Dresser
For the last five years I have been using a smallish three drawer night stand for a dresser. This would be a problem for most people but I happen to have a clothes obsession. (AKA I love bras and I have too many of them) so I have been needing a real dresser the problem is, the style of dresser I really want is mirrored but if you look at the prices on them they are usually between $750 to $1000and that's on the cheap end.
So I took some inspiration from pintrest and I went to DI and found a nice six drawer dresser for $35
I removed the drawer pulls,cleaned, sanded, and repaired the dresser then I went to the home improvement store and found a really good silver spray paint.
I got Valspar primer in grey and Valspar Billiant Metal in silver. I started with primer first.
then waited overnight for that to dry completely then I started with the silver. It took several coats and several days and I decided to paint the inside of the drawers. I used a purple kyolan color but it didn't cover as well as I would have liked.
when the dresser was painted and everything was dry I went back to the store and picked out some new drawer pulls.
That is the finished project and now my clothes have a happy home.
One thing I have noticed is I have silver "dust" that will rub off of the dresser when I touch it. I think it's because I was working on this in October and the days were getting cold. I don't think the paint could dry properly. I plan to wait for spring and warmer weather and take it back outside and give the dresser one more coat of silver then get a good quality clear spray and give the whole thing a clear coat. I'm also not happy with the coverage of the purple inside the drawers so I will redo that and I might go with a dark charcoal instead of purple.
Monsters
Another fun project I have worked on are some crazy closet monsters. In October I was at the book store and found a fun book about taking old clothes that you would get rid of and turning them into monsters. I love this idea, taking something old and "upcyling" it into a creative project. I immediately thought of making monsters for my nieces and nephew for Christmas. So I found three projects in the book that I thought were cute and again I headed to some thrift stores( I didn't have the specific clothing items I needed) take a look at these pictures.
I forgot to take a picture of the sweatshirt before I cut it up but this first one was made from a teal sweatshirt. I made this one for Ari because I thought he was kind of funky for a young teen girl.
This Monster started out as a pair of zip off leg pants. This guy was for Kai because I thought the Velcro pocket and the texture of the corduroy stripes and the zipper head (yes his head can zip off completely!) would be great for development of a one year old.
And this guy was a green and purple turtle neck sweater. I thought this would be fun for Devyn because the sweater is soft and cuddly, also I thought the monster's personality kinda matched Devyn.
Aren't these guys so funny. I'm very happy to say that they were a pretty big hit with the kids for Christmas.
So That's just a little of what I've been doing to keep the creative juices flowing.
7 comments:
haha those monsters are hilarious! great dresser. the clear coat definitely helped mine from rubbing off. Looks great though.
I literally squealed when I saw you had blogged. True story. Your projects turned out fantastic! I agree with you and Court, a clear coat will help the dresser. I had the same problem when I spray painted a pair of shoes back when I was an art major...
My kids LOVE the monsters (and so do I). They are adorable and no one has anything like them!
As for the dresser, it looks really good. If you are going to do another coat of paint before you clear-coat it Krylon does make a mirror finish spray paint that might make it look even more like the dressers that you like: http://www.krylon.com/products/looking_glass_mirror_like_paint/
Just a thought.
Hi,
My name is Jessica and I had a question about your KCACTF display. I am submitting my costume designs at the KCACFT national level and I am confused about the space we have? Also I was wondering how you did your writing? I see it is on a black background with white letters. Did you print that out before you got to the conference? I am sorry to pick your brain but I am having a hard time figuring it out. Thank you.
Jessica my email is jcarr2@uoregon.edu
THANK YOU SO MUCH. If you don't have time to respond that is not problem.
To Jessica, I had done every thing for my display the way I wanted it for my regional presentation so I did the White lettering on black background on my computer before I went which I recomend. I didnt'e change my display for the Kennedy center but I could have. You do have more space at the Kennedy center than at regionals if your region follows the same rule that mine did. I think my region allowed 4x4' and at Nationals you get a 4'X8' space the longer direction is vertical. Congratulations on winning at regionals and if you have any more questions you can contact me again if you can find me on facebook I would be happy to friend you. just add a message that your the girl who asked me about actf The best advice I got before I went to DC the first time was " the competion is over now go have fun learn as much as you can and if someone is doing soming that you think is cool ask them how they did it" I did that when I went with costume design and I learned some cool suff from my pears and I made some cool friends.
Oh I don't know if you saw it but I have my Costume Design ACTF presentation from the year before on this blog. I was lucky enough to go to Nationals with that one too. it's posted in february of 2010. look at those pictures if you want to see how I did that. another tip that I learned from a friend at my school was to mount everything on my board with velcro so I could put all the images in my carry on luggage and the foam core could be checked that way if disaster strikes and your foam core is damaged you will still have all of your remderings and research safe with you. I didn't glue anything permanantly to my foam core every thing was mounted on black card stock or illustration board then velcro'd to the background.
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