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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

A little ruffle skirt dress

This little dress is made from 2 shirts I got on clearance at Old navy for a dollar a piece. The pattern is my own. I used this transfer paper technique.

Old shutters to a living room partition-a tutorial

Before...some really ugly and dirty shutters I bought on Criag's list for cheap


After...a lovely partition (by the way...have you priced out partitions? One like this would cost a couple hundred bucks easy. This one cost me around $30)



This is Ashley's faux aging technique, here's what you need:
-Plain white paint
-Dark walnut wood stain (a little bit goes a long way)
-Polyurethane glaze
-Sand paper
-Hinges
-Sponge
-Paintbrush

Step 1:
Paint the surface plain white. A flat type of paint is best, but I used a semi gloss for this project and it worked just fine. I would stay away from high gloss for best results. Let the paint dry completely.
Step 2:
Sand all the edges and any other spots that you want to look aged (the spots you sand will show up very dark brown when you are all done). Note: make sure you sand all the way down to the wood or it won't work)


Here's a close up of the sanding:


Step 3:
Using a damp sponge wipe the dark walnut stain on all surfaces. The areas that you sanded all the way to the wood will stain very dark brown and everything else will be an earthy brown color. Allow the stain to dry. Note: even when the stain is "dry" it will still have a tacky feeling, that is alright.

Step 4:
Paint a polyurethane glaze over the entire surface. This will seal in the tackiness of the stain and make everything more durable. Again I suggest a flat glaze as opposed to a gloss but either one would work fine. Let it dry.

Step 5:
Connect everything with hinges, stand it up and you are done!



The DIY Show Off

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Skater Girl Dress

Before: this shirt was on clearance for $2 at Old Navy
After: a little DC dress (daddy's favorite brand). I used this tutorial for the dress with this technique for the logo.


Make it Yours @ My Backyard Eden

Repurposed Books

Before: Plain ol' books



After: Cute but oh so affordable decorative books




I just used modpodge and some cute scrapbooking paper to re-cover these books. I covered the spines first, followed by the covers. Then I found two matching belts at Goodwill and wrapped them around. The cute handle thing was 50% off at Hobby Lobby. All in all this project cost about $5.

<br />http://www.thethriftyhome.com