{Neon Statement Necklace}

Hey, y'all!  You know I LOVE jewelry, and I find myself making more and more of it lately.  I really love statement necklaces, so I decided to make my own utilizing a supply that's found at the hardware store.

Over a year ago, I was browsing the hardware section of Walmart to find something to inspire me to make jewelry.  I found a bag of cotter pins of various sizes.

I used them to make a pair of earrings that you can find {HERE}.  Since then, I've had the leftover cotter pins in a jar in my craft room, waiting patiently until I thought of another way to make them beautiful.  Recently, inspiration struck!  I knew I could use them to make a statement necklace--a NEON statement necklace.  I gathered a bunch of them of different sizes and Krylon's Fluorescent spray paint to begin the process of making them beautiful.

You can see my technical spray painting set up above.  ;)  I spread the cotter pins out on a wire that I stuck in the ground, and then I just sprayed them with a few coats of the spray paint.  It wouldn't hurt to spray them with a few coats of clear spray paint as well, but I wasn't patient enough to do that.

I matched the sprayed cotter pins up by size, and then I put them together in a "V" pattern.  I had to make something for them to hang on, and I decided gold would look great with the neon pink.

I cut a piece of chain 20" long.  (The type of chain I used will allow me to shorten it if I want.)  I attached a jump ring to one end.  Then I carefully threaded the cotter pins on and attached the clasp and second jump ring to the other end of the chain.  Immediate neon statement necklace awesomeness ensued!

You can't really grasp the fluorescence of the neon in the photos.  It's pretty darn bright.

I love the gold with the neon pink.

And I love the way it fans out when I wear it.  Do you love the statement necklace trend or do you prefer more "subtle" necklaces? You can find more of my DIY necklace tutorials {HERE}.

{Just Paint It White Lamp Makeover}

Hey, y'all!  One of my good friends recently asked me to makeover a pair of lamps that she'd been given.  Lamps are one of my favorite things to makeover.  (Remember the School-worthy Lamp Makeover and the Chicken Wire Shade Lamp Makeover?)  Of course I agreed, and this is what I came up with.

When she gave me the lamps, they looked like this.  (Minus all my spray paint preparation.)

A lot of people would see these in a thrift store or at a yard sale and not give them another glance because, let's be honest, they're not that cute.  But you would be amazed what a bit of white spray paint can do.  So that's what I did.  I prepared the lamps for the paint by taping off all the pieces that didn't need paint, and then I sprayed the base with a white gloss spray paint.  To make sure they were extra glossy, I sprayed them with a clear high gloss spray paint.  Then I had to work on the shades.

 Yeah, they weren't that cute to begin with either.  My friend likes bright colors, and her living room is yellow, so I chose a bright red fabric for the lampshades.  I started by making a template of the shades.

I traced the edges of the lampshade by rolling it on the paper while holding my pencil against the edge.  Because of the shape of the lamp, I had to trace two different sections and tape them together.  (A drum shade would be much easier to to trace because it would roll straight instead of in a semicircle.)

I used the paper template to cut out my fabric, cutting out extra all around just to make sure the fabric fit the shade properly.  I used spray glue to carefully adhere the fabric to the shade.  Then I trimmed some of the extra fabric at the top and bottom of the shade and used my glue gun to glue the fabric that was left over the bottom and top edges of the shade.  Then the makeover was complete.

My friend loves her new lamps!

I love how the white paint immediately updated these outdated lamps.

And I think the bright patterned fabric modernized the lamps even more.  So if you find some not-so-cute lamps at a thrift store or a yard sale, buy them and just paint them white!  :)

{End Table Makeover}

Hey, y'all!  Today I have a little table makeover to share with you.  

A coworker of mine bought a small table from a yard sale a while back, and she recently asked me to transform it.  She picked out a spray paint color and brought the table to school for me to take home and makeover.  Here it is before...

I started the makeover by filling in a few dings and dints with wood filler.

With the drawer front, I did two layers of wood filler to make sure the groove caused by the old handle was no longer visible.  Then it was time for priming.

When I started to prime the table, I didn't have a new back piece to replace the torn one.  If I would have, I would have attached it before priming, but since I didn't, I went ahead and sprayed the piece with Kilz spray primer.  After giving the primer time to dry, I sanded it with 220 grit sand paper and gave it a few coats of the blue my coworker picked out: Valspar's Tropical Oasis.  My dad cut a new back for the table from thin plywood.  After priming and spraying it, I attached it to the piece with small nails.  I then distressed the edges of the piece with sandpaper and gave the entire table a coat of Polycrylic to seal it.  After that, the makeover was complete!

I added a knob I bought at Michaels as the crowning jewel of this little table.

The blue was the perfect transformative color.

This little table looks so much better than before!  My coworker loves it, and I love how spray paint can transform an ordinary piece of furniture into something special.  What have you used spray paint to transform lately?

{Vintage Suitcase Makeover}

When people know that you are crafty, they sometimes present you with opportunities to work on items you wouldn't have even thought of working on.  It's then that your creativity gets tested.  During the summer, a lovely lady who works at the local thrift store told me she had a metal suitcase that belonged to her mother that she would love for me to makeover.  She brought me the suitcase, told me colors she liked, and then handed it over to me.

 This is the piece before.  Many of you probably would have loved this suitcase just the way it was, and for precisely that reason, I was REALLY worried about messing it up.

I mean, it had so much character already, and it was a family heirloom.  But after asking the lady for the ok to spray paint the piece, I lightly sanded it and primed it with Rustoleum primer.

After priming, I sprayed it gray, and then I used my Silhouette to create stencils from contact paper.  I used spray paint to paint the designs, and it was very tricky to do.  Because the base coat was slippery, I had some seepage, but I carefully masked those places off and touched up the paint.  (I think I put a coat of clear spray paint over the design, but it's been a while since I did this, so I can't exactly remember.)  I created some fabric flowers and hot glued them to magnets.  This way I could stick them around the design, and they could easily be removed if the lady didn't like them.  Then it was all over except for crossing my fingers and toes that she liked what I came up with.

I met her at her house, nervously knocked, and handed her the piece when she opened the door.

To my relief, she loved it!

She even liked the fabric flower magnets.  :)

{A School-worthy Lamp Makeover}

Do you know the saying about the cobbler's children having no shoes?  Well, a lot of times, I feel like that cobbler.  I make pretty things, but I often give them away or purposefully make them for others.  I've been trying to work on that--I did the whole craft room makeover, and I've made myself some jewelry.  Sadly, one place that was almost completely lacking the Pitter and Glink touch was my classroom.  I have a lot of photographs I've taken, a lamp I revamped on my desk, and a canvas I painted; but that just wasn't enough.  I decided to give an old lamp a school-worthy makeover.

I started with this plain lamp fresh from the closet, where all unused lamps wait patiently for their time to shine again.  Pun intended.  ;)

I covered all the components with aluminum foil to protect them from spray paint, and then I sprayed the entire base yellow, one of my school's colors.

To finish the base, I applied Rub 'n Buff to all the nooks and crannies to help them stand out.  And since a newly-spray-painted lamp base is nothing without a revamped lampshade, I had to work my magic on it too.

I put a piece of cardboard over the hole in the top of the shade and sprayed it with blue, my school's other color.  This turned out pretty neat, except for the fact that weird fuzzies were all over the shade after the spray paint dried.  My solution was to lightly sand the lampshade with 220 grit sandpaper  Then I used hot glue to embellish the shade with ric-rac and felt and fabric flowers.

I stuck the shade on the base, and now I have a school-worthy revamped lamp.

The spray painted shade reminds me of washed denim, and the blue flowers resemble pom-poms.

I love how the details on the base stand out because of the Rub 'n Buff.

This little beauty will make me smile when I look at it.  I'm sure I'll need that smile some days...  :)

{DIY $20 Vintage-Looking Table}

Do y'all get magazines each month?  I get two: Southern Living and Country Living.  My favorite of the two would have to be Country Living.   When the May issue came in the mail last month, I can't tell you how many times I looked at it!  It is probably the best issue ever, in my opinion.  There was one photo from an article called "600 Square Feet of Thrifty Style" that I think I drooled on.

{Photo by Victoria Pearson via Country Living}

Something about this photo just spoke to me.  I love the peacefulness of the room, the colors, the accessories, and THAT VINTAGE TABLE!  After looking at the photo obsessively many times, I decided that I just had to have a table like that.  I had the perfect wall for it in my craft room, and since my dad is pretty good with tools and building stuff, it couldn't be that hard to attempt to make one like it with his help.  So I took my dog-eared magazine to my dad's for us to come up with a plan.  Here's what we came up with, keeping in mind the dimensions of the wall I wanted to put the table on...

You can click on this picture to see a larger version.

I went to the lumber store near my house to buy the wood, but they didn't have 2x2's, so I had to buy fence pickets, which are the same size.  They were treated, which I hated, but it's all they had.  (That's why the legs in the unfinished table photos will look different from the other wood on the table.)  The lumber cost me $20, and all the other supplies either my dad or I had already. Anyway... First, we cut all our pieces according to the cut list above.  We cut the two 13 1/2" pieces to look like the inspiration table.  (See photo below.)  Then we made a box using the two 45 1/2" 1x6's and the two 13 1/2" 1x6's.  We attached the pieces to each other with wood glue and nails.

When the box was complete, we used a scrap piece of 1x2 to create a brace in the middle of the box to attach the top boards to.

We actually attached the piece sideways--different than my dad (J-Man) is holding it in the photo.  Then we started attaching the three 50" 1x6's to the top with wood glue and nails.  (I promise I really did help on this even though I'm not in any of the photos...)

Once we had the table top attached, it was time to attach the legs with wood glue and screws.  (I neglected to put screws on the supply list, but you could use nails if you wanted.)

At this point I was a bit scared.  It looks like a spindly legged baby horse.  You know...when the baby horse's legs look like they are WAY too big for his body when he's first born.  But I know from experience that there's, more often than not, a stage in a project where it seems like the project will become a weird looking disaster, so I didn't give up on my little pony yet...   The next step was painting the table.  I sanded it down really well.  Then I covered the top of the table and sprayed the bottom with white spray paint.  (I primed the legs with Kilz spray first since they were made from treated lumber.)

A vintage table would not be crisp white, though, nor would it be completely smooth.  So I got out nails, pliers, screws, chains, and my hammer and banged up the table pretty well.  Then I glazed the table base with Ralph Lauren glaze mixed with black paint.  (Brush on the glaze and then wipe it off with a cloth.)

The glaze stays in all the dings and dents, and it takes the new off the white.  When the base of the table was finished, I had to figure out how to make the top look like the inspiration table.  There are many tutorials on the web about using steel wool and vinegar, like this one from Our Adventures in Home Improvement.  I decided to try it.

I brushed it on and waited with excitement...and nothing really happened.  I put coat after coat of the mixture on, but it just didn't look like I wanted it to.  (I neglected to take picture during this part because I was getting really frustrated.)  Yeah, it looked a bit darker, but it wasn't the old barn wood look I was going for.  I did a Google search for aging new wood.  People were saying that when doing this technique, you don't have to sand the wood first.  I guess you shouldn't sand it first.  I saw that you can use lime (definitely didn't have that around the house...), tea, and Clorox to age wood too.  So while the table top was still soaked with vinegar, I brushed some tea on it.  Still not what I was looking for.  While the wood was still wet, I put some Clorox in a cup and brushed it on the top, going with the grain.  THAT was more like what I wanted!  (I'm not sure that you would get the same effect if you brushed straight Clorox on dry wood, so be careful!)  I let the table dry for a couple of days to before I put a sealer on it.

I like to use Polycrylic as a sealer.  I put a few coats on the entire piece.  When I finished, I was so flippin' excited!!!  I have my very own table that was featured in Country Living!!!  Okay, not really.  But it looks A LOT like the table from the magazine, and it only cost about $20 to make!

I am so in love with the finish on the top of the table!

The vinegar or either the Clorox caused the nails to rust, which I love.

I like how the glaze makes the imperfections in the table stand out, which adds more vintage-like goodness.

The table is part of makes this area of my craft room my favorite.

If you haven't checked out the entire craft room makeover reveal, you can find it here.