I shared my new pillows with you yesterday and today we'll discuss those puppies above the pillows.

 

 

I found 4 framed hunting dog paint-by-numbers on this trip with some blogger friends. When I first spied them at Screen Door, I was a little hesitant. But, Angela was quick with 'Are you nuts??! Buy these this second!!' {I may be paraphrasing a bit} and therefore they became mine. As you may know, I have a bit of a crush on paint-by-numbers {remember this room??} and dogs...

They hung on my dining room wall 'as is' for a while. Until I decided to give the frames a little brassy, gold, goodness. Here's where they started au naturel.

 

   

 

I loved them like this. But, there is a lot of wood in this room, so I thought a little sparkle would be great. I popped out the painting and sat it aside. I cleaned the frame with a damp papertowel and then sprayed it with adhesive.

 

   

 

This is not what the directions say to use. They want you to buy a special paint-on-for-leafing-adhesive, but I kinda thought 'sticky is sticky' and didn't feel like buying something just for this purpose. I had spray adhesive, so thats what I used {outside} and then let it sit for a minute. 

 

 

Then I opened my package of gold leaf...ummm... copper leaf? ...dang it. I thought I bought gold leaf. Well, let's just roll with it and see what happens.

 

 

I started laying the sheets onto the frame and then working it with a soft brush into all of the cracks.  Overlapping slightly until the whole thing was covered. Now this jazz is really, really thin. Like Housewives on Bravo thin. If you miss a section, no problem, simply place another piece of leaf over any missing areas. 

 

 

It looks pretty rough at this point. You have to keep working the brush over the frame allowing all of the excess to fall off or float off. Then, I burnished it with my fingers by rubbing it until it was completely smooth.

 

 

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it was really rosy -- the undertones were very pink.  Yuk.  But, this is to be expected when you buy Copper instead of Gold, right?

 

 

So I trekked down to my paint area and grabbed some Raw Umber glaze and Pure Gold acrylic paint. I mixed them together and painted the frame with it. It knocked off a lot of the shine and added a layer of brownish-gold that killed the pinky tone perfectly. It added a layer of richness that I loved.  

 

 

I popped my dogs back in and hung them in place, 2 on each side. 

 

 

It took a package and a half to do all 4 frames. I bought mine at Michaels and I think they were around 7$/pc but, I used coupons {of course!}. A pretty inexpensive project that makes a dramatic change. Have you ever tried it?

 {I've had a few emails about my new fabric on the cushions. stay tuned--I'll share the artist behind the fabric as well as other fabrics I used on my new slipcovered end chairs}

 

Slowly, I have started to update our dining room. Most of what I am doing is tweaking what we have to make it a little more 'us'. Sometimes it takes living with stuff for a little while to get a real sense of the changes I want to see happen. At least that's how my brain works--slowly.      

 

 

I painted the dining room chairs emerald green last year {look who was one step ahead of  the 'trend' :) } and I just recently got around to recovering the seats. I wanted to make a monogram {obviously} pillow to sit in the 2 chairs that flank my buffet.  

 

 

I had just enough green check cotton fabric left over from a project to make the fronts and enough yummy army green velvet from a different project, to create the back and flange of my new 20" pillows. I decided to replicate the look of the 'Celeste' applique style from Leontine Linens using acrylic paint mixed with textile medium.   

 

 

 

  Tomorrow, I will show you how I jazzed up those puppies.

 

 

 I wanted to create a fun Christmas gift for Maris who will be attending University of Kansas in the Fall. My fashionista loves shoes and you've seen me jazz up a pair for her before. I found this pin of a pair I loved and thought that she would, too. 

 

 via

I took lots of pics with my phone while I was painting them. But, because the kids go through the pictures on my phone all the time, I immediately emailed them to myself and then deleted them. I didn't want Maris to see them before Christmas. When collecting the images for this post, I can't find them anywhere!! I probably created a fake folder to hide them in and, of course, I hid them from myself as well. Why is my brain so dumb? So, I just have shots that I took after I gave them to her...      

 

 

KU's mascot is the Jayhawks. Because I wanted a perfect mirror image, I made a little template out of computer paper that I taped on to the toe of the shoe and flipped it over to use on the other shoe. I used a fine tip Sharpie to trace around my template. This gave me the exact size on both.   

 

 

The back's got the Collegiate KU and on the inside, I wrote 'Rock Chalk Jayhawk!'

 

 

I wanted just the jayhawk {not the whole shoe} to have a nice shine so when the paint was dry, I covered up the blue of the shoe with painters tape right up to the edge of the white outline and used several light coats of clear acrylic gloss spray.

 

 

She wore them this morning and here is Jack sporting his SMHS tie from yesterday's post!

 

 

 

I have always had such fun making things for Maris over the years. I started smocking her little baby gowns just after she arrived. Then I created little dresses out of vintage pillowcases, created jewelry, headbands, purses, decorated shoes...I love that she has been so accepting of my wearable art. But you don't get to do much of that for little boys. So, this year for Christmas I was excited to finally make something for Jack to wear.

 

 

On days of swim meets, the swimmers have to dress up to go to school. Jack didn't have a lot of ties, so I decided to try my hand at personalizing one for him. Because I had no idea if this would work, I invested in a very inexpensive tie from Wal-Mart. The perfect shade of Smoky Mountain blue.

 

 

 I bought a very fine tipped paint pen from Michaels and coupled that with my fine-tipped Sharpie

 

 

I didn't know if either would bleed, so I tested it on the back, under the hem. no bleeding! I sketched the mustang mascot very lightly on the tie with a sharpie--yea, big deep breath anytime you have to sketch anything with a sharpie. Then I filled it in with the silver metallic pen. To add the blue mane, I used a little blue acrylic paint. After I was finished, I went back and added some heavier black outlines.

 

  

 

I was a little nervous to see his reaction, but he loved it! He will wear it tomorrow for the first time and I am pretty sure he will be the only one rocking a SMHS tie!