Shower Gift Signs

**Working hard on getting stuff ready for my etsy shop opening soon!
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I made these as a gift for a friend getting married this weekend.

Inspired by the birds and teal colors on her wedding china..........

And inspired by her love for bikes and her favorite color purple.......

And can't forget to mention that I straight up copied this design from the Silhouette Blog!

Too bad you can't sell anything with the Silhouette images on them, otherwise I'd be cranking out lots of that one with the birds on it. Gotta look into some uncopywrighted images so I can do something like that! Since I copied the Silhouette idea, I'll stick to it being a gift! :) I did pick a different bike just because I thought the purple made it girlie enough already!



I usually party at these places.........

Shelf Re-do

Please forgive me for posting some iPhone pics! My camera is broken! Accck!

I found this shelf at Goodwill and looked past it's old "country kitchen" appearance to see it for what it could become!

I sprayed it with Heirloom White, then mixed a few differnt blues, watered them down and brushed them on with my Purdy brush!

I left the top part under the shelf blank while I painted the rest and thought of what I should paint there. I thought a word would add a little more interest!

Decided on OCEAN, cut it with my Silhouette, and painted over the letters with the blue after placing them on. Then I peeled off the letters and smeared a slight bit of blue back on top of the letters!

I sanded the whole thing to bring out some of the cream beneath. It was soooo easy to sand since I'd watered down the paint!

I'm loving how it turned out and pretty sure this will go in the guest room. Got company coming in a week and hoping to have it a little more fixed up by then!

Linking up...

Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After

Beach and Lake Signs

I found these rough fence posts at Home Depot, that I thought would make great signs!

I had them cut each into three pieces and the top boards had a point. I sanded down one board to make both sides pointy but it was too much work to do it again! (Yeah, I need to get a saw!)

I made the Lake Michigan one for my sis-in-law's bday. She grew up on Lake Michigan, but now lives close to me in Nashville with my bro and their fam!

The Beach Cottage one was for me..........

I immediately hung it in the guest room!

It was the perfect completion to the doorway, along with my hanging starfish and jute, DIYed chalkboard and a clearanced rack that was missing a hook, which I simply replaced with a starfish! It's right by the laundry, so I hang up our swimsuits to dry there!

I love the rough splintery-ness of the wood!

Quick rundown of how I made them (I love learning new methods of painting signs so leave me any links in comments if you've made any different ways!)

• 
  
  Sprayed each board with the color I wanted the letters to be


• Cut out the letters on contact paper with my Silhouette


• Pressed the letters FIRMLY onto the boards. (a little hard to do since they are so rough, I used one of those Pampered Chef Scrapers!


• Sprayed again over letters with the color I wanted the letters to seal it a bit.


• Sprayed over the letters again with the main color of the board (Heirloom White for both!)


• Peeled letters off!

No sanding needed here to make it look rough!



I'm usually hanging out at these parties........

Beachy Greys and Blues

I've been seeing lots of grey and blue projects floating around blogland and was inspired to paint this yard sale find box, then a sign afterwards with the leftover paint I'd mixed.

The box had cute features, but looked like a project gone bad. Looked like someone hand made it with wires and boards, although the bottom part looked like it was meant to be a box. The wires holding the slats of the box together where letting the slats slide everywhere, and the paint job was B-A-D! Looked like someone had maybe started to whitewash it and gave up, or just did that bad of a job!

What?? Not so bad you say? Look closer......

I glued some of the wires to the boards to make it steadier, and then gave it a paint job of mixed grey, white, and blue paints. Really no method to how I did it, just kept painting and dabbing at the different colors, watering them down, mixing them etc.

I think it looked much better that I painted over the wires, but it was hard to make it look nice! It definitely still looks a little sloppy but that sort of adds to its charm now!

I threw out the old jute that tied it up, and braided some lighter string (sisal? from the Dollar Tree, can't remember the name of it though!).

It's not perfect, but for $.50 at a yard sale and some super cheap oops paint, I love it!

I'm thinking of stenciling something on it? What do you think? Think a pencil transfer would work? Or mabye if I let it "cure" for a bit a Silhouette made stencil would work!


I took the leftover paint and threw it on some leftover MDF board so it wouldn't go to waste!

I had no idea what I was going to paint on it, but pulled out the stencils I also got at a yard sale and went to work!

I would've used my Silhouette instead, but I'm out of vinyl that I'd actually keep on a sign, and couldn't make a stencil out of it since it's latex paint and I've learned the hard way that it peels off! Ha!

I probably used too much paint because I don't love how the letters turned out when you look up close. I also painted the starfish too close to the top of the board- just freehanded that and the sand dollar so they are kind of random!

See kinda goofy!

This will probably be going on a up high built in shelf in the living room, It goes really well with the wall color!

(This my dining room shelf I just threw it here to see how it looked!)

Definitely not perfect projects, but I'm liking them! They are helping me work on my painting "skills" too!