Night Stand Update

Oh, hi! I'm still here, just a-pluggin' along. Apartment hunting, packing, playing, and painting our bedroom furniture. Nothing in our bedroom looks like it goes together. I'm not a fan of bedroom sets, or matchy-matchy things, but similar color schemes would be nice. Here's what we're working with as far as night stands go.

After sanding.

Not at all exciting, but they were free, so who am I to complain? They came from the graduate student housing at the university I worked at for a summer. For whatever reason they were replacing the perfectly good furniture, so I inherited whatever would fit in my tiny car, aka two of these sturdy little night stands.

primed twice

In my quest for a deal on "Whoops" paint I came across light blue tinted primer. I like the color, so I thought I would just prime them and leave them, but in my research (doesn't that make me sound all informed?) I found that it could feel chalky, and look dull, so on to plan B. I decided to give them a light blue wash similar to the primer color. Unfortunately my budget for decorating is pretty much zero, and I didn't have said paint. Crap.

Then, it occurred to me that once upon a time I was a painter. I have tons of oil and acrylics for painting on canvas! Why can't I just use that paint? So I did. I mixed white and aqua marine acrylic paints with about a cup or two of water, and came up with a light blue wash.

The sun washed out the color a bit, amplify this color by 20% and there you have it.

Umm...ok, so not quite as light as I had intended. They came out a bit brighter than anticipated, but turns out I love it! I couldn't stop looking at them. I kept peeking out the window at them while they dried, and breaking out into a huge grin. 

I knew that my husband wouldn't be quite as thrilled as I was, so I added a little more white paint and water when I painted the second one, and did a thinner wash.

I would have loved to buy pretty new pulls, but like I said, my budget is zero. Instead I dry-brushed primer on them, then spray painted the original pulls black. I actually like how the black and blue look together, and the dry brushing gave them a little texture, so they look kind of like wrought iron. Nice!

I lightly distressed the edges a little here and there.

My husband thought I was crazy for "ruining" my brand new paint job. It's going to get "ruined" during the move anyway, I'm just helping it look more intentional. :) Lastly I sprayed a clear coat on the tops, drawer fronts and pulls. This color isn't for everyone, but for an apartment-dweller surrounded in white, I think it's awesome!

One more  photo...

My little monkey boy, who can climb up the back of the couch and onto the ledge in 3 second flat.

Linked to:

Magnetic Spice Jars

Well hello there! You still read this ol' thing? I thought you all forgot I existed. Oh...you did? Ah well, I'm still here, just busy busy. My sister is putting the house up for sale, and since we rent from her, that means we have to clean clean clean, and don't forget to declutter. As a result of all of this cleaning, I can't find a single thing. Sigh. On a positive note though, I've been more productive out of necessity, trying to maintain the clean, so here I sit on a Tuesday afternoon, and all of the weekly chores are already done! Yay me! You know what that means? I get to post here, AND maybe even paint something. Sweet! Before I go crazily painting all of our furniture, here's a little something I did for my husband for Father's Day.

Magnetic spice jars

He's been looking for a spice rack, but I thought these were so much cooler, plus, I got to use up some of the empty baby food jars we have, and be crafty. Yay! All I did was spray paint the lids black so they all matched, then glued the neodymium magnets to the lid. I ordered my magnets online, but they were much smaller than I anticipated(so I had to use 2-3 on each lid), and with the inflated cost of shipping (Magnets were like $3, shipping was $16), I would have been better off just buying the 4-packs they sell in the Walmart craft section for $3 something each.

I used superglue to attach the magnets, created labels using this Celtic knot design that I stretched:

Typed in all the spice names, printed on clear address labels I already had, and voila!

The finished product. For now they are on the fridge, but you're supposed to keep them in a dark cool place, so eventually I plan on mounting a cookie sheet to the inside of a cupboard door, and keeping them there. My total cost was about $20, which was the cost of the magnets. Everything else I had on hand. My only advice with these is to not tighten the lids much. They are pretty hard to open if you tighten them as much as you think you should.  Oops, the baby's awake. So much for painting furniture! Happy Tuesday everyone.