Thursday, October 24, 2013

The Evolution of a Project

Sometimes I find that my projects seem to take on a life of their own while I follow along after them. That was the case with a small cupboard I recently bought. I've been doing my best to get a studio set up in our new home, trying to have what I want while spending the least amount of money possible. That's a tall order! To make it work, I've scoured thrift stores and Craigslist as well as using what I already own.

One of my storage needs was for stamp sets. I still have quite a few of these from the days when I was a Stampin Up! demonstrator. These are wooden stamps designed to coordinate, and each set comes in a plastic storage box. I wanted something with shelves, but I didn't want the shelves to be too tall or deep (hope that makes sense) so that I didn't end up either with things I couldn't see at the back or teetering towers of stamp boxes. I looked and looked, and was getting very discouraged!

At the end of a Friday afternoon after looking all day, I decided to stop at one more place. I found this little cupboard in a vintage shop, which looked to be about the right size. I think it probably was made originally to be used in a kitchen for extra storage. It wasn't very well made, and the materials used were very cheap,  but I like the shape and size. I hesitated though, because it had a strong and unpleasant odor inside. I decided to take a chance, hoping that a good scrubbing would take care of the smell.

Long story short, scrubbing did not work. My DH reminded me that we had a can of Kilz left over from another project. I sprayed the inside well, and it worked like a charm. No more recoiling every time the door was opened! I can tell you, I was relieved.

I wish I had taken a before picture for you. It had been painted a pale mint green - not my kind of color at all. I had a sample of gray we'd tried and rejected for the walls, but I thought it would be just the thing to cover up the previous color. I painted it inside and out, and DH reinforced the hinges for me. I took it upstairs, filled it with stamps, and thought I was finished. Yay! Check another project off the list! But...

While strolling through Hobby Lobby, I spied a stencil for a curling vine with leaves. Hmm...that might look nice on the cupboard door. Well, if I'm going to do that, I might as well reactivate an idea I'd had earlier to paint a section at the top a contrasting color. And if I'm going to do all that, I really should do what ought to have been done in the first place, which is to sand down a lot of old paint drips or what's the point? So, I emptied the cupboard and hauled it outside, spending an afternoon sanding and repainting. Why oh why didn't I do that in the first place!!

Then out of the blue, or from some strange place in my mind, I thought that rather than go just with the vine, it would look nice (at least in my mind's eye) over a neutral geometric background. Not, you understand, that such a coherent thought actually occurred to me - it was more of a mental picture that I'm now trying to describe. I had a picture of a diamond motif in pale white. Thinking that the worst that could happen was that I'd have to paint the whole thing over, I went to work with some low-tack tape. I eyeballed the design (there's no way that I'd have the patience to measure all that!), got some white acrylic paint and had at it. It went very quickly, and as I used a very light touch with the paint it dried quickly. I pulled the tape off and was quite pleased. I almost left it at that, but wanted to go ahead with the vine.

I taped the stencil in place, and used a thick bodied acrylic paint in a really pretty blue. I found that any mistakes were easily wiped off with a wet wipe (you know, the kind parents use on babies - very useful in crafting). The stencil had little dot flowers at the ends of some parts of the vine, but I didn't paint those in. Instead, I pulled out my stash of buttons, and glued buttons on in place of flowers. I'm very happy with the way it turned out, and here it is:
As you can see, the top shelf is a good indication of how poorly this thing was made in the first place! I did try painting the knob in the same blue as the section at the top, but it looked terrible after adding the vine. So back to gray it went. Now I really think I'm finally done! 

Happy crafting,
Immi

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Immi! My name is Katy and I'm the social media coordinator for KILZ brand products. We are happy to hear that you had some KILZ aerosol primer on hand to help you repurpose an old small cupboard. We would LOVE for you to share your experience with our products by writing a review. Visit our review page, select the products you've used, rate and write a brief description and hit submit - it's that simple! We would greatly appreciate the feedback! Thanks so much!

Link to review page: http://www.kilz.com/primer/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=8ad359ff4f72d310VgnVCM100000176310acRCRD

Gio said...

It's important the journey not the destination, Immi. I think you have lots of fun making this and you got a wonderful result. The vine and especially the subtle background is marvellous. Well done!