while back. Blogged here. This frame came from IKEA, but I didn’t think the natural wood was quite right for this collage. I’m glad I decided to paint it!

/////

I would love to see your photo frame revamps! It really is super simple. And, don’t be intimidated by larger pieces that have been professionally framed. It only takes a little bit of work to disassemble these. I’ll be sharing a tutorial on just that hopefully tomorrow! I have a great trick for removing the mat from the photo or artwork without damaging the mat. Stay tuned!

Mirrors and frames I picked up from different thrift stores.

Two mirrors on our $4 thrifted chair.
This find was by Dustin! 
 

I shared a while back that I totally lucked out with some recent thrifting. Well, as promised, here’s a little bit of what I got. 

I have been wanting some mirrors for our place. But not just plain old boring ones, something with some character, and affordable! I came across these mirrors at a local thrift shop and had to snatch them up. The larger one was $8 and the smaller one $5. I think that’s pretty darn cheap for mirrors! The big mirror looked like a pretzel or some sort of bread. It was pretty bad. 

My plan was to slap some glossy black paint on them (along with a bunch of thrifted picture frames that I’ll share tomorrow). I think they turned out exactly as I imagined! Can’t wait to hang them!
 

Here’s a close up of the large mirror drying!
  

 
Big mirror. Let me just say, taping this off was FUN! ha!
Totally worth it, I think it looks a million times better! Not sure
if I want to hang it this way, or flip it upside down.
Any thoughts?
 

Small mirror. Maybe I should have wiped down the
mirror before taking the shot! oops.
 

Can’t wait to share the rest of my finds! Including that orange chair up there. Wait until you hear the story behind that furniture! I’m still in shock. 

I just love IKEA fabrics. And, I REALLY love browsing their AS-IS section. A few weeks ago, I picked up 5 Dining Chair covers in this great black and white fabric. Not sure what I would use them for, but I couldn’t resist at .99 cents a piece! 

Well, my cousin had a housewarming party this weekend and I thought it the PERFECT time to use one! So, for about $2 total this 14″ throw pillow was born. Hope to have photos for you soon of her place! Trust me, you’ll want to see it!

Pillow photographed on our “new” orange thrifted $10 chair. Wait til you see the pieces we got! What a steal!

Just a project I finished this weekend. My husband asked me to cover his Bible in this brown Ultrasuede fabric for his birthday. (Yeah, that was back in August.) Well, I finally finished after many sore fingertips. HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABE! 

It was a relatively easy project. Just a bit time consuming and lots of sore fingertips. My awl came in quite handy with getting the needle and hemp through the covers. I glued the fabric to the front, back and spine with a little Mod Podge, and it turned out perfect! He loves it. 

I realized late last night I should have photographed my “new” candle holders with candles IN THEM! How silly of me. Anyway, I decided to see how these revamped Ikea votive holders looked with some juicy cherry “flavored” candles. YUM! I just love them! Enjoy!

Well, tonight I was inspired to do a few more very simple projects from Big Ass Book of Crafts for the Crafty Daisies Book Club. Here they are! Enjoy. And check out the Crafty Daisies Book Club Flickr Group for other people’s work!

Five paperweights I made using rounded glass chips and bits of magazine, book and dictionary pages. Love how these turned out. Inspired by Big Ass Book of Crafts. Page 219. 

Handheld mirror with a young Frank Sinatra image on the back. Inspired by Big Ass Book of Crafts. Page 230.

Revamped Ikea votive holders. Four holders turn into two sweet little votive holders. Inspired by Big Ass Book of Crafts. Page 207. 

Revamped Ikea votive holders. Four single holders turned into one taller classy votive holder. Inspired by Big Ass Book of Crafts. Page 207.

Can’t wait to see what the next book will be! It’s nice to have a reason to do projects I might not normally have done. Thanks for the inspiration Crafty Daisies! 

After my hiccups yesterday, I decided to try my hand at something other than printing. This first project has been in my head every since we moved in almost a month ago. All of our packages had these red stickers on them, and I thought … THESE ARE PERFECT FOR A PROJECT! So, the poor movers, had to work around me ripping them off all the boxes as they were coming in our place. 

For a while they were stuck to walls, fans, mirrors, furniture… all over the place! As you can see above. I think the only thing I will change with this project is to paint the frame black. I think it will look nicer and work well to pick up the black in the image. I am going to make one more that has an orange sticker in place of the yellow. (Only had one yellow sticker.) I’d like to have a pair, or three if I have enough stickers. We will see. 

Next a project from the Big Ass Book of Crafts by Mark Montano. I am participating in Crafty Daisies Book Club, we are currently on this book. I plan to do more projects before the deadline, but this is my first! It can be found on page 6, Drag Art. There are SO many projects in the book I want to try. Check out the Crafty Daisies Book Club Flickr Group. And to end the post, here is a pretty picture of my paint blobs today. I think I’m going to have to print this one and frame it. I love the way the light catches the colors. Makes me want to create! 

About a month ago, my husband brought home a plumeria branch. Rumor has it, if you let it dry out completely, you can then stick in the ground and it will grow into a tree. Well, what’s the hurt in trying, right? So, I threw in down on the rocks beside the house, completely forgetting it was even there until yesterday when I turned the corner.

I was welcomed by these AMAZING little blooms. I will certainly miss these trees the most. My favorite time of the year over here, other than when the trees are in bloom, is when all the flowers begin to fall off the trees, but are still so beautiful as they scatter the ground.

Last picture is a bit dark, forgive me. I’m still learning how to use The Hubs camera. Aren’t they just the most beautiful flowers? I hope they brighten up your weekend!