Barn Red Dresser

When this dresser came to me it was in an "interesting" state to say the least. Take a look:

One drawer was busted, a track for another drawer (see the tape?) was split and being held together with electrical tape, and the finish had overall seen better days. But, at it's core it had some great qualities. Solid wood, no particle board, and what's this? All of it's handles? Yes, something could definitely be salvaged from this situation - even if it ended up only being some really cute hardware to add to the collection. I thought about it for a few days, and I'm a huge fan of letting the furniture be the guide. Like I mentioned, it was not without it's wear and tear, so that set us on the path to a shabby chic - antiqued look.  I made some executive decisions and got to work.  First, take a look at the after:

 Tuh Duh! Yea, I had to ditch two drawers. I probably could have kept one, but an 8 inch tall shelf didn't seem as useful as a 18 inch high. I think this would be great for a TV, record player, bookshelf, wine bar, you name it.

 Yea, I went with red. This red is almost like a wash or a glaze too, so the wood grain shows a little. The entire piece was stained with dark walnut as well.

 I was able to make this with almost entirely re-used parts from the dresser itself. The back you can see are the fronts of the old drawers. The only new wood is the shelf.

 See the gap back there behind the last shelf? I did that on purpose, here's why:

 

A hole for wires! In case the new owner decides to run something electrical through it, the wires can be concealed and run out the back via that gap I showed you. 

 I'm really happy with this one! Just a few more details and he'll be ready to go up for sale. Thanks for looking!

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Before & After: Aqua Blue Lamp

My friend Sarah snagged this lamp for me a while back, and as pretty as it was for it's time, it needed a modern spin.  Here's the before and after of the Aqua Blue Lamp:

Before.....

 

 ....and after:

 Well there she is! I'll have it up in the shop soon, and I will lower the price if you don't need the shade. Have  a good one!

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How To: String Wall Art

How lucky am I? Recently I posted about string art, and it got my mind so wrapped around it (no pun intended!) that my goal that night was to hopefully convince Ralph that he needed it in his room.  It wasn't that hard really, he had already seen the post & the pictures and loved it, I just had to put the hammer to the nail - ha, ha - get it? hammer to the nail...  I'm full of 'em today! Well here's the wall done:

With that, let's get to work. So you want giant string art on your walls, eh? Good choice  make that... great choice. This is 50 times easier than it looks, and it comes out fantastic. You can also change it whenever you want with very little time & effort. Estimated cost, maybe $10?

You'll need:
Nails -  I recommend something longer than an inch, with a head. (A friend of mine used colored thumb tacks and that worked well too)
Hammer
Scissors
String - Yarn gives a thicker look, embroidery string is a thin look. For this tutorial, we used yarn.
Pencil
Push pin
Lite Algebra
Good music

Step 1: Find yourself a blank wall. We've all got 'em!

Step 2: Draw Your Circle.  Here is where your algebra can come in handy. There are two ways you can approach this. The first & easiest way, is to just decide how big you want this baby. For the example let's say 4 feet wide. So, our radius, will be 2 feet. Tie a piece of twine (any non stretchy string) to a pencil. I chose a pencil that matched the wall, hehe. Measure out 2 feet from the pencil, and tie the twine to a push pin. Still with me? We're almost there! Push the pin in the wall where you want the center of the circle. Pull the pencil and twine nice and taut, and lightly draw your circle. A good tip is to hold the pencil straight towards the wall, not at an angle. See look, here's a blurry picture of me getting my circle on:

Not the best picture, but it was dim lighting in there! The other way to draw a circle only applies if you need an exact amount of nails for your pattern. I generally advise just winging it, but some people think I'm nuts. So here's the other way, that makes you feel like those 8 years of algebra can finally be put to some use. I know, this is super long winded, but I promise the rest will be nice n' breezy.

OK - nerd alert, here we go: Using the equation Circumference = 2*pi*radius, we can get some fairly accurate specs. Brings back memories right? I know... Let's use the same measurements as circle 1. Let's say you want exactly 80 nails or something. We basically need to know how far apart to place each nail, so we need to find the circumference. Our radius was 2 feet, or 24 inches. Plug that in and solve your equation. C=2*(pi)*24, pi is about 3.14159265.  This gives us a circumference of 150.79 inches. Divide by number of nails (80), means place a nail every 1.88 inches. Phew! So what does this all mean? If you draw a circle with radius 24 inches, place your nails that far apart on the line. Another way to work this would be to do it backwards, decide how many nails you want and how far apart you want them, get a circumference, and solve for radius so you know how to draw your circle. Ok, enough-enough! Let's move forward....please!

Here we drew our circles and hammered our nails in.  We measured for the larger and we winged it for the smaller. I think weird shapes would be really fun too.

Look at that! We've begun. Choose a nail, tie your string and just play with it. For this pattern here, we just crossed the circle over to a nail, wrapped skipped one wrapped, then went back up to the next clockwise nail, and wrapped.  It's so much easier to do then it is to explain, you'll see. Play with it.

Keep the pattern going and stop whenever you want, or continue until it completes itself. The wonders of math make it come around to nail #1 sooner or later. We stopped a little early here, because the open space is nifty.

Who doesn't love a good close up?

The baby was a total wing job, and it came out fantastic. You can see we are just zig zaggin it...

Look at these two:

There you have it, another tutorial. This is a personal favorite. I love it so much, I want to do it right now. Maybe I'll beg Ralph to add a third - haha - a third circle would actually look really nice here!

Good luck with yours, remember, it is much easier than it looks, but we don't need to tell too many people that - it's more fun to just have your friends think you're some kind of math magician. Have a wonderful day, and if you embark on a string art, I'd love to see & share your photos!

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String Art

Once upon an apartment, before I was allowed to paint, I had a fairly large bedroom with a not so fairly large window.  Bottom line, I had enough blank white walls to go around. I had a good amount of art, but I really craved something big and different. String Art. Yes, the lovely 1970's string art. This was the perfect solution to my problem and it was fairly easy. I plan to do a tutorial on it soon, but for now, I want to show you some really awesome spins on string art. These have a more modern feel, and if your looking for something cleaner than yarn (yarn tends to get fuzzy and bulky), swapping it out for embroidery string costs a little more but looks really really good. Here are some neat pictures I found, with links to more info:

 Now this one (above) is actually done on a piece of wood vs. the wall, which is a good idea if you want to keep your finished work. This picture is from Threadbanger's Decor it Yourself.

 I LOVE this one! I've been trying to find the patten you would use to get such a fractal like design, but I think it's an isosceles triangle. If you find more info let me know. I love how it complements the red couch. Here's the link.

 I'm pretty sure this is the one I'd like to do somewhere, ASAP. I love the tree. This is different than it's geometric brothers, but it's very striking against the green wall. This actually has a full tutorial, and it only uses thumbtacks & yarn!

This fella did an awesome job, again with that pattern I'm looking for. I read his is out of yard, but it certainly looks like something thinner. This picture was from a post on Yarnia.

There you have it! A little inspiration for the weekend. Look around you and see where you can cram some art, and let your creativity do the rest. There are so many different shapes and patterns you can do, from geometric, to random, to actual shapes. Seriously, do some google image searching and you'll see things range from stars and flowers, to owls and people's silhouettes. Wild stuff. Have a great weekend!

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Japanese Rising Sun Coffee Table

Remember this table? Your standard, run of the mill table... I had a LOT of ideas for it, but as a spur of the moment decision, I went with the rising sun. I'll let the pictures do the talkin'

Here's how it was before. I think it's a lil better now.

Thanks for checking out the update on my table, finally! This is up for sale in the shop, message me if you would like to work something out. Have a good one.

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