What There's Time For

Fake but Pretty

This is a second story window.  But there's no floor under it, so there's no walking up to it to, say, clean it.  Or open it.  Or raise and lower the blinds over it.

When we moved in, the blinds were down.  Privacy, sure, but what a waste of a foyer window!

Much as I hated it, we didn't have any way to get up there to open the blind and we weren't really in favor of having it permanently open to the eyes of passersby, anyway.  (It does look right in on the bedroom hallway and guest bathroom.)

This is where I took an aesthetic risk and bought "stained glass" static cling film for it.

Which sat in the closet for months because... we still didn't have any way to get up there.

But Saturday night, thanks to a borrowed ladder and a trying-hard-to-be-supportive Mr. Right (even though I hadn't put this particular project on his master "Before Christmas" list — whoops!) I was fifteen feet in the air, cleaning a filthy window and applying fake stained glass to it.  (Mr. Right offered to be the one on the ladder, but I felt like having the smaller person steadied by the larger person made more sense than vice versa.)

The immediate result, after dark, was underwhelming from inside.  Sadly, not too thrilling from outside, either, even with a candle in the window.

But the next morning?  It's beautiful.  (Both the kids said so, too.)

Long Overdue

This glider is ten years old and has been through four babies (my sister had it first). Until a month ago, it still had the original denim-like cushions, which weren't washable and, as I'm sure you can imagine, had reached an unpleasant state in all that time.

I took the old cushions off, cut foam for a new seat cushion (decided to leave off the back pad), and then sat on the naked ugly foam for a month while I over-thought / avoided the project.

It took a few hours in the end - more than I felt like it should have - but there's finally another splash of cheer in poor Shmoogie's bare little room.

Next stop: curtains!

Shadow Puppets on Canvas Tutorial

When I was a kid, we had family slide show nights, because all our family photos (including from back when my dad was a kid) were on slides and you couldn't look at them, really, unless you pulled out the slide projector after dark and took that one picture down to make a big blank wall and waited patiently while Dad fiddled with the boxes of slides and the inevitable jams of the projector.

It was big fun.  Sitting in the dark, choosing which events to go back to, smelling the heat of the projector's lamp, listening to the loud ca-chunk of the next slide dropping into place.  And in the blank spaces between boxes, our parents showed us how to make shadow puppets with our hands.

When I first thought of immortalizing shadow puppets on painted canvas for Shmoogie's room, it didn't really occur to me that our kids have never seen a shadow puppet.  Ever.

But now they have.  And they both chatter excitedly in their own way about watching me trace DiDi and PaPa's hand shadows of a mama and baby lama (that's what we're calling them).  The bunnies and bird (the old stand-bys of my childhood) were done after bedtime.

This was a simple project, so if you'd like to try it yourself...

Supplies:

• pre-streched artist canvas (I got these at Michaels in "value packs" of two)
• acrylic paint in your choice of background color and black (also from Michaels)
• brushes you feel comfortable with
• a pencil
• a light source (we were actually able to use the chandelier in the dining room, but a flashlight, bare bulb, or projector(!) would give a clearer shadow)

Instructions:

1. Paint the canvas with your background color.  You'll need at least two coats for a reasonably even coat (like you see here).  More coats if you don't want to see any variation.  Remember to paint the edges!
2. Let dry.  At least overnight, to be safe.  These sat around for weeks before I had willing helpers for the next step.
3. Get at least one helper.  Prop the canvas up in front of your light source in a dark room.  
4. Arrange your hands or the helper's hands into the puppet you want (you can google "hand shadow puppets" for ideas).  Remember that you can move your hands in three dimensions to change the two dimensional shape that lands on the canvas.  Try tilting towards or away from the light source to make the shadow as long as possible or foreshortened.  Move closer or further from the light source to change the overall size of the puppet shadow.  Take rings off or use them in your design.
5. Trace the shadow onto your canvas with your pencil.  Work quickly because your model will have a hard time holding perfectly still for very long!  (You should have them prop their elbow on something to help stay steady.)  Try to keep the pencil line light and accurate and just inside the shadow, because you will want to paint over it so it doesn't show.
6. Mix a bit of black paint into some of your background paint to make a shadow color.  You will need much less black paint to make a good shadow on a light color like the yellow than on a dark color like the purple.  (From my experience: the yellow turned very green looking with black in it, but dried more grey.)
7. Use a small brush to paint the outline of your shadow, then fill in with a larger brush.  Let dry (this won't take long) and add a second coat or more until you are satisfied.  The darker your shadow and background color, the fewer coats you will probably have to do.  I only needed two coats on the lama and bunnies, but four on the bird and that shadow is still not very even, but we've decided we like it that way.  Remember to extend the shadow around the edge wrap of the canvas!
8. Let dry and hang.

Have fun!  I like how these turned out, especially the sentimental factor of my childhood memories and the shadows being the hands of family members.

 

A Brief Fling with Spray Paint

Our kitchen table, which is where we eat all our meals since the dining room has wall-to-wall white carpeting, has been a pretty sad sight since we moved in.  The drop-leaf table I grew up with (now I get to shout DON'T LEAN ON THE TABLE! just like my mom did!) and Mr. Pants's "youth chair" (that was once Uncle 2's) and a plastic high chair for Shmoogie attached to another family heirloom (in desperate need of recovering) and grey folding chairs for me and Mr. Right.  And a second-hand vinyl table cloth we've had for years thrown over the flaking finish on the table top.

I had a plan, though.  A plan which can be entirely blamed on the spray painting enthusiasm of the energetic people at Young House Love (and Elizabeth of the comments who recommended them to me).  First, I had to wait for acceptable chairs to show up at Goodwill, which didn't actually take very long and being patient instead of buying new I got them for $22 for the pair!

They were pretty ugly (you can see one of them above in its original dark brown/fake speckled state), but I've been following Young House Love for a while and so now I know spray paint in the right color can do amazing things.  

But what color?  Matching the table, whose legs were painted a curiously lovely shade of blueish sage (?) by my mother at least fifteen years ago, was not going to happen.  And probably would have been a little dull, anyway.

Undexpectedly, in the weeks I was waiting for my chairs to appear at the Goodwill, I started to love the random had-it-for-years table cloth.  When I finally realized that the "green" leaves on the cloth were a near perfect match for the "blue" table legs, I was sold.  The perfect chair color must be in there somewhere.

It totally was!  My spray painting skills are atrocious, but for kitchen chairs I think they'll do.  I love the color combination (the paint is Valspar's satin "Sumptuous Purple").  It makes me think of an awesome hostel my roommate and I stayed at in Kilmore Quay, Ireland (I'm pretty sure it was Kilturk Hostel, but this was back in 1998 and I can't find any more information than the address and phone listed at that link).  It was a sprawling white-washed farm house with the inside full of popping color.  Bright purple doors in turquoise frames, hot pink window frames set in royal blue sills, that kind of thing.  I'd never seen anything like it and I loved it.

But I don't love spray paint.  :(  I wasn't happy with the smell, but I could have gotten over that.  The environmental and safety hazards wieghed on my conscience, but I was doing a good job of ignoring that.  The difficulty of getting a smooth, even finish was frustrating (even though YHL has really good instructions), but more practice would have taken care of that.

No, the real problem is that the strain of holding the can and pushing down on the stupid spray button for half an hour makes knitting painful enough for a day afterwards that I worry I'm injuring myself.  And knitting is so much more important than smoothly painted chairs!  Or maybe I'll just have to time future spray paint adventures with knitting lulls?