The Dunny Shelves

LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES

1. I did a botched up job of spray painting, my first mistake being that I didn't tape off the places I didn't want painted very well, and second I did not strip or sand the wood before spray painting. What happened because of this is that the spray paint pooled in certain places because of whatever kind of finish was on the wood. I re-sprayed about 4 times and finally came to the conclusion that it would never cover evenly.

2. HOWEVER bad my spray painting went, my next intuition was correct. I took acrylic paint and covered the places the spray paint had trouble covering. When I went to an hardware store they said that is fine since they are both water-based paints.

3. After touching up with the white acrylic paint I mixed my own purple acrylic paint since I knew the purple spray paint was not the answer. It requires a steady hand and patience to paint a piece like this because the detail I wanted to remain white. I messed up a lot, but went back with a tiny brush to cover the purple with white again. This can potentially be an endless process, but at some point you need to just decide it's good enough.

NOTE: if you want detail, but it is not built into your piece, you could consider painting the detail in. I suggest a darker color on a lighter color simply because you hopefully would only have to do one coat.

So for future reference: SPRAY PAINTING DOES NOT COVER ALL THINGS. You may need to prime or sand a piece a lot before painting. For detailed pieces, in the end, it may be easier to just do it by hand.

My Make-do Christmas Tree

Stephen and I do not have room for a Christmas tree in our house. Okay, well maybe a small charlie brown one, but when you are trying to save money as newly weds a tree is not the top of the list of things to buy. (especially when I'll want lights and accessories too)

However, I wanted some kind of Christmas decor. So I decided to make my own. I had a lot of ideas, like hanging ornaments I'd made from the wall at varying heights to make the triangle shape, or taping lots of things to the wall, but all my ideas had a damage problem- they would potentially damage our rented space with either lots of holes or a loss of paint. That's when I realized I have a roll of canvas and paint. I had thought of painting one of my already made canvases but none of them were big enough and in the future I'd be tempted to paint over it.

How I did it: So far....

1. I cut a large chunk of canvas, about 3x4 feet- give or take some inches. Then I labored to sew the edges under. If trying this at home, I suggest not sewing with a machine, or not using primed canvas. I had so much trouble and it was so heavy and not malleable. It even threw my sewing machine out of tension because it's weight pulled to much to one side or another, and it left wrinkles in the canvas from handling it too much.

ANYWAY- You can always use regular fabric or paper.

2. I sewed a deep seam at the top so that I could stick and old curtain rod through it.

3. I made a hanging element with ribbon. To get the ribbon through the curtain rod, I tied a safety pin to thread dropped it through, attached the safety pin to the ribbon then pulled it back through. HOWEVER if you use a dowel rod for this you can always just tie ribbon to the ends.

4. I hand sewed the shape of the tree with friendship bracelet thread (string? yarn?).

NOTE: Don't do What I did, PAINT FIRST before adding decorations to the tree.

5. I stupidly sewed the turning points of the plaid ribbon. I had the idea that it would look nice if it could move around. In the end I used hot glue to glue them in place after painting around/under them. (I also originally was not sure if I would paint it so I just wanted to decorate right away)

6. PAINT: I painted the tree with acrylic paints using only blue, yellow and white. I added different amounts together to make different shades of green- more blue for darker, more yellow for brighter, and more white to tone it down or make paler.

For the trunk I just made one shade of brown.

TO MAKE THE HEARTS: for some people this is a no brainer, for others maybe you just don't think this way, but paint a CLEAN border of the heart first and then fill it in. Often you have to go back over the edges to get rid of white spots from where the paint didn't fill in all the divets in the canvas. I painted mostly large hearts first, changing shades all the while, and then when I had mostly covered the shape I went back in with a smaller brush and made smaller hearts in any larger white gaps. IT may be easier to think of hearts as triangles in how you fit them together.

7. The star is hand stitched with felt. It took a long time. I stitched as I watched television, but if you want something easier, just use glue....I mean no one can really see the detail anyway.

I plan to add more, but I am waiting for a bit more inspiration. I have a lot of bows I have made from felt, but I'm not sure it's quite right. I'll experiment and get back to it. Hope you enjoyed this!